La Paz, Bolivia Partners of the Americas chapter environmental chair Ursula Bustillos-Daza was able to give a talk to the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment about creating sustainable eco-communities with indigenous people who are endangered by modernity. An excerpt from her talk is below:
“Sustainable Eco-Communities: What if the Present looked at the Past to build the Future?”
The excessive and uncontrollable global mass production has led mankind to an insatiable consumerism, which in turn has become an important link in the contamination chain of Mother Earth. This environmental degradation has also a dramatic presence in urban areas where its size is directly correlated to the size of the area. Mankind has poisoned, damaged, and polluted our planet profoundly, putting in grave danger the fragile balance of our ecosystems and, consequently, the continuity of life itself. Now we must imperatively shift our gaze back at our ancestors’ wisdom and return onto the path of nature. We must find the appropriate eco-technologies that operate under the principle of sustainability for the benefit of future generations and Earth itself.
A ” Sustainable Eco – Community ” is an existing small human settlement, where the respect of the social organization and the valorization of the ancestral knowledge are fully integrated with the opposite force of eco-technologies whilst projecting its sustainable lifestyle into the future. The tourist community, Quilima, a.k.a Sleeping Dragon, lies on the shores of Lake Titicaca – Bolivia at 12,467 feet above sea level. It is located in the municipality of Carabuco at about 96 miles from the city of La Paz. This mystical and energetic place is what motivated us to interrelate with the community, its natural environment as well as the whole landscape.