Geoscience Reference
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ecosystems, garnering political and social power to defend themselves;
at the same time, as we have pointed out in this chapter, sympathizers
and scholars are recognizing the signifi cance of these efforts and their
gradual coalescing into movements. Reiterating, the fi ve basic principles
of this strategy mentioned above are: autonomy, solidarity, self-suffi ciency,
productive diversifi cation and sustainable regional resource management.
But it is no longer possible for us or for the communities with which
we intend to collaborate to continue assuming that we can design our lives
around a consumption scheme and market system like that developed in
the western world or continue to depend on a productive apparatus like
the one that is decimating our ecosystems and provoking global warming.
It is not suffi cient for us to learn from the models of 'good behavior' of
the communities trying to defend their páramos, their forests, their sacred
mountains; we must join them in searching for strategies to build a 'good
life', incorporating the principles handed down through the generations
among the Andean peoples, and recently coming to the fore in the World
Conference of the Peoples on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother
Earth, convened in Tiquipaya, Bolivia in March 2010 (Acosta 2010). 15
If there is one lesson that can be drawn from these experiences, it is
for tradition to survive it must become a living process, a resource that
is constantly renewed to assure its currency and its value. In Mexico,
people that now comprise more than one-quarter of the population, fi nd
that indigenous epistemologies are truly a building block for constructing
alternatives to globalization: transforming into reality the realization that:
Many other worlds are under construction by peoples around the globe
right now.
References
Acosta, Alberto. 2010. Only by imagining other worlds, this one will be changed. Thoughts
about Good Living. Sustentabilidades, No. 2 (Text in Spanish.).
Barkin, David. 1998. Wealth, Poverty and Sustainable Development. Mexico City: Editorial Jus.
(available free from: http://econwpa.wustl.edu/eprints/dev/papers/0506/05060003.
pdf).
Barkin, David. 1999. The economic impact of ecotourism: confl icts and solutions in highland
Mexico. pp. 157-172. In : Pamela Godde, Michael F. Price and F.M. Zimmerman (eds.).
Tourism and Development in Mountain Regions. Cab International, London.
Barkin, David. 2000. Overcoming the Neoliberal Paradigm: sustainable popular development.
Journal of Developing Societies XVI (1): 163-180.
Barkin, David (ed.). 2001. Innovaciones Mexicanas en el Manejo del Agua. Mexico City:
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana.
Barkin, David and Carlos Paillés. 2002. NGO-collaboration for ecotourism: a strategy for
sustainable regional development in Oaxaca. Current Issues in Tourism 5(3): 245-253.
(http://www.planeta.com/planeta/99/0499huatulco.html).
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