Could We Ever Understand the Importance of Tropical Landscapes?

[Ricardo] Recording? Okay. Welcome to Could We Ever, part of the-

[Danyelle] Welcome to Could We Ever, part of the UT Dallas CometCast network.

[Ricardo] Could We Ever shines a light on our experts and ask them to tackle questions you never knew you needed answered.

[Danyelle] From science to art and more.

[Clip from The Burning Season] For generations, thousands of men were lured up the Amazon River to harvest precious rubber from the Brazilian rainforest. The barons who traded in this white gold made vast fortunes. The workers who tapped the rubber lived in fear and died in debt. The rubber tappers treasured the forest that sustained them and despised the bosses who enslaved them. Finally a man was born who would fight back. His name was Chico Mendes.

[Ricardo] That was the opening clip from The Burning Season: The Chico Mendez story. This movie gives a sense of the struggles that people who live in the rainforest face while trying to make a living. In this episode, we’re asking could we ever understand the importance of tropical landscapes.

[Danyelle] Our guest today is Dr. Anthony Cummings, who says the earliest inspiration for his work was Chico Mendes, a former Brazilian rubber tapper and labor leader. Anthony is an associate professor of Geo-spatial Information Sciences in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. He began his career at UT Dallas in 2013 and studies the rainforests, particularly the impact of humans upon them. Before we get started, just a quick reminder that this interview was recorded remotely, so please excuse any audio mishaps. Now let’s get to our chat with Anthony. So getting started off, we want to talk a little bit about your background. You were born and raised in Guyana and you were the son of peanut farmers. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up in that country and how it influenced what you chose to study when you pursued higher education?

[Dr. Cummings] Absolutely. So I was born and raised in what is describing Guyana as the northwest district, so this is a part of Guyana very close to the Venezuela border. You know, in the 1970s, early 1980s or so the Guyanese government had this program and the idea to essentially populate the borderlands. So they wanted more Guyanese citizens to move closer to the Venezuela border. If you were to do a Google search for Guyana-Venezuela relations, you will notice that there has always been this tension over the border. Um, so during this time, my dad who is a former military man, so he was a captain in the army, he went to the border area to help out in training uh people to essentially prepare them for the eventuality of tensions increasing between Guyana and Venezuela, and uh my grandfather was there before my dad and you know he-he had daughters and my dad um became interested in one of his daughters, and my parents uh then acquired a piece of land on which they grew peanuts, and you know, that’s you know, I joke about it. Uh my parents uh cut down the trees, built a house and that’s where they raised my brother and I. So that’s the kind of setting in which I was raised. Our home uh was surrounded by indigenous territories. So there are groups of indigenous peoples, who uh live or have been living there for quite some time before my parents, my grandparents arrived, so I was very fortunate in the sense that I was raised amongst these indigenous peoples and some of my best friends are indigenous peoples. I went to primary school with indigenous peoples and uh you know when I look back now and begin to list some of my best friends, they all go back to this place in which I was born and raised up. Even today, I still maintain these relationships. These were the boys who uh showed me what a bow and arrow was you know and how do you catch fish. These-these were the people that I, that you know give me these early understandings of what it meant to live in that part of Guyana. So while my parents were interested in growing peanuts, there was certainly a stark difference between what my indigenous friends were doing. So very different kinds of way in which uh we approached that space, we approached uh living there but for me it was, it was always an education. It was always something interesting whenever I met my indigenous friends, always something interesting to-to learn, to talk about, uh going to school, there was never never a dull moment. I was fortunate that I was raised amongst indigenous peoples and I had a chance to see how they, how they approached the land, how they went about making a livelihoods and that early education still impacts my work today, the way in which i approach my work as scholars, it goes right back to those early days.

[Danyelle] When we talked before, you mentioned that when you went to university, you kind of had one idea of what your scholarship would lead you to and then it ended up being something kind of totally different. So can you quickly tell us what that change in your path of study and your goal was?

