Role in FIRE-ADAPT: co-leader of the thematic area “(inter)cultural services and human well-being”
Organisation: Cobra Collective
Country: United Kingdom
What motivated me to join FIRE-ADAPT
That was thanks to the wonderful previous cooperation with Pau Costa Foundation; Núria Prat invited me to join the project. Additionally, I´d had previous meetings with Imma Oliveras, who also expressly invitated me to collaborate. I accepted it very gladly. It is a way to consolidate previous initiatives such as the meeting “Fire ecology across boundaries”, which was fantastic. In addition, Imma has worked in Latin America and we had the idea of consolidating those relationships with excellent colleagues in the region.
What my area of work in the project pursues
Promote paradigm shifts in fire management, especially in Latin America, where fire suppression practices prevail, which is to fight fire, eliminate all types of fire. In our work with local communities, especially indigenous, in the Amazon region, also in Mexico, and now in Argentina, we see more and more that it has enormous validity to incorporate local knowledge and practices, moreover, as a much more effective way than suppression practices, which are expensive and can even be counterproductive under climate change conditions because fuel accumulates. It’s ironic, but those suppression practices promote bigger fires.
Moreover, it is necessary to give voice and participation to local communities that are carrying out these fire management practices in an ancestral way. Then came the idea of creating a work area that addresses the intercultural dimension, that incorporates the human component, and the contribution among all to make new paradigms.
What I highlight about the project
I feel that FIRE-ADAPT is going to play a fundamental role in bringing us closer to decision-makers and policy-makers, in transforming those policies and incorporating more of that traditional knowledge that has been ignored historically.
What differences and similarities I see between Latin America and Europe
I believe that the technical development in suppression practices and the new conception of prescribed burning has a much more elaborate technical component in Europe than is found in Latin America, where many times the techniques are imported, with imported equipment. In Europe technology is developed and there is greater experience in prescribed burning than in Latin America.
Now, in Latin America there is a greater richness of biocultural diversities with the use of fire management. In Europe it is a process that also is being tried to rescue, but the Latin American wealth comprises the greatest diversity of indigenous groups in the world, not in quantity, but in different types of cultures.
Being in the UK and France I have realised that in the end there are more things in common than differences. It has been wonderful to perceive the interest of scientists, universities and firefighters, for example. I expected that there would be more differences than cultural ones, even that languages would be a barrier. I can communicate in English, and I’m learning French, but I see interest in speaking Spanish, which is my mother tongue. It’s very nice to feel that open-mindedness.
This is me
I am from: Venezuela
Favourite food: sancocho
Favourite film: Modern times, by Charles Chaplin
Favourite music: ethnic music, especially Latin American, such as that of Atahualpa Yupanqui
I admire: all those indigenous or local communities that refuse to disappear, that from the shadows continue to fight for maintaining their culture.
Superpower I´d like to have: make everyone much more understanding, more flexible, broad-minded, and to help others overcome their mistakes and forgive them.
In Venezuela, I’d take you to: the great savannah, the Pemón territory, in the Canaima National Park.