The 2015 Global Georgia Initiative at the University of Georgia is to present a lecture titled “An Amazon Contribution to Global Survival” on Feb. 19 at 4 p.m. in the UGA Chapel.
The lecture is to be given by Randy Borman, the son of Anglo-American missionaries who was born and raised among the Cofan people and who is now their chief of territories. The Cofan are an Amazonian tribe whose territory covers parts of Ecuador and Colombia.
According to a Feb. 16 UGA news release, the Cofan were on the verge of disappearance 40 years ago as a result of unchecked incursion into their lands by oil companies and related development interests.
In the mid-1970s, however, the tribe successfully lobbied the Ecuadorian government for more control of their lands. New oil exploration also was brought to a halt by the 1990s.
The release says that Mr. Borman helped secure land titled for the Cofan and entered into conservation treaties with the Ecuadorian government.
“We began slowly to realize that we weren’t just preserving this for ourselves,” he said in a 2010 talk at the TEDxAmazonia conference in Manaus, Brazil. “The preservation for ourselves is a minimal part of what we’re doing. The challenge that we are facing at the moment is the rest of the world: How do we go about making this something that the rest of the world will also buy into?”
During his visit, Mr. Borman also is to take part in a department of geography colloquium on “Disappearing Mountains of the Amazon: Land Grabs and Food Security in Cofan Territory.” The colloquium is to be held Feb. 20 at 3:30 p.m. in Room 200-C of the geography-geology buidling.
Mr. Borman’s efforts on behalf of the Cofan led to the implementation of conservation politicies than now protect more than 1 million acres of Cofan-controlled rainforest, according to the release.
Mr. Borman also has developed ecotourism in the area to raise capital and protect the environment.
The Global Georgia Initiative is comprised of a series of lectures aimed at presenting global problems in a local context. It seeks to address contemporary issues, including economic and environmental concerns with a focus on how the arts and humanities can play a positive role in finding solutions.
The initiative is an annual speaker series sponsored by the Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.
For more information about the Global Georgia Initiative programs, click here.
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