Spring 2023 Newsletter
Our newsletters are back with an updated design, renewed energies and much more to share with you all! At this stage, we are planning for one newsletter each season with the frequency to be increased gradually.
Good news!
The year started with a great assembly of almost all the Kogi communities at Bonga, attended by our very own, Falk and Paula. The assembly was linked to a new agreement and management plan for the Tayrona National Park, the management of which closely involves the four indigenous peoples of the area (Kogi, Arhouaco, Wiwa, Kanguamo). On the 14th of March, the Colombian Ministry of the Environment announced that the Park is to be enlarged by over 170,000 hectares. This was specifically linked to protection of the ancestral lands within the Black Line, the frontier designated by the indigenous people and notionally enshrined in law.
The Munekan Masha Project was also discussed, after which the workplan for the first 3 months of the project was agreed. The project, however, cannot start until we have purchased the first piece of the land, which, in the first instance, is an area of around 13.5 hectares. It has been surveyed by the Mamas and by our own team, and we now having a full professional appraisal for legal purposes. The legal work on the purchase is also almost complete. The final documents should be with us before the end of May, and then we can rapidly complete the purchase.
Thanks to the wonderful and enthusiastic public support, we are close to having the full purchase price for the first piece of land. The land will then become part of the Kogi indigenous reserve.
What happens next?
After the land purchase is completed, a Kogi family will immediately move to the purchased land to oversee and to protect it. Both the Mamas and environmental scientists will then begin their evaluation of the land, creating a baseline upon which future changes in the ecosystem will be compared with.
As we are now going to be working on a different scale of budget from the past, donations are more important than ever. Donations can be made by clicking the button below or by visiting our website.
In other news…
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Park Expanded
Colombia's protected national park in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is being expanded. This is a result of joint efforts from the four indigenous groups of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, including the Kogi. This expansion will make the park the largest protected area in the Caribbean, representing more ecosystems while also protecting the ancestral territories of the indigenous groups that live there.
The Kogi will recuperate 1636 hectares of ancestral territory
A court ruling restores the rights to their ancestral territory, located in the rural area of the municipality of Dibulla, La Guajira. The expansion of the national park and the land restitution court order both acknowledge their ancestral territory, indigenous peoples’ land rights and nature rights’ itself.
Earth Day 2023
Earth Day 2023 took place on April 22nd. The motto of the day was: “act (boldly), innovate (broadly), and implement (equitably)”. Climate change campaigns and protests took place all around the world with trees being planted and trash being cleared. A month prior, the IPCC found that “there is a more than 50% chance that global temperature rise will reach or surpass 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) between 2021 and 2040…”. It seems that while good efforts are being made, solutions are not being implemented at the scale needed and most importantly, our behaviour towards the Earth has not changed drastically.
