CASA Latina and EmerGENcies Musurrunakuna-Mocoa-Colombia

Solution

Key challenges for people on the ground – both affected and responding:

The Musurrunakuna people lost their territory for third time. This people of the Inga’s lineage faced a third displacement by natural disaster (the 2 previous by land conflict and violence), which entails a great hit against community sovereignty and cultural survival.

The situation of emergency in Mocoa has its origin in the lack of urban planning and historical non-favorable political leadership inside the city’s administration, as well as in the level of the national government. The emergency situation for the Musurrunakuna people is related to being located in a zone of risk, and it adds to the fact that the community has being displaced in 2 previous occasions for armed and land conflicts sponsored by land distribution policies in Colombia. If the Musurrunakuna people aims to develop their Life Plan in the new territory, key conditions are required: 1) a land in a zone safe from foreseeable risk, 2) legally entrusted power over the land and 3) a land with potential to create a sustainable living conditions: fertile to grow food, suitable conditions for a housing project, and a size that allows to develop productive projects and rebuild their Cabildo (own traditional communitarian structure). The conditions 1 and 3 are checked. Condition 2 regarding to land ownership is a highly bureaucratic long term process for any community in Colombia. It has been 21 months (by the time this text is written) since the community moved to the land, and yet the land ownership has not been secured by the National Land Agency in charge of buying, repairing, restitution of the community right to land access.

Mocoa is the main city of a distant and poorly connected state at the south of the country. The new territory is located in El Pepino, a rural area where displacement of emerGENcies support team and experts, materials and aid is costly and difficult, those high costs and lack of financial support represents one of the main challenges to consolidate actions to attend the emergency and subsequently develop the programme of the regenerative reconstruction of the Musurrunakuna Community in the new territory. Also, the lack of will of the local government in protecting the agreements to back and make official the acquisition of the new land is an issue which up to day, puts pressure in the community and jeopardizes the whole settlement process.

The Intervention

EMERGENCY MOCOA: PARTICIPATORY REGENERATIVE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE MUSURRUNAKUNA TERRITORY was created to:

1. Support Musurrunakuna people on the regenerative design and construction of their territory, based on their Life Plan and ensuring that bioconstruction, agroforestry and economy-productive solutions integrate the most useful and healthy of local and conventional practices.
2. To become a local practical example of community based reconstruction for other Cabildos (organized indigenous communities) willing to prepare for and prevent in case of similar situations of natural disasters related to climate change and poor (or non-existent) planning of human settlements in Putumayo and Colombia.
3. To become a live example of community reconstruction post-disaster, as a tool and method for governments to consider the case and include recommendations in local, national and bioregional territorial development plans.

Diagnosis, designs, learning plan and reconstruction work are all done based on the integration of the following assets and approaches:

• Musurrunakunas’ Life Plan
• 4 Dimensions of Sustainability
• Permacultural Regenerative Scale
• U Process
• Musurrunakuna Traditional Spiritual teachings and practices

Up to now we have reached:

1. Territory design and subdivisions of families’ areas, collective areas and forest restoration areas.
2. Bioconstruction of Cabildo’s House: central community’s house to host community gatherings for conversation, decision making, celebration and common shelter.
3. Construction and Provisioning of Traditional Bioconstruction Workshop: to enable in situ workshop for future constructions and training.
4. Agricultural Productive Project in Familiar Chagras (familiar gardens): combined traditional and conventional agriculture in Chagras with Andean-Amazonian edible plants and products and medicinal plants for self-consumption and selling, basic soil work, fertilizers, planting plan, plants nursery – vivarium,
5. Permaculture Trainings: design principles applied a living systems; bioconstruction techniques with materials form the bioregion; organic food production and syntropic agriculture; ethics and principles for soil conservation and harvesting, Intelligent Food and Kitchen.
6. Bioconstruction of the 1st Model of Family House
7. Collective systems for drinkable water management; water sanitation; energy management systems

What’s Next:

1. Building 20 family houses more, each with traditional materials and combining the best of traditional techniques (Chonta, Iraka, Chagra…) with eco-technologies (Efficient stoves, compost toilets, water management systems…).
2. Agricultural Productive Project in Collective Land: soil preparation and fertilization process, species selection, planting in subdivisions applying and testing principles of agro-ecology, syntropic agriculture and edible forest.
3. Apiculture: bees keeping for plants pollination and production enhancement.
4. Non Violent Communication and Participatory Leadership Trainings
5. Community Based Enterprise: productive project from Andean-Amazonian fruits.
6. Follow-up Practices and Management on Traditional Agriculture and Reforestation.
7. Knowledge Management: 1 guide book on the Permacultural Regenerative Community Design Methodology
8. Professional audio-visual documentation

What were some of the most important things CASA Latina did to mobilise or engage people?

