Popular version of PhD dissertation resonates local voices in land use decisions

Sara O.I. Ramirez Gomez defended her PhD thesis in September 2019, after which a press release was published. The Spanish newspaper El País amplified this message across their readers. However, the powerful messages of her thesis also needed to get to local communities in Suriname who participated in the creation of knowledge in relation to the PhD research. Therefore, with the support of Tropenbos Suriname, WWF Guianas, IUCN NL and UU, Ramirez Gomez’s thesis was synthetized in simpler and accessible writing style and it was translated into Dutch, English and Saamakan, the local language.

Indigenous communities are essential to the conservation of the forests. However, until now there was no good way to communicate with the local population about their environment and the effects of overexploitation. Ramirez Gomez’s PhD thesis provided lessons to practitioners and policy makers on how to empower indigenous and other traditional communities to preserve the last intact tropical regions on Earth. Together with the traditional Saamaka communities in Suriname, Ramirez Gomez mapped the areas important for the provision of ecosystem services to the local people. This includes areas for fishing and hunting, cultivation of food crops and timber resources. This type of spatially explicit knowledge can be used by communities to negotiate a better position when confronted with external developments, such as logging and gold mining.

Making knowledge accessible

In this popular version of the thesis, Ramirez Gomez presents ways in which local communities can use the generated knowledge and maps of community use areas, and addresses how communities may deal with potential challenges in using this information. The Saamaka version of the publication was distributed to more than 200 hundred community leaders in the Saamaka territory.

The publication emphasizes the importance of local communities being recognized as the owners of this knowledge. External organizations can also play a role in supporting them to use the knowledge in policy making. In recognition of this, a local Saamaka traditional leader says: “It is often the case that we, communities, are only providers of information while the knowledge products and the opportunities to apply it stay with outsiders.” Ramirez Gomez hopes this publication can become a tool for the communities in discussing land use issues and thus change the top down way communities are usually engaged in research.

At Utrecht University, Sara Ramirez Gomez worked on her PhD project in collaboration with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development (promotores Prof. Frank Biermann and Prof. Rene Boot, copromotor Dr. Pita Verweij).

More information

Informative video about Ramírez Gómez’s PhD research: https://vimeo.com/144478218

In South Suriname, Ramírez Gómez mapped community use zones together with the indigenous Trio and Wayana people, which has led to the proclamation of a large indigenous area, the South Suriname Conservation Corridor.