The city of Cartagena, located in the Colombian Caribbean, has become an emblematic case of climate change risk and vulnerability. Industrial, urban and tourism development has resulted in the dramatic loss and deterioration of mangrove ecosystems that, despite their strategic importance for climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, have historically been sites of industrial waste dumping and organized abandonment. In this presentation, I analyze the efforts led by four different Black grassroots organizations that have dedicated their efforts to reclaim, defend and recover Cartagena's mangroves. Drawing from ethnographic research, I seek to better understand mangrove spaces as Black ecologies that materialize a politics of life at the frontlines of climate change. 

 

Diana Ojeda is a Colombian geographer working at the intersections of feminist political ecology and critical agrarian studies. She is currently Professor in the Department of Geography and the Department of International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington where she directs the Commons Program at the Ostrom Workshop. She is also member of the Latin American feminist collective Miradas Críticas al Territorio.