In order to enhance the uptake of the digital tools developed by HARMONIZE, the Colombian public engagement team seeks to engage in a two-way knowledge exchange with the communities living in the selected hotspots. We aim to learn about the local perceptions of the connections between climate change and health threats, and understand how the communities feel about the use of drones for data collection.  

El Espinal, one of our selected hotspots, is a municipality located in Tolima, a department in the centre-west area of Colombia. Our team selected La Caimanera, a small village in El Espinal, as the specific site to install one of HARMONIZE meteorological stations, collect data using drone technology and to develop our qualitative research. 

Felipe Aramburo Jaramillo (PhD candidate at Andes University) installed the meteorological station on September 12th, and María Galvis-Malagón (qualitative researcher at Andes University) has been conducting semi-structured interviews and doing ethnographic observations on two field trips scheduled at the beginning of August and September. Despite being preliminary findings, the qualitative research conducted by the HARMONIZE team in Colombia has already shown interesting insights, as described below: 

Local perceptions on climate change

The temperature increase and the environmental transformations associated with changing climate in El Espinal are the main concerns identified by the local community. Many of our interviewees say that the year 2023 has had a particularly long and intense summer. Usually, August is the month of the year with the least rainfall, however, the dry season in 2023 started earlier than usual and has extended through the first half of September. These climate conditions affected the agricultural production in El Espinal. For example, the mango harvesting, which is one of the main economic sources in La Caimanera, is producing smaller mangoes than usual, and some lemon crops have dried up. 

A farmer in La Caimanera is showing the mango harvesting to researchers from HARMONIZE

During the fieldwork campaign the local community identified  some customs as the main cause of changes in climate. Some interviewees blame the burning of  rice chaff after the harvesting, a practice done to prepare the land for the next sowing, as the main driver of temperature increases and uncontrolled fires.

Our interviewees also mentioned that the use of herbicides is causing great damage to the land. Although our interviewees find an explicit connection between some community practices and climate change, they do not associate these environmental transformations and threats to human health.

Local perceptions on technology

We have learnt that there is a conflicting long-standing relationship with technology in La Caimanera, whose origin dates back to the Green Revolution¹ in the countryside. For example, some land lessees and land owners have bought new machines that speed up the extraction of rice crops, replacing peasant labour, and positioning the arrival of new technologies as an economic threat to a part of the local community.

The inhabitants of La Caimanera are familiarised with drone technology. In recent years, some land lessees in the village use drones to fumigate their rice crops. Several interviewees mentioned that this practice has mistreated or burned the trees that border the village’s highway. The HARMONIZE team aims to transform the local meaning given to drones: instead of using this technology for herbicides, entailing an environmental deterioration, we seek to collect data to support a better adaptation to a changing climate for the health sector. 

1 The Green Revolution was implemented in Colombia in the first half of the twentieth century, and it aimed to generate high rates of agricultural productivity by implementing intensive farming and the massive use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, tractors and other heavy machinery (Ceccon, 2008; Medina, 2018).