The Green Path

Yaisa Bejarano (ELP 2024) | Project Support Manager, Global Environment Facility (GEF) Project Agency - Conservation International, Columbia

Curiosity has been a common thread in my life: from wondering what would happen if I got into the adults’ pool when no one was looking and almost drowning at eight, to rewinding shows and movies because of missed details. I’m not able to focus when conducting clarifying online searches about character origins; curiosity has been part of me and evolved with age.

When I applied to university to get my International Affairs degree, the teacher who interviewed me asked about what I intended to do with my degree once I completed it. My honest answer resonated with him as I said: “I don’t know.” I explained that I intended to learn something that I would be interested in and start from there. At that time, I never imagined my career would be in the environmental field, where I have been able to serve the people and the world. This relationship between people and nature is key to me and a big part of my willingness and excitement to devote my life to this field.

I am originally from Chocó, Colombia. The Chocó Department oversees a large amount of natural resources; has access to two oceans and many rivers; and is part of the region with the highest biodiversity concentration per area (World Rainforest Movement. "The Colombian Chocó: A megadiverse region in a megadiverse country . . . for how long?"). This contrasts with poor socioeconomic indicators that show a critical situation, where the predominantly black population faces situations that are – and should be - part of the past in many regions in Colombia. This includes lack of access to healthcare and others –that are frankly ridiculous in this environment– such as lack of access to water and energy.

In such a place, biodiversity can be seen as a burden. People think of the forest and other natural resources as a curse that stands in the way between them and development. This view not only drives us further from development, but also threatens our immense biodiversity and part of our cultural identity. Knowing this situation firsthand and with curiosity being a part of my life, I found and fell in love with the concept of sustainable development that entails using and benefiting from natural resources to increase the present and future generations’ wellbeing.

At the beginning of my environmental career, working in my country’s environmental authority, I was lucky enough to be part of a project that directly benefited my beloved region and surpassed its goals, which included: declaring new protected areas; restoration in areas degraded by mining activities; and increasing income for families in the region. When the project was closing, I was interviewed and said something along these lines:

“As a conclusion, I know now that Choco Biogeografico’s wealth goes beyond biodiversity indexes. Communities’ resilience and the fact that they contemplate options that differ from the ones they have been practicing for decades, speaks about the relevance of having sustainable productive practices and how these alternatives allow pressures on biodiversity to decrease.”

This project, working in a region so close to my heart, left an indelible mark and made me see my job as more than just a fleeting assignment, but a possible life path.

This exciting path has landed me at Conservation International (CI), an organization that has the relationship between people and nature at its core. At CI, I’ve been able to give my inputs into projects that benefit not only my country but also other Latin American countries. I have been able to do this even if they have very different communities and face problems I have never even heard of before. Can you imagine? How cool is it that my 8-year-old curious inner kid gets to experience other countries, communities and issues, but also play a role in making things a little better?

At the end of the day and now, after the Beahrs ELP, I am a firm believer that actions, even at the smallest local level have impacts that though small (in comparison to the historic threats’ nature is currently facing) are significant to people in communities and in people like me, who are lucky enough to contribute. So, if you asked me something similar to what the professor asked me back in 2011, wondering where I see my career going, today the path seems clearer, and green.


[The blog post image was first published on Flickr. Original image by R. Halfpaap. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic.]