The Anaconda del Sur Ecovillage (a local node of CASA Latina) sent out a call for support and became the recollection and distribution point of aid (in kind and cash) in the first phase of the immediate response to the emergency. A crowdfunding campaign was launched and first need supplies were distributed among families and communities refuged in the rural areas of Mocoa, out of the official shelters installed in the middle of the city with poor care and sanitation. https://www.facebook.com/redCASAcolombia/videos/1684079944940487/

The second phase gathered a team able to respond to a call for support from the Musurrunakuna people, who were newly moved to a 69 Ha of land offered by a landowner, where the process of regenerative reconstruction of the Musurrunakuna territory started. The call convened 6 organizations and currently a total of 11 among donors and technical developers have supported collective and specific reconstruction actions.

What were the key impact or results?

Up to now we have reached:

1. Territory design and subdivisions of families’ areas, collective areas and forest restoration areas.
2. Bioconstruction of Cabildo’s House: central community’s house to host community gatherings for conversation, decision making, celebration and common shelter.
3. Construction and Provisioning of Traditional Bioconstruction Workshop: to enable in situ workshop for future constructions and training.
4. Agricultural Productive Project in Familiar Chagras (familiar gardens): combined traditional and conventional agriculture in Chagras with Andean-Amazonian edible plants and products and medicinal plants for self-consumption and selling, basic soil work, fertilizers, planting plan, plants nursery – vivarium,
5. Permaculture Trainings: design principles applied a living systems; bioconstruction techniques with materials form the bioregion; organic food production and syntropic agriculture; ethics and principles for soil conservation and harvesting, Intelligent Food and Kitchen.
6. Bioconstruction of the 1st Model of Family House
7. Collective systems for drinkable water management; water sanitation; energy management systems

What were the key successes?

The Musurrunakuna people is together, growing in number –from 99 members in 2017, they are now 145 people in 2019- and growing in ownership of their territory, their homes and the possibility to continue their culture. We do celebrate the life of the Musurrunakuna community!

We also celebrate the call made from the community which gave life to the EmerGENcy Mocoa. It gathers a group of initiatives creating bridges between innovative-regenerative systems and conventional systems like traditional communities, community based organizations, cities with projects and policies on adaptation to climate change, and government’s plans on feasibility of land regulation.

More than an emergency-related-response project, it has evolved into a designed and hosted process which involves different organizations, people and experiences to implement practical solutions for climate-change related emergency situations and to establish living examples on regenerative lifestyles which can prove that human settlements can generate a positive impact on ecosystems regeneration at the same time that such us ecosystems provide sustenance for the wellbeing, high life style and comfort of people.

What were the key learnings?

“It always seems impossible until it’s done” Nelson Mandela:

Patience and persistence are indispensable when requiring response from governments (national and local) to move forward in the restitution of the land ownership of the affected community. The rhythm of the process can be much lower and discouraging than anticipated and it will imply that the community is clear and solid in their identity, their vision and their aim to stick together and continue as a community.

“The best strategy is various strategies”:

When moving for the phase of the first response to the phase of post-disaster reconstruction process, many external inputs can affect the vulnerable new system. So, learning to draw and navigate among plan A, B, C… is key to comprehend that conflicts are at the level of the strategies, not of needs, and that together, different views can create very different feasible strategies which could not be created by a single mind.

“A great process requires a great team effort”:

After experiencing how to be resilient, it’s the community itself which starts to fuel back the people that has decided to support. Community and supporters have to become a synchronized team, which create their own agreements and principles to work together, to learn from each other and to recognize themselves as peers. Supporters need to connect with humbleness and wisdom, and community members need to connect with self-esteem and inner power, so what emerges can be materialized from a center of regeneration, authenticity and love.