Costa Rica. Final Report

Nov 1, 2017 by heather mcphail

By: Heather McPhail, Juan Carbone, Lucia Torres, Gloria Gutierrez, Sofia Ferreiro, Daniela Solera, Marisol Sanchez 

1.Connect issues of power (colonization) to climate issues, using examples from what you learned throughout the project.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, climate change wasn’t taken so much into consideration. While companies and industries expanded and gained power, scientific investigation has shown different impacts that the unmanaged colonization caused to the environment. For example global warming due to the greenhouse effect due to the greenhouse gasses due to farming and production due to consumption. Colonization isn’t bad, it just has to be controlled. Thanks to colonization new revolutionary technologies have been developed. Everyday they are more and more eco-friendly. Human consumption and colonization is inevitable, but at least if we do colonize, we should affect less our surroundings and environment.

Colonization and climate issues need to have a balance to have sustainability.
Empowered people have had the say between climate change and economy, most of the empowered companies don't even take in to consideration the climate issue that they produce, because of the ambition to have more. Like some problems that we discussed in our bilateral conference with our partners in Canada, they explained their issue, the tar sands, this is an example because the country is getting benefited by the income that this oil produces, but the environment isn't because they needed to deforested a large area to extract this oil, and also damage the water supply for the near by indigenous communities. Another example can be one in our country, Crucitas mine. A foreign cold company came to Costa Rica with the idea of extracting cold without considering the ecological impact that it comes with in.

2.What is the role of those in power in climate action? What are the role of the colonized in climate action? Are these roles fixed? How might we navigate these multiple roles? What does it mean to “decolonize” in support of climate change?

The role of those in power is to follow all the laws on behalf of the environment and the respect of the communities and their culture, to always act according to the wellness of the communities and to know that sacrifices are needed in companies that care about the Earth. They should always raise awareness between the companies related, so they can all work under the same values.

The colonized should always raise the voice on behalf of the environments and communities rights, colonized have to be aware that everybody follows the laws and to create more or adjust the ones present to mitigate and adjust to climate change. The proposal of strategies to work and to educate on behalf of the climate change mitigations, also to review that laws and plans are being respected, is responsibility of all.

The roles are not fixed, since we are colonizers in some situations and in others we are in the colonized role, the main thing is to always act on behalf of the climate change mitigation. We depend on the products made that sometimes act against the environment, it is our responsibility to learn the source of what we consume so we avoid buying them. In the global world in which we live today, it is hard to belong to only one group, so every one of our actions should be based on the respect for Earth and for others, be following laws that provide protection and educating others to live a sustainable life.

Decolonize encloses every practice that we can follow in order to decrease the consumption of unnecessary products and encourage the use of local products, it means to forbid others to take advantage of our land on their behalf, without respecting the communities that live and depend on them.

3. How might we participate in climate action in different contexts?

Youth can participate in different projects of climate action by creating awareness. Projects like EPI (Ecological, Project, International) this is a program that helps endangered sea turtles species like Leatherback Turtles. We took a four day trip to Limón, Costa Rica so we could work directly with this species. After this trip every single student acquired an immense amount of awareness about climate change and about the simple actions we can do that can help the animals. One of our proposals its called “Giving back what we take” and It is that If you need to cut a specific amount of trees you need to plant more quantity than the ones you took from nature. In this way people understand and get involved with climate change. Another way we can involve kids with climate action is to give active workshops in where kids can play but also create awareness about this issue.   

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