Aníbal Torres: between the academia, the research and the community construction

Our interviewee of today is Aníbal Torres, a geographer by profession and the coordinator of the Sustainable Futures program of the Monteverde Institute (MVI).

His double role as the coordinator of this program and a member of the Monteverde community since his childhood, have allowed him to manage initiatives that are really important for the inhabitants of our district and that seek, in the medium or long term, to find practical solutions that allow the empowerment of our community on issues of community building and resilience to climate change.

To Aníbal, one of the greatest achievements of Sustainable Futures is the opportunity to create discussions around important issues that help to “generate many questions”.

“One of the things that I have learned is that in a community it is very important that questions arise, because when questions arise, people question themselves. And these questions, these types of discussions, have helped people to imagine something different or simply to capture a small seed of doubt, of curiosity”, explains Aníbal.

“These are intangible achievements because Sustainable Futures, based on all that curiosity, has managed to generate seeds of doubt and that is very valid for the processes that our community needs to trace”, he says.

Check out the full interview with Aníbal here. We invite you to learn a little more about this program that can create a community baseline involving people from inside and outside of Monteverde, who have one thing in common: the hope of building a sustainable future.

THE INTERVIEW

Q: What is your role at the Monteverde Institute?

A: My role in the Institute, within the Community Initiatives Center (CIC), is based on the Sustainable Futures program. I am in charge of following up on the initiatives that seek a link between the academic programs that we bring and the issues relevant for the community. 

Q: In your  own words, what is the Sustainable Futures program about and why is it important to the community?

A: Sustainable Futures began as one of the first courses of the MVI that integrated more community needs.

Sustainable Futures has worked with around 90 projects since it started and helped the MVI to to have a greater exposure of its programs in the community - it has not been the only one, of course, but without a doubt Sustainable Futures, as a course, was one of the first academic courses of the Institute in carrying “all the stages”. What do I mean by “all stages”? Generate a call for projects; work with the community on needs previously established by the community itself; return inputs; generate a learning opportunity for students; generate a learning opportunity for the community; and generate a record of its achievements. 

For me, this last point is important because when I entered Sustainable Futures - between 2003 and 2004 - the course was held every summer, but there was no tracing of the work. So my role began to involve contact with the organizations throughout the year to generate a better follow-up and stability; and, from that moment - or perhaps a couple of years later - the local government and Sustainable Futures began to become more fully involved with some of the commissions.

And so, from being a course, Sustainable Futures became a program of the Monteverde Institute. In other words, it went from being a three-month activity during the summer, to an annual program. 

The program has had different nuances, so to speak. The first nuance had the territorial planning approach; the second nuance focused on architecture and sustainable design. Currently, from my perspective, the third nuance that the program is taking is the participation of national state universities. The institute has always been very strong in international academic programs and has had a lot of presence in the community, but we have always been very weak in linking the institution with public universities in the country.

Given this, the Institute gave me the opportunity to create a greater link with the university sector. In my head, this link is opening the door so that the annual initiatives of this program are nourished not only by the international academic part, but also by the national one.

Our students who come from the United States have not had the opportunity to interact with their peers in Costa Rica. By opening a constant research link with universities, an opportunity for connection between national and international students automatically opens up.

These kinds of opportunities allow the Institute to extend more and in a better way new opportunities at the national level. It is starting very strongly with the School of Biosystems Engineering, but now also with Geography and a little with the Agricultural Economics school, with which students could do their university community work (TCU) here in the area.

Open Classroom, at the Monteverde Institute facilities. This design was inspired by the forest and it was made with reused wood form non native trees.

Q: Through this program, how have you managed to mix the academic and investigative part with community construction?

A: For me one of the most important things that the CIC has is the constant presence in the community. This constant presence of the Institute in the community allows many processes to progress.

For me, within the CIC, the Sustainable Futures Program has been one more capable of maintaining many baseline processes over time and that, based on that constancy and presence in the community, has facilitated the insertion of projects in the community needs and other academic opportunities.

