LALI – the Latin American Landscape Initiative unites 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean through a shared vision for peoples and the environment. Could you tell us more about your work?
Founded in 2021, LALI arises as a bottom-up movement with a horizontal, transdisciplinary, and cross-cutting trajectory that brings together civil society, academia, public institutions, and other parties. At its heart is the declaration of fundamental ethical principles that promote the recognition, valuation, protection, management, planning and sustainable design of the Latin American landscape. This is done through the adoption of agreements that recognise the diversity of Latin American landscapes as well as their local, national, and regional values, both tangible and intangible, and which promote culturally appropriate norms and processes to safeguard them.
LALI is a network of networks. It nurtures partnership-making in the extraordinarily diverse region that is Latin America. By leveraging alliances and complicities between actors, it raises awareness of the importance of protecting biodiversity, traditional knowledge, beauty, and heritage in all its forms. A melting pot of Latin American citizens of different professions, nationalities, and origins, LALI is inspired by ancestral worldviews (or “cosmovisions”) and the European Landscape Convention. Its regional adaptation, going towards a Latin America Landscape Convention, responds to the knowledge of each place and territory, with a “Latin American conscience”. The Initiative is consolidated through interactive clusters or ‘nodes’ which address different themes but have a common goal: safeguarding the landscape by crossing borders and disciplines to radically imagine cities of the future.
