Biodiversity withstands climate change
Published in 2009
As the weather changes throughout the Andes Mountains of South America, farmers are noticing that modern agricultural practices produce consistently smaller yields, while those who have begun planting many varieties of plants, as their ancestors did, are getting better results according to Zenón Gomel Apaza.
“People are developing more appreciation for Andean agriculture,” says Gomel Apaza, who believes biodiversity is the key to food security. “A lot of this has to do with climate change. While the modern model is collapsing, people using traditional farming methods won’t go hungry. When the weather is good, there’s good production. When the climate is bad, there is less production. But there is still production.
“Traditional agriculture is seen as an alternative, but to see it practised you’ve got to travel to isolated corners of the world where modern practices haven’t arrived. And people are coming to see – in February, a Canadian television crew came here [the highlands of Peru] to see how it’s possible to produce healthy food using sustainable agriculture.”
Andean farmers harvesting a local variety of tuber, ollucos. To ensure food security, they relied for centuries on a diversity of edible plants adapted to their inhospitable environment. Orurillo, Peru, 2006
©Rolex Awards/Xavier Lecoultre
With the funds from his Rolex Award, Gomel Apaza has been helping a rural community protect dozens of varieties of potato, sharing the seeds with neighbouring communities through seed fairs. He has also been working with indigenous leaders from across the highlands who have made common cause with environmental activists. Together they have presented legal proposals to the Peruvian Congress in the hope that legislation will be passed to ensure respect and protection for traditional culture.
For Gomel Apaza, ancestral practices such as the harvesting of barley by hand are ecologically and culturally better adapted to the lives of Andean farmers than modern, mechanised agriculture. Orurillo, Peru, 2006
©Rolex Awards/Xavier Lecoultre
Gomel has also taken the battle to the schools. He persuaded the University of the Altiplano to begin a course on the conservation of biodiversity. He is also trying to ensure that classes on cultural knowledge are taught more widely. “In all the specialties, in medicine and law and education, we should be emphasizing elements of our culture,” he says.
“People are coming to see that our culture and agricultural biodiversity are the same thing, a form of sustainable life for Andean communities. We can’t have biodiversity without Andean culture. It’s the same thing. We live it and feel it. When we work on our farms, we are living our culture,” Gomel Apaza says.
According to Leo Gorman, a master’s student at the University of New Orleans who has been conducting an oral history project in Pukara, Gomel’s home village in Peru, the Rolex Laureate is teaching young people that culture is relevant, a message that has the potential to slow urban migration and revitalize rural communities.
“His work on linking culture and food security is cutting edge,” Gorman says. “Last year I filmed young people in the area who enjoy cell phones and modern transportation, and are tempted to move off to the city because they feel that rural areas have little to offer them. Zenón is helping them understand that they can take advantage of living in a modern world while also embracing their own culture.”
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- Contact Information
Mr Zenón Porfidio Gomel Apaza
Asociación Savia Andina Pucará (ASAP)
Barrio San Francisco
Jiron Leoncio Prado N° 330
Ayaviri, Melgar
Peru
