Faced with sea level rising, one indigenous community weighs a plan to mitigate climate change.

[n2doc]

By Ruxandra Guidi

According to a legend of the Kuna peoples of Panama, the Great Father Bab Dummad and his wife, Nan Dummad, created all that exists. But before giving birth to humans, they created boniganas, spirit sanctuaries in tropical old-growth forests with imposing canopies as tall as 250 feet.

The largest such bonigana in Kuna territory occupies more than 1,250 square miles along the northeast corner of Panama. Dominated by hardwood species such as jacaranda, ceiba, caoba, and cocobolo (or rosewood), the bonigana was a lush gift of the deities. Hundreds of species of vines, herbs, roots, and fruits like cacao would provide medicinal powers; skunk pigs, tapirs, and armadillos would become game for food; and a handful of hardwood tree species were there for thatched-roof homes and the Kuna's ubiquitous cayucos, or kayaks.

Out of their gratitude for such bounty, the Kuna developed a powerful conservation ethos. Even today, when a man must fell a grown tree to build his house or to grow subsistence crops, he will voice appreciation for the tree before giving it the final blow. "Trees have sap," goes one of many traditional Kuna adages. "And who do you think drinks the sap? Nan Dummad. That is how she strengthens herself." The Kuna were instructed not to recklessly clear the vegetation -- doing so would provoke the spirits, unleashing a wave of disease against their transgressors.

But recent weather events are forcing the Kuna to consider clearing and settling in their bonigana. Since 2004, sea levels have risen four inches on the more than thirty islands off Panama's Caribbean coast, where much of the Kuna's population of 45,000 lives.

In October 2008, the encroaching seas, combined with two weeks of unusually high tides and storm surges, flooded a majority of the islands, ruining schools, subsistence crops, and wood and straw homes. When the waters finally receded, residents, fearing they would eventually have to abandon their island homes, began discussing a difficult contingency plan: relocation to the only other land in their territory, the sacred mainland bonigana.

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http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/2010/12/will-a-un-climate-change-solution-help-kuna-yala.html

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. This is our future.

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