Cartagena de Indias (Bolívar) is one of the Colombian cities that suffers from tree shortage more severely. The Public Environmental Institution of Cartagena (EPA-Cartagena) ratifies that in Cartagena the amount of trees per inhabitant determines a 1:16 relationship (a tree per 16 inhabitants), that is, just 0.06 trees per inhabitants, well below international standards:
With regard to the arboreal coverage of the city, it is just the 0,34% of the total surface of the city and 11.47% of the total public urban area, being these last one specially important to be covered of vegetation for the social and environmental services it must offer to its inhabitants. The North-American NGO American Forest suggests a minimum of 40% of arboreal coverage in the cities as a strategy for the fight against global warming. This reflects an urgent need to increase arboreal coverage as a climate modifier, that is, to minimize the greenhouse effect which suffers the city.
¿How does Food Forest Cartagena work?
In Cartagena, under the coordination and implementation of FEM fundation, we are creating Food Forests in the zones which surround the Old People's Home and which suffer from heat and deforestation the most. ¿Why do we involve the Old People's Homes?
According to the Group of investigation in Physical Activity and Human Development of the Universidad del Rosario, Colombia does not guarantee an appropriate environment for the elder people, since the determinants of active ageing are affected and this makes the elder population live in conditions which do not meet at all the WHO guidelines. This means that elder people are caught up in a physical and psychosocial problem that drives them to the downtime, social rejection, abandonment and dependency.
The WHO defines the active ageing as a process of optimization of opportunities for the physical, social and mental welfare in the course of life with the aim of expanding life expectancy, the productivity and life quiality in the old age. The policies and programmes of active ageing are the essential tool for enabling the process of active ageing and, in this way, counteract the phenomenon of ageing of the population. Choosing the Old People's Homes as the managers of the daily monitoring of the trees, the project Food Forest boosts the practice of leisure activities of the elder people as an stimulus for the active ageing. |
Moreover, we have supported the creation of a micro business of gardening composed of people of the urban Zenú indigenous ethnicity and we have contracted their services so that they are the ones in charge of the labour force of the project. ¿Why do we involve the urban Zenú indigenous?
Currently there are 1200 migrant indigenous in the city, most of them with informal jobs which do not guarantee their sustainabiliy and neither their family's in conditions of dignity.Tuchins and indigenous craftsmen and traders are constrained to participate in the economy from a position of inequality. But they have remarkable capacities like their traditional knowledge in sowing and agriculture. Some of the indigenous are associated into the ATINAZ organization, powered by FEM since 4 years ago, since it was constituted and through which the indigenous develop processes of social innovation.
Recruiting the Zenú indigenous for the sowing and maintenance of our trees, a service of high quality is guaranteed and, in the same time, we support the transition of this community towards a more dignified, independent and sustainable life. |
All our Food Forest are composed of native fruit trees. Why fruit trees? Does not work with other type of trees?
We have to add to the reforestation effect the fact that the trees that we sow give fruits, which will redound into a possible strategy of food sovereignty for the city.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), a seventh of the worldwide population (800 millions of people) suffers hunger, and a quarter of this amount are children. The economical policies imposed by the transnational businesses, with their back turned to the communities, are the cause of the deepening of the gap between rich and poor people. Cartagena is not oblivious to this phenomenon, since it is one of the cities most strongly battered by poverty and inequality in the whole country. In Colombia, the neoliberal policy of the financial administration has granted in concession the main goods of the State, road corridors, sea and river ports, airports, public lighting, telephony, aqueducts to private groups and family clans, and it is estimated that less than 10 thousand privileged families live with what this companies produce. In view of this situation, to which we have to add the problem of the displaced persons, it is necessary to boost the democratization of sources of revenue. This is the main mission of food sovereignty: implementing root processes of agrarian reform that guarantee to each community the right to define their own policies and strategies of sustainable production, distribution and consume of the food which will ensure a healthy diet, based in small-medium-scale production, with respect for their own cultures and the diversity of the farm, sea, ethnic and indigenous means of agricultural production, marketing and resource management. The project Food Forest, with the exclusive sowing of fruit trees in urban zones and with the integration of a future strategy of food sovereignty for the city in its plan of actions, joins the forces for change towards a sustainable city which will guarantee a stronger food sovereignty of the citizens. |