[Dr. Cummings] Absolutely. So you know, I noticed a little while ago, one of my earlier observations was watching the way in which my parents went about making a living. My grandparents growing peanuts for example and there were quite a few indigenous folks who were also engaged in peanut growing, but it was very obvious that when you considered some of the crops that were grown by indigenous peoples, of the cassava crop for example, the manner in which they went about that part of the livelihood was very, very different from the way in which my parents went about doing things. Uhh synthetic fertilizer for example, was a very important part of my parents approach to agriculture. So I was you know, being raised by these folks who were essentially attempting industrial agriculture in these tropical landscapes and looking over and seeing, well my indigenous friends they’re doing something else, and obviously as a boy, you’re the difference in economics begin to, you know, you begin to observe it, like oh my dad is driving a tractor, my indigenous friends are not driving tractors, this is very interesting. There’s a difference in economics here and once I was finished with high school, my passion was, oh I want to go to college and really learn these techniques and learn how to transfer technology back to these indigenous people’s landscapes and my goal was to be, what would have been described in the civil service of Guyana at that time, as an agricultural extension officer. That was what I wanted to do, to essentially take these technologies back to the rural landscapes and essentially help indigenous peoples to, you know improve their livelihood practices, uh but you know I quickly realized that their approach was the right way to do things. Uh what I was attempting to do, like hold on a second, what they were doing is completely in sync and sustainable for their livelihood practices, and in fact, the way in which my parents went about practicing agriculture was not sustainable, was not going to last for a very long time within those landscapes, and this so, you know, once I would have gone through college and went through that entire education, like oh no I need to actually go to the indigenous people’s landscapes and that’s what I need to study because this is what the world needs to be excited about, is how they go about practicing their agriculture, how they go about making their livelihoods, and this is what we need to understand, and you know, as a scholar now this this is what I’m really engaging, trying to understand how indigenous peoples go about practicing their agriculture, trying to document that and you know hopefully use some of the lessons I’m learning to benefit more than one sets of people across the world and how we think about living certainly on this one planet that we have. I think indigenous peoples and the way in which they go about uh practicing their livelihoods has so many lessons for us really.

[Ricardo] Before we get too deep into this episode, we went back and forth on the title of this episode and your use of the word tropical landscapes as opposed to environment or other words like that. Can you tell us what you mean when you say tropical landscape?

[Dr. Cumming] Yeah. When I think of uh landscapes and certainly within the context of the Guyanese tropics, I am thinking of those spaces that were shaped by indigenous peoples over thousands of years. So these are the spaces where wildlife are present, so when you think of an indigenous person’s home for example, they will have a place that they live in and they have a farm and that farm not only allows them to grow their crops, but it also attracts the animals that they are going to hunt and eat, and then these herbivores, the animals that are eating indigenous people’s uh farm produce if you like, uh are then in turn the prey species of the jaguars, uh you, and the apex predators that you find within these landscapes. So you move from one indigenous person’s home to another into another, and eventually you have now this really big landscape, this large area is influenced by multiple indigenous. So for me when I begin to think of the places in which I work, those spaces that are influenced by indigenous peoples, the tree species that we find, they’re the animal species that we find there, all go back to their livelihood practices and it’s within these same landscapes or within these same spaces that you also find deposits of valuable minerals, gold for example, and now you have folks from outside of these landscapes who were not there historically moving into these spaces now in search of gold. They’re in search of precious metals and timber as well and what we end up seeing is a clash, if you like, between indigenous people’s way of life and the folks who are now moving into these spaces in search of gold, in search of timber and these you know precious materials that would have been kept in place by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. So for me, when I think of these spaces that I work, I think the term landscape is more appropriate because I I oftentimes see the hands of the indigenous peoples uh essentially shaping what we see today.

[Ricardo] You seem to really have a big passion for indigenous peoples and their way of life. What is one of the biggest lessons that you learn from them?

