Collaborating with the Isberyala Community for a Future in the Mainland Attached to the Indigenous Traditions

The GEF CReW+ project in Panama comes to collaborate in strengthening water management focused on the Guna Yala indigenous territory, which is a costal sector, a territory governed by the native people Guna.

This project has faced the challenge of being able to adopt to the Guna worldview as a community, in particular how they evaluate making decisions.

This project is about to analyze the social and environmental adaptation along with the future inhabitants that will relocate from the Cartí Sugdupu Island, to the Nuevo Cartí community in mainland. Due to the radical change to their way of living and relationship with their new environment, from being surrounded by water to a wooded area, as well as the livelihood of their residents, organization, environmental management to mitigate the impact of their daily activities in the woods, as well and the responsible management of water, among other topics.

This work has a objective collaborating in the adoption of their new environment, achieving a great acceptance of future residents to dimension the change that is approaching, through a Local Guidelines for Good Practices for the New Community of Isberyala, name that comes from the consultation process substituting Nuevo Carti, aligned with their vision and language. This document is generated from the workshops done with the future inhabitants of Isberyala and the authorities, collaborating with their wisdom and historical passage for the design, so once the new local authorities are in place is adopted.

We consider that the success of this document it born from its conception and construction, its conduction and genesis with the future inhabitants came from their key interest in preparing for a change of life attached to their culture. From this process a lesson learned is that to be able to provide financing options and administrative management of their resources to handle the development of the new community, it was necessary to create ad shape their capacity in project management, something that will give them the knowledge and tools to be able to achieve the financing of projects to foster resources for the integral development of the community.

This is translated into a challenge to be able to channel the necessary funds to accomplish this process of strengthening that seeks to secure a future in which they can manage and raise funds.

 

Author: Jorge Elias Jaen Bonilla, Engineer, Direction of Costal Areas and Seas, Ministry of Environment of Panama