Q: What have been, in your opinion, the greatest achievements of the program so far?

A: There are tangible and intangible achievements. When we think about the tangible achievements of Sustainable Futures, we can talk about the trails - which in the future became sidewalks. The paths, initially, were a Sustainable Futures design that allowed the appropriation of public spaces so that later, thanks to the help of Corclima and the local government, they could evolve to sidewalks.

The intangible are the base projects. What do I mean by this? The fact that many times we have discussed important issues, such as local planning.

These discussions, beyond obtaining answers, what they generate are many questions. And one of the things that I have learned is that in a community it is very important that questions arise, because when questions arise, people question themselves. And these questions, these types of discussions, have helped people to imagine something different or simply to capture a small seed of doubt, of curiosity.

What I want to say is that some of these projects remain as questions over time and it may take years for someone to want to tackle the project. It took me a long time to assimilate this, but then I understood that there are many projects that do not start developing even in five or six years. And there are many projects that probably I will not even see materialized during my period here at the Institute.

And I mention, again, that these are intangible achievements because Sustainable Futures, based on all that curiosity, has managed to generate seeds of doubt and that is very valid for the processes that our community needs to trace.

A big part of the Monteverde Institute facilities are a result of Sustainable Futures Program work.

Q: Currently, part of the program is promoting the construction and use of bio-gardens in some key institutions - such as the Centro de Educación Creativa (CEC). What have been the challenges you have faced when implementing this initiative in these institutions?

A: For everyone, in Costa Rica and particularly in Monteverde, one of the keys to sustainable design is the sustainable management of water resources. And it just so happens that, in the process, we came across the UCR School of Biosystems Engineering and with it we began to revisit some projects since we realized the importance of extrapolating all the knowledge and lessons we learned to the community.

So we look for funds and from those resources we manage to involve students and obtain materials for the implementation of the artificial wetlands; in fact, we started with the Escuela de los Amigos and along the way the need arose in the CEC, with a system that they already had but that was inactive… and, in the middle of that, Rose Daily arrived, the affiliated researcher who has helped provide leadership in the CEC process.

One of the challenges that we have had to face is making the institutions understand how these systems work and also that they assume responsibility for their maintenance. We have tried to give all the tools to the institutions, such as a manual for the usage of the systems and signs so that they know that organic waste should not go into the pipes.

One of the lessons learned is the importance of monitoring wetlands and supporting the institutions behind them: monitor them to determine the quality of the water and therefore the health of the wetland, and create opportunities for students to apply what they are learning in universities.

It's very cool because these are projects that are rolling, they are working, that are responding to a community need... because wastewater treatment is critical in Monteverde. Monitoring is also important because, beyond the wetlands looking very nice, it is important to demonstrate that they are working. And having the metrics allows us to speak with numbers.

Even if Monteverde were to have a water treatment plant, more than 50% of the territory would still be left out. So, all those sectors that will be outside the water  treatment area should look for a solution - and the wetlands could be one. 

Q: What benefits will the institutions and the community see once the bio gardeners are working at 100%?

A: The way in which we have wanted to follow up on the issue of artificial wetlands is that it should not be seen in isolation, but should be seen as part of a comprehensive management of water resources.

That is why we also want to get into the issue of rainwater sowing more strongly because the benefit of this type of system, together with artificial wetlands, is to be able to generate tools for the mitigation of climate change and a problem that exists at the community, which is wastewater treatment.

Q: What 's next?

A: What I imagine, in the future, is to achieve a community "know how", to gradually enable people or small companies that already have their bio-gardens to manage them themselves.

There is a small network of biogardens in the district that needs to be monitored and that, eventually, could be the seedbeds for other projects to grow in the community.

Monteverde continues to be a rural community and, although not everyone has the space to have a bio-garden - there are properties that have the necessary area to have one.

Do you have the space? Do you have a problem? Perhaps the bio-garden is a good answer to that problem.