[Dr. Cummings] One of the things I will take with me throughout my life is how indigenous peoples respect the spaces in which they live. Often times they may refer, to so we see a forest, you walk through or you drive through a landscape and all you may see is trees but you really spend some time with the folks who live there and they may see what might be analogous to a supermarket. You may not necessarily see that by by just walking through, not knowing where you are, but one of the lessons that they’ve taught me, is don’t ever take the things you see around you for granted. Step back and ask questions to the people who actually live there and then you’ll begin to learn that, wow there’s just so much more here and when I work with indigenous peoples, when I interact with indigenous peoples, they have shown me so much respect and they have allowed me really to work with them, to interact with them, to be a part of their-to be a part of their lives and I think that’s really just an extension of how they see themselves, certainly the folks I work with in Guyana, that they certainly see themselves as an extension of this natural world and everybody else who’s coming into it, how they treat you with the same respect.

[Danyelle] You mentioned that you work with indigenous folks in Guyana. Can you give us an overview of what exactly the work is that you do? What are your research interests and what are you currently investigating?

[Dr. Cummings] Currently, I am trying to understand how uh processes that are occurring far away from indigenous peoples landscapes uh influence their livelihood practices. For example, in 2007-2009, there was the global economic crisis, or you know we had folks in the global north, for example losing their jobs and there’s this massive mortgage crisis, people losing in their homes and so on. On the other end of uh this spectrum and certainly as we saw in the United States for example, uh the price for gold went upwards. It went to record levels and in fact, as we speak today, those record high gold prices have actually been sustained. Gold is currently being traded at the highest possible level. Well, when these things occurred on the global market, so when you know there’s a global economic crisis the price for commodities go up, certainly gold is a good example of this. This means that there are folks down in Brazil, Guyana, places where their gold deposits, all of a sudden they have an incentive for wanting to go out there and become gold miners. Right, so these, if I recall them, shocks in the global economy uh they have implications now for who may want to acquire land for gold mining in Guyana and this may then mean that more people will begin to arrive within indigenous people’s influenced landscapes for mining, for logging, and the potential now is created for this clash between the way in which the folks who are arriving for gold mining and for logging, with those of indigenous peoples who have been there for a very long time. So my current research uh and my interests really is trying to understand how processes are far away from uh from indigenous people’s influence landscape. So you know, we live in the United States and you know we don’t necessarily think, well what happens when the price for gold goes up on the stock market. Well, perhaps that means somebody’s not going to invest more in gold. Well, that goal has to come from some place right. It has to come from some place and most of it is coming from these indigenous peoples influenced landscapes and I’m trying to understand how there’s, first of all, how does people uh respond to these changes. Uh so sometimes you know, we may think that the folks who are living in the villages for example, they don’t quite know what gold prices are today. Well I want to find out. I want to know, do they actually know and are they changing the way in which they’re going about practicing the livelihood practices, based on what changes are occurring on the global market, and if they’re not, well then what other, uh let me say, things are are impacting their lives in ways that that we can potentially measure or try to make that connection, uh because you know, we think of the bigger picture, we all we only have one planet to live on right, and this where indigenous peoples live uh for example, we have some of the highest uh densities of tropical trees that provide important ecosystem services for the global community. Well, how is that global community indirectly impacting that. So that’s that’s what I’m trying to track at the moment, trying to understand how global processes are perhaps shaping indigenous people’s livelihood practices.

[Danyelle] Thank you for painting that picture, because I I definitely feel like a lot of people wouldn’t make the tie between an economic recession in the global north, the rising gold prices affecting people who had nothing to do with the economic recession in the global north, and I I think that that specific example in illustration is so helpful for me. I don’t know how-I don’t know how you feel Ricardo, but it’s helpful for me to understand that that it is not only a physical ecosystem, as far as like our trees and species are concerned, it’s also like a social ecosystem that the things that affect us also affect people in other places that we don’t always think about. So we know that the jaguar is the national animal of Guyana. Can you explain what the role of big cats is in the tropical landscape and how issues arise due to gold mining regarding the big cats?

