Reviving Water Project: Field work report, July 2022

This report summarizes the main highlights, developments, and conclusions of the first official fieldwork for the project “Munekan Masha: Reviving Water in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta”. It is a collaborative, intercultural ecological restoration project endorsed by the international sustainability science coalition UNESCO-BRIDGES.

The project is jointly developed and managed by the Kogi People, represented by their Indigenous Organization (Organización Gonawindúa Tayrona, OGT), and the Tairona Heritage Trust (THT), a British NGO supporting the Kogi for more than 30 years. Current institutional allies include the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and the French NGO Tchendukua. Múnekan Masha intends to put Kogi indigenous ecological practices and natural scientific conservation into dialogue, supported and mediated by anthropological expertise, to jointly identify, assess, and regenerate degraded pieces of land, in particular dried water sources.

The title “Munekan Masha” follows the Kogi premise that their ancestral territory is a living, conscious entity that guides its own regeneration, constituting forces that humans need to allow to be (re-)born.

The overall aim is to develop an intercultural and interdisciplinary sustainability model based on knowledge exchange and mutual understanding that, although emerging from a specific context, can be replicated in other situations, places and communities.