This session proposes a decolonial shift in the debate on African heritage and climate emergency, focusing on the cosmologies and resistance practices of traditional communities. We question hegemonic models of adaptation, which empty their political potential for insurgency against environmental racism and the historical disorder that consolidates socio-spatial segregation.
Communities such as Aldeia Guató, the Mebengokré nation, Candomblé terreiros and quilombos, despite being exposed and vulnerable, demonstrate that resilience emerges from radically situated epistemologies, intrinsic to their memory and the way they build and inhabit. We seek approaches from a diversity of traditional sites and communities in Brazil and Latin America that reveal ways to map cultural values (cartographies, orality), assess risks (impacts and threats) and develop climate action plans (strategies, policies).
This session invites a radical transformation, regarding the role of (bio)cultural heritage in combating climate extremes (chaos) and the becoming of inhabiting the Cosmos (order). More than “including” traditional knowledge in current architectural or urban models, we aim for a complete reorganization of adaptation. What forms of spiritual climate governance emerge from the integration of ancestral knowledge and community practices? How can the cosmoperceptions of traditional peoples translate into more just, inclusive and resilient cities? How can climate action be reimagined based on the ethics of care, reciprocity and justice for permanence in the territory?
Presentations:
The memories of the water of Iquitos. Moronacocha case
Moses Porras
Community space for the Huarpe de Aguas Verdes community: Fragmented territory, knowledge in resistance and climate action from community architecture
Mauricio Vellio and Martín Ezequiel López
Who pays the climate bill? Afro-Brazilian spiritual governance between worlds – Morro da Pedra de Oxóssi and Highway BR 030
Maria Alice Pereira da Silva, Fernanda Viegas Reichardt, Sandra Akemi Shimada Kishi, Bruno Amaral de Andrade and Celso Almeida da Silva Cunha
In search of the Land without Evils: a proposal for design intervention based on the Guarani Mbyá indigenous cultural heritage
Ana Helena Leichtweis
Tide of struggle: the re-existence of quilombola heritage for climate adaptation
Liane Monteiro dos Santos and Thiago Assuncao dos Santos