[Dr. Cummings] Absolutely. So I’ve got to go back again to this idea that there’s this connection between the global economy, this idea is far away from indigenous people’s influence landscapes and I’m trying to understand what are the connections between this these processes that are far away from those landscapes, and the way in which I go about trying to understand that, so I’m beginning to identify those things that I can measure. So what can I use to give me a sense of those connections between the global market and these local processes. Oftentimes, when you you talk to people they may not necessarily tell you what are some of the things that’s happening to them as gold prices change for example. These can be very complicated things to explain, people will not necessarily understand how their lives are being changed by changes in gold prices, but as more people move into the forest, they are having impacts on biodiversity. That some folks may be hunting, some folks may be logging, they may be fishing. For many gold miners, that are moving into indigenous people’s influence landscapes, uh they are doing so way ahead of the social and security services. So gold miners show up for example, into the forest and oftentimes they’re off the grid, if you like, so the police don’t know where they are, you know, they may have a sense but they can’t necessarily offer those protection services right away, and because they’re so far away too, they may be cut off from those regular channels of food supply. So for them uh having a dog becomes a very important part of their mining camp, if you like. The dog can provide two services for them, first the dog is going to recognize when a stranger arrives so it’s going to bark right, he’s going to make a lot of noise and the miner is now alerted there is a stranger coming by and you know he’s dealing with gold, so you know for him, he has a chance to respond to protect himself, protect his investment. The dog may also provide hunting services, so just that food supply thing right, so miners may go out with their dog and they hunt. For the jaguar though, the dog shows up in this landscape and all of a sudden the jaguar sees, oh here’s breakfast and immediately the gold miner and the jaguar are in conflict. Unfortunately, a number of gold miners uh they have responded to this potential conflict between the dog and their jaguar uh by killing the jaguar. Um so one of my early uh one of my early, I guess, investigations into this challenge was triggered by a series of photographs I received that had a dead jaguar in a trap, which was in a series of photographs that showed at their dogs. So right away, you know, the jaguar killed the dog, the gold miner now has responded by attempting to trap this this jaguar. So as a part of trying to understand how these larger global processes are influenced in indigenous people’s influence landscapes, understanding the conflict between people, and using the term conflict because oftentimes this is what is manifested you see, uh there’s the signs of dead animals right there, the jaguars for example. It becomes a little bit easier to talk about. People are a bit more interested and it’s a bit more uh easy to measure right how many times have you seen a jaguar and you know you could begin to communicate around something that is perhaps a little bit easier to talk about right, but I’m still trying to measure how these global economic processes are influenced in these local landscapes, and yes, the jaguar is the national animal of Guyana, and there is so much pride in Guyana uh around the jaguar. In fact, a couple of the two major uh sports teams the football or soccer team as we say here in the United States and the cricket team, they all have the jaguar attached to their names. So it’s certainly an animal that they take a lot of pride in, and because I I guess, because of that too I’m interested in trying to understand how people are are affecting uh jaguars and in what areas of of employment. So is there a difference between gold miners and their interaction with jaguars and uh cattle farmers and their interactions with jaguars for example, and how can we begin to understand how these are connected to global processes.

[Ricardo] What are other hardships that or challenges that you face when you research this topic?

[Dr. Cummings] If you were to, uh go to Google Earth and pull up a map of Guyana, you will probably recognize right away you’re looking at a massive piece of greenery on on the board’s map. So Guyana is about, I’m going to estimate here, from perhaps upwards of 80 percent forest cover. 90 of the Guyanese population uh live on about roughly 10-11 percent of the land. Right along that, most of it a very tiny region along on the coast of Guyana, so being able to access indigenous people’s influence landscapes is incredibly challenging. Being able to go to these places, and this is something that they seem you know. In 2021, you’re thinking, well hey man you just get in a car, you drive there or you know you well to access some of the places that I work in. I oftentimes have to fly or get in a boat to be able to understand what what is it I’m trying to study. So that that’s a huge challenge, and of course when you begin to think of accessibility, accessing places, then of course having the money to do it is also a massive obstacle, but you know on the flip side, because these uh places that I work are so, are still so difficult to access, they offer really an ideal lab laboratory for studying some of the processes I’m interested in, because most of these places are so inaccessible. You can still walk around and see a snake go by on the road uh you know, that’s some of the things you can’t necessarily do in some places in the world. There goes a snake or there goes an augustine, so you know these places because the population density is so low, you have now a chance to really study some of the things I’m interested in examining.

