The article explores how climate change, driven by extreme heat and drought, is undermining the traditional farming practices and livelihoods of Indigenous communities in Central America. It highlights the misconceptions surrounding ‘slash-and-burn’ agriculture and the importance of recognizing the sustainability of traditional milpa farming systems. The article emphasizes the need to support Indigenous-led efforts to adapt to climate change and revitalize traditional ecological knowledge.
Massive Wildfires Sweep Central America
Combine April and May, in 2024, two of the worst fire seasons in memory strike Mexico and Central America amid record-high heat and drought. Fires in Belize incinerated tens of thousands of hectares of diverse forest, leading to states of emergency as fires decimated crops, homes, and environmental quality with exceptionally poor air. Indigenous communities put their lives on the line to stop the encroaching fire.
The wildfire crisis over, the same knee-jerk responses kicked in, blaming Indigenous communities’ ‘slash-and-burn’ farming for most of the blame. That narrative overages the underlying causes of the climate crisis and is rooted in a continuation of resentment towards Indigenous Peoples.
Dismantling the Myths of Slash-and-Burn
Focused on Belize, milpa is a type of agriculture that the local Indigenous Maya farmers regularly use to plant some crops in small forest-cleared patches. It is this horticulturefeiticheramente recommended as ‘slash and burn’, a label so boring, with his historic baggage of pejorative connotations that came handicapped colonial and post-colonial attempts at the modernization afro-no farming formats.
Nonetheless, research has demonstrated milpa farming to be a superior, and often less sustainable or even simply benign alternative to many permanent farming systems in the humid tropics. Indigenous Peoples maintain lands globally with lower deforestation and degradation rates, and the structure of Mesoamerican forests has been influenced by ancient Maya farmers. Milpa farming when managed well can also be beneficial for soil fertility, long-term carbon sequestration, and biodiversity.
Adjusting to a varied Environment
But as some show us, this time the earth is a planet that has become nearly untenably hot and unstable beneath our feet—even with counterproductive measures, milpa farmers scramble to adapt. The consequence has been a loss of milpa system biodiversity and ecological resilience, incomplete generations associating less with farming participation, and inherited traditional ecological knowledge erosion.
Pease writes that rather than demanding Maya farmers stop practicing what their wife calls knowledge of good soil and just follow the logicists, the article advocates for solidarity with the self-determined efforts of Mayan communities to address climate adaptation. This involves engaging invisible and marginalized communities in understanding the impacts of climate change on them through research and education, providing information about food sovereignty, institutions, and governance based on India’s constitutional tenets, andana RFS system like the one we have proposed along with other similar efforts.
