Reforestation from below: knowledge in tension and recognition of environmental citizenship from the experience of Chilean temperate forest beekeepers

Abstract

The observation of daily life practices in peasant and indigenous communities of the Chilean temperate forest reveals the established intimacy with other species; an intimacy that has allowed the regeneration of plant cover in an area deeply damaged by timber activity in the 20th century. Such intimacy finds its sustenance in the knowledge that results from the affections incubated toward the territory, as revealed by  beekeeping. The case of bees is of particular interest because of the stimulus they represent both for the development of personal reforestation initiatives and for the possibility they offer to reinvent small-scale ways of life. It is in their relationship with them that both the traditional patterns of interspecies linkage and the threats posed by market expansion come into play, particularly about the linkage of the pollinating activity of the bee offered as a service to the company. The knowledge and affects generated by beekeeping contradict the scientific knowledge conveyed to communities by the institutions of development. The meeting of both forms of knowledge raises contradictions and misunderstandings that suggest the convenience of constituting local practices in a model of substantive environmental citizenship. The symbiotic modes prevalent in the community ensure autonomous ways of inhabiting the territories, forms that are stressed when production intensifies in the interests of business opportunities. The promotion and protection of beekeeping activity should constitute a form of recognition that the State makes to those who exercise the care of forests, and its center should not be the business unit but the strengthening of social relationships and local autonomies.