[Danyelle] So Anthony, let’s talk more about plants. You have some really interesting research comparing the values of plant species from the perspectives of commercial loggers and indigenous peoples. Can you tell us a little bit about what you found between those two perspectives?

[Dr. Cummings] Yeah, for sure. You know, when we think of indigenous people’s influenced landscapes, historically as I begin to look at these spaces, we see that indigenous peoples play a significant role in determining what kinds of plants are kept around them, certainly within within their homesteads. If you were to go to an indigenous people’s influenced landscape in Guyana today, you’re going to find that a number of plant species are used for medicines, some are very used for construction and building crafts and really a major part of their livelihoods. Commercial logging in Guyana is relatively new compared to the amount of time that indigenous peoples have been existing within these landscapes, right, so when you think of those two, in my work, we refer to the way in which indigenous peoples go about interacting with the plants around them as this broad term subsistence livelihood practices, and we make a comparison um to commercial logging. My work is currently, uh trying to understand, and I’m working with students and colleagues and trying to answer these questions, so to understand to what extent, spatially, so if you were to take an indigenous person’s home for example, how far away from where they actually live across space are you going to find them actively influencing the types of plant species you find for subsistence purposes, and how do those same plants or how are they viewed from a commercial logging perspective, and what we’re beginning to find, what our initial findings are showing is that indigenous peoples are keeping the plants that are important to their livelihoods closest to their homes, so within say 10 kilometer range of their home you’re going to find those plant species that are of stronger importance to their livelihood practices for medicinal purposes for example. Uh maybe those plant species are more important for providing food for the animals that are hunted by indigenous peoples for instance, and then on the other side of that equation, the plant species that of greater importance to commercial logging are located farther away and we believe that this might be so because you go back ten-five to a thousand years uh even up to 120 years or so, uh commercial logging was not as important to indigenous peoples and and their economic practices. Uh so the plant species that are more important to that one, therefore will not be closer to them. This is what our initial data are showing. This is something that uh requires a lot more attention.

[Danyelle] How will understanding this make a difference on a larger scale? What are the implications of this research?

[Dr. Cummings] As we sit in uh in the year 2021, there’s so many different, I’m going to call them forces, that are acting through indigenous people’s influenced landscapes. There’s so many interests that are showing up within indigenous people’s influenced landscapes on on a daily basis. Somebody is thinking about forest protection, somebody is thinking about jaguar protection, somebody is thinking about fish and so on and so forth. My one research is perhaps one of those forces that are activated in within these landscapes too. I’m not going to discount myself as being a potential force here because I’m also, thankfully they’re allowing me to be a part of their landscapes, but I’m also you know something that could potentially influence how these landscapes are treated and how they’re, how they will be treated in the future, but there is one global force that I am incredibly interested in as we speak and it’s a program that is being led by the united Nations and is called the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation Program or REDD+, and what REDD+ attempts to do is essentially compensate folks who would have kept their forests or composite countries who have high forest cover, for keeping their forests intact, so it can continue to provide that very important ecosystem service of carbon sequestration or storing carbon. Well you begin to think, where you go to a place like Guyana or Suriname or Venezuela, the spaces where you’re going to find the higher densities of trees that are providing these ecosystem services are going to be within indigenous people’s influenced landscapes. My work, when I look at the distribution of trees now, so how are these trees that are important for subsistence laboratory practices distributed versus those that are providing commercial logging services, how, understanding how they’re distributed can then help to-help us to understand whether some areas within a forest should be prioritized for forest protection versus otters when it comes to these programs like REDD+. So if my work should begin to show well you know what the plans that you need for your livelihood are kept closer to you, so they’re found within a five to six kilometer range of your home and people are now concerned that, well if we begin to engage on something like REDD+ then we are going to lose access to our forests. Perhaps my research can begin to shed light and yeah you know the trees that are really important to carbon sequestration and the less important to your livelihood practices are found far away from your home. So they’re 10 kilometers away now, maybe this is where you need to begin thinking of engaging for protection services for carbon sequestration. So when you begin to engage in these international agreements for example, things that are very far away from you and you don’t affect them in any way, your work don’t have major impacts on carbon, but when these folks come and speak to you well you, you know yeah we that forest over there we don’t use it for medicines, we don’t use it for for hunting, for example, those are not important to us so maybe we can engage in these programs because if we do, then the impacts in our livelihoods are going to be minimal. Perhaps it’s going to be comparable to engaging in commercial logging for example and now we know you can begin to weigh the costs and benefits of commercial logging versus something like carbon sequestration.

