The first
event in this year’s Environmental Lecture Series will be a presentation by Kendra McSweeney from Ohio State University. That will be Thursday, Oct. 3 at 7:30 pm
in the Ronk Lecture Hall, COE.
Kendra McSweeney interviewing the
oldest living Tawahka woman, Honduras (photo credit: K. McSweeney)
Dr. McSweeney is a geographer specializing
in the relationship between people and forests.
She has conducted research for 20 years in Honduras, where she has
tracked the resilience of forest-dependent native communities to
climate-related and other exogenous shocks, including drug trafficking. She has
also studied the links between demographic change and struggles around
territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon. At
Ohio State, she teaches courses on Latin America, fieldwork, research and
professionalization, demography, and environment.
“… There has been
relatively little attention…to the ways in which narco-trafficking is
transforming the Central American countryside. In fact, the flow of drugs
through remote, biodiverse regions is having a profound and devastating effect
on the region's forests; Guatemala and Honduras now have some of the world's
highest deforestation rates. Narco-trafficking is also contributing to the
massive displacement and impoverishment of indigenous peoples and peasant
smallholders across the region. Drawing from long-term research in eastern
Honduras (a major trafficking hub), this talk will detail just how drug
trafficking has this effect, and will review the ways in which these dynamics
are profoundly linked to the ways in which the U.S. chooses to wage its 'war on
drugs.' "
View of deforestation from boat, as seen by
two young Tawahka women, Honduras (photo credit: K. McSweeney)
This year’s Environmental
Lecture Series explores “Environmental and Human Health in Latin America,” with
perspectives from experts in human ecology, policy, and scientific study
related to specific environmental issues.
