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Accepted Paper:
An exploration of more comprehensive forms of engagement with the Mayan culture in the coproduction of public policies to mitigate the impact of climate change in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Linda Russell
(Universidad Autónoma de Campeche)
Laura García
(Instituto Pedagógico Campechano)
Said Jose Abud
(CEPHCIS, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
Cessia Chuc
(Autonomous University of Campeche)
Paper short abstract:
In the Yucatan Peninsula indigenous complex relational observations regarding minute local changes in flora and fauna due to climate change suggest transdisciplinary opportunities and challenges for engagement with Mayan culture in the mitigation of the impact of climate change
Paper long abstract:
There is growing recognition that responses to climate change need to go beyond technological and policy initiatives to include local and indigenous knowledges and practices which not only harbour information concerning the impact of climate change on particular ecosystems but also constitute a vital medium which needs to adapt and evolve to strengthen ecosystem resilience. In south east Mexico, there is a local general awareness of changing rain patterns, increased extremes in seasonal temperatures and reduced soil quality. A source of more specialised environmental knowledge resides in the Mayan communities whose culture is still largely organized around the agricultural calendar according to the periodicity of wet and dry seasons which in turn temporalizes the related religious offerings, thereby sustaining in differing degrees the Mayan pre-colonial world view. Public policy engagement with Mayan communities has, nevertheless, to date been mainly limited to restricting sustenance hunting and ancient practices of slash and burn land clearance, although since 1997 an option for participating in environmental management units (UMAs) was established; likewise environmental education programmes remain basic, apparently aimed at an urbanised population. Preliminary results from a study of indigenous knowledge of climate change in the Yucatan Peninsula show Mayan environmental knowledge as fundamentally holistic and hence ecological, proffering complex relational observations regarding minute local changes in flora and fauna due to climate change, thus indicating transdisciplinary opportunities and challenges (Klenk and Meehan, 2015), for engagement with the Mayan culture in the coproduction of public policies to mitigate the impact of climate change.
Local knowledge in a changing climate: the experimental politics of coproduction
Session 1 Thursday 1 September, 2016, -