[Danyelle] Thank you for explaining that. That-I I really feel like that helped illustrate the importance of understanding what happens in one country with one set of indigenous peoples in an area and how that can be affected globally, so thank you for taking the time to explain that to us.

[Dr. Cummings] For sure and I think we certainly need to, from a research perspective, we need to understand this because I haven’t met an indigenous group who would like to compromise the livelihood practices and you know they’re being bombarded by all of these uh potential interests in their lands and oftentimes they have asked me questions about some of these things and I don’t have answers and you know I’m still, this is why I say are we still trying to find out, we’re still trying to understand what this means and perhaps my work in geographic information systems and spatial analysis could help us to clarify some of these questions and help to provide some answers for them.

[Danyelle] Anthony, so before we ask you our final question, did you have one, you know, ending thought you wanted to leave our audience with?

[Dr. Cummings] I think if there uh there is one, if there’s one thought i would like to leave with the audience is that uh and this this goes to the theme of of this podcast is could we ever. I think we need to understand uh tropical landscapes we need to develop a very good picture of what happens within these landscapes because the very existence of our species is is tied to, connected to understanding of the importance of tropical landscapes and understanding how processes and you know far away from these landscapes impact the people who live there, the animals that live there, and understanding that the well-being of these landscapes is really connected to the well-being of people who are living far away from them. So you think of the carbon sequestration services that tropical forests provide for example, being able to understand what happens there, being able to support the people who live there and and their livelihood practices, um and understanding that you know the traditional way in which people have done things uh are responsible for these landscapes being the way they are today, is is really important. So yeah uh, let’s pursue trying to understand these landscapes is what i would say. If you’re thinking of something to do this this week and you know you you don’t have in your mind what exactly you should be doing at any moment of your day this week, try to put it towards understanding what happens within tropical landscapes and how your life is impacting these landscapes as well.

[Ricardo] I couldn’t have said it better myself. So Anthony could we ever understand the importance of tropical landscapes?

[Dr. Cummings] Yes we can. Maybe not completely in my lifetime, but I’m hoping that we could influence a lot of people to recognize that we need to understand tropical landscapes and that yeah it needs to happen. It needs to happen urgently.

[Danyelle] Hey, so before we wrap up we know that there’s like this upcoming event you want to plug and it sounds really exciting. Can you tell us a little bit more about the series of half marathons and how you aim to improve the understanding of big cats?

[Dr. Cummings] The Jaguarton is going to be, I suspect in 2021, is only gonna be one or two runs, a half marathon kind of runs, and the idea is to have a run, maybe you know, over two two and a half hours or so, and then we’ll spend some time engaging school children, engaging members of the public on the importance of wild cats and their prey which includes the agouti, so that we can improve our understanding of these animals and hopefully change people’s perceptions towards uh wildcats. That’s that’s the ultimate goal, is that we remove that fear, remove whatever apprehensions people may have towards wildcats. You want to begin your road in that and helping us to understand that, while cats are an important part of the ecosystem and we need to keep them there because they their numbers, their presence, then uh determines the density and presence of so many of well almost every other thing that’s in the ecosystem. They are essentially the farmers of the forest along with indigenous peoples.

[Danyelle] Hey friends. You can look out for more information on Anthony’s forthcoming website, www.jaguarton.com. That’s www.jaguarton.com and we’ll include a link in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us Anthony and teaching us so much about so many things we were not aware of, and were not on our radar and for having that final like push to tell us to get involved and understand the importance of tropical landscapes in our own lives, not just in the lives of indigenous peoples in Guyana.

[Dr. Cummings] Thank you for having me. It was an absolute pleasure uh talking to you. Again, thank you for inviting me, for for doing this and then I hope I’ll see you at the Jaguarton 2021.

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