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Guardians of the Green

Indigenous women of Kábata Kónana shield Costa Rica’s forest and mountains from pesticide threats

By IW:LEARN

August 22^nd, 2023

“It is a great concern. Many people come into the territory, people that are not indigenous and work with a lot of pesticides, and we try to reduce that. And we will continue that fight.”

-Maricela Fernández, President Kábata Könana Women Association

Indigenous women of the Cabécar territory – one of the 24 indigenous territories in Costa Rica – founded the Kábata Könana Women Association in 2016. They work to protect natural resources, rescue traditional knowledge, empower women to own their land, lead projects, and make decisions, and ensure food safety in their communities, located in Talamanca in the Costa Rican Caribbean.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic razed the world economy and deepened all inequalities, the guardian women of Kábata Könana reacted. They combined traditional knowledge and social media to ensure food security during the pandemic. The organization created the Indigenous Virtual Barter Shop (Estanco Indígena de Trueque Virtual Productivo). This space allowed them to sell their products but also to barter, the ancient ‘trueque’: exchange goods for other things rather than for money.

Kábata Könana means ‘Defenders of the Forests and Mountains’

in Cabecar language

Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. Photo: Unsplash/Trail

The idea flourished and united 10 communities of the Cabécar Indigenous Territory in a women's network to sell and trade agricultural products, handcrafts, knowledge, news, and more. More than 240 associates started to use WhatsApp to help support their families. At the same time, it created resilience to the global climate crisis.

In 2021, Kábata Könana received the United Nations Equatorial Prize 2021, for being a “model for community resilience to climate change and other external shocks”.

Ancestral knowledge to transform the Binational Sixaola River Basin

“We work with the five categories of traditional production (Witö, Teitö, Chamugrö, Sá Chä, Sá Delï). We fight to reduce environmental damages such as forest and river degradation or pollution. We also promote that all our farmers produce organic, may all our production be organic. The nutrition we give to our territory is vital, it must be healthy”, describes Maricela Fernández Fernández, president of the Kábata Könana Women Association.

They commemorated World Environment Day last June with education and awareness raising in Gavilán Canta in the Cabécar Indigenous Territory. In July, they celebrated their Feria del Maíz, the Corn Fair, with a large showing of traditional production, as well as a constant education of the urgency of achieving food security.

The Association also trains women in rotational and regenerative agroforestry and promotes the use of local native seed varieties and traditional medicinal plants. Kábata Könana understands that is the way to improve the community’s resilience in the face of climate warming.

“We need everyone in the territory to feel the commitment that Kábata Könana feels, we are worried of pollution. We have sent our technician to study out the territory and they returned to support local producers in organic agriculture. We also need scientific knowledge but in a natural way, to help farmers to control diseases. We have the means to produce organic fertilizers and bio ferments,” explains Maricela.

Kábata Könana is a great example that we can change the traditional model of production and consumption. This model is exacerbated in the Binational Sixaola River Basin, where the banana and banana monoculture has caused a serious pollution crisis because of the abuse of pesticides it sustains.

Maricela explained that when COVID-19 hit, they sought the advice of the Cabécar elders. “They advised us to take a step back and work on food and nutritional security, integrating our principles of conserving the environment, protecting streams and rivers, and eliminating monocrops and agrochemicals”, Maricela said in this UNDP profile.

“Motivate and persuade people to protect rivers and streams. We have a spring of water that never dries, and this year it had no water. Water is diminishing. It is a great worry, no one can live without water. We want these trees to reforestate the river borders and farms with monocrops, to give variety.”

About the IWRM Project

Towards the Transboundary Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) of the Sixaola River Basin shared by Costa Rica and Panama is a GEF project, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and executed by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OET) of Costa Rica.

Divulgated in communication actions as Proyecto Conectando Comunidades y Ecosistemas (traduced from Spanish as Connecting Communities and Ecosystems), it works with communities and institutions of Costa Rica and Panama to: Strengthen coordinated transboundary action; Set the conditions to achieve a real water management; Restore river ecosystems; Reduce risks of disasters by flooding; and Overall collaborate in the reduction of the excessive agrochemicals use in banana and plantain crops.

For more information, please contact Manuel Sancho Gutiérrez at manuel.sancho@tropicalstudies.org. You may also visit the project website and the project Facebook page. Follow the Kábata Könana in social media.