Protecting Colombia's Environment

Aug. 25, 2008—When Lavinia Fiori Reggio was 20, her work with the Tanimuca tribe in the Amazon gave her greater insight into the complicated roles between men and women in her native country of Columbia.

She had grown up rebelling against some of her Italian immigrant mother’s traditional attitudes about women, but living in the Amazon became a real eye opener for her.

“There is a clear separation between what men and women can do in these communities,” she says. At first, Lavinia viewed most of what she saw as discrimination, but then “I realized that sometimes there are just two different ways of understanding and I learned to respect these.” For example, she mentioned the consultative councils in the area, in which men sat in the inner circle making decisions while women were relegated to the outer circle. Despite the seeming higher status of the inner circle, men carried the women’s suggestions and comments forward in discussions. The fact was that women had a great influence on decision-making, but not “a straight power,” she explained.

Her experience in the Amazon helped develop her commitment to the underprivileged. She was able to realize this commitment when working for the Colombian government, where in 1991 she helped with the process to create a new Colombian constitution. The new constitution recognized the minority status and land ownership rights of the Afro-Colombian population—descendants of African slaves who are largely settled along Colombia’s Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Lavinia recounted the very democratic process that went into writing the constitution, which included “community organizations, the Afro-Caribbean people, and the government.”

Lavinia learned that cooperation was a more effective means than force to reach an end.

This strategy served her well when she moved to an island near Cartegena along Colombia’s coast and began a new career in conservation in 1999. In spite of the hardship of not having running water, light or even a health center, she says the skills she gained building social participation in conservation efforts made it worth the sacrifice. “If people really understand the environmental problems that are affecting their daily life, people will change the activities that are causing negative impact.”

Lavinia now lives in Bogata, where she is the executive director of Fundación Marina, a marine conservation organization. It is an unpaid position, but one that allows her to follow her heart, combining her love of the sea with her passion for helping marginalized communities. Her list of successes includes convincing fishermen not to use dynamite and encouraging them to work the deep sea together in environmentally sustainable ways. Teaching children to respect the land, presenting educational plays, and training young leaders are all part of Lavinia’s work.

She hasn’t forgotten her early lesson about the importance of strengthening women’s voices—a commitment that was reinforced during her own struggles raising two children as a single mom throughout her career.

Lavinia joined 25 other women from around the world for the July 2008 Global Women in Management workshop.

Lavinia would like to do more with women in the seaside communities where Fundación Marina works, especially to help reduce poverty. Today, women largely are absent from the formal economy in that region, and men bring in most family income from their work as fishermen. But, Lavinia sees potential for women to develop their own businesses and advance conservation efforts, like making and selling fish patties or developing eco-friendly lodges to serve a growing market in ecotourism.

Lavinia received lots of personal encouragement to pursue these ideas during her participation in CEDPA’s Global Women in Management program over the summer of 2008, which is funded by the ExxonMobil Foundation’s Educating Women and Girls Initiative. Still, she is realistic about the barriers facing women in her country. “For Latin American men,” she says, “it is still difficult to understand that women can have an independent life.”

Her experience working with disparate views to forge consensus—whether on environmental practices or to draft a new constitution—will be a great asset in Lavinia’s continuing quest to confront gender barriers in her country.

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