What do women engineers who have dedicated their lives to water breeding in Ayacucho, a farmer who has managed to collect more than 300 potato varieties in Huánuco and a native community in Ucayali who have stopped cutting down their forest and now protect it as their greatest treasure have in common?
All are stories about climate action in Peru. They are also part of the Apacheta Project, an initiative of the Fábrica de Ideas, supported by Swiss Cooperation SDC, whose main objective is to bring environmental issues closer to the public in a different, closer and more human way. To achieve this, the project has published an anthology, El Libro de los Elementos, and has launched a website where it shares varied texts produced by the Fábrica de Ideas over the last twelve years, for reference agencies such as the Ministry of the Environment, the United Nations Development Programme, the National Water Authority and the SDC itself. Each selected text, photo or info graphic establishes a connection between science and people-friendly information by combining ten journalism tools that help to build rapport and foster dialogue, analysis and reflection, while also proposing solutions to the climate crisis using traditional wisdom.
The project takes the name “Apacheta” from the piles of stones of different sizes, placed one on top of the other, as a symbolic offering in the Andes, as we believe that this environmental communication project is like them. Each story chosen is like a small stone heavy with meaning in itself, but which acquires its true dimension when it is put together with others and forms something new, and much more powerful.
The anthology (like the website) is divided into five volumes. Four of them are devoted to water, earth, fire and air, and between them they offer 44 stories organised according to the four elements that, according to the ancients, constituted the essence of the world. The fifth volume is more reflective and is written to describe communication. It explains the different journalistic tools that have been chosen to bring scientific narrative down to earth, and reinforces the important social dimension of science. Using sources, chronicles and reports to put a face to the information, text structures that are easy to read and so make information easy to access, portraits, info graphics to reveal those aspects that remain invisible to the eye … these are some of the ways the project chose to enhance the value of environmental information and bring it closer to the general public. That is why this project is designed to share the knowledge gathered over the last decade through stories, because until they are read or heard (there will soon be a podcast version) they will not be complete.
We invite you to travel through these stories, to discover and learn from the wisdom of the pioneers and eco-heroes.
Download here a short excerpt from the publication.
Source: Xabier Díaz de Cerio, Fábrica de Ideas
