At this moment in history, humanity is going through an unprecedented crisis: climate change. A scenario that is only beginning to reveal the consequences of all the devastation caused largely by human factors. There are debates around this issue, about how much we are responsible and how much what is happening is part of an organic warming process of the Earth itself. A discussion that is sometimes raised simply to hide our guilt.
In any case, whether or not there is proper acknowledgment, the fact is that the Earth is warming, and this has generated a host of consequences: for those of us who cultivate the land, the weather has become a box of guesses. We do not know whether it will rain or whether the sun will be so radical and aggressive that it will kill the baby plants. We do not know which plants might withstand the impact of drastic climate changes. We do not know if what we are going to plant will have any chance of survival. In any case, life is gradually becoming an art of trying to foresee things in the midst of chaos. And so, without certainty, we must keep walking.
In some places, such as the Global North (that geopolitical and capitalist North, among others), measurements somehow help and will continue to help in anticipating mechanisms to confront this wave of uncertainty. Meanwhile, in other places, such as the Ecuadorian South where I am, the underlying philosophy is to “live day by day.” It is like a principle of existence shaped by different colonial processes, one that leads us to build the circumstances of life day by day. Given the economic ups and downs, insecurity, political instability, and so much more, here the human spirit is forged in the midst of the sea: between the tide that rises and falls. A capacity for survival and daily reconstruction that confines us to the day we are living—it does not allow us to think too much about the future, plan for retirement, or design the next five years of our lives.
In all of this, with the calculations of the North and the resilience of the South, the truth is that we have not developed a global awareness of what is happening in relation to what is our Great Home. Although statistics flow on one side and the urgency of survival on the other, the chaotic scenario has not been understood in an integral way. And what this ultimately raises is: why have we broken the relationship we once had with the space we inhabit, to cause such a tremendous crisis?
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