the story of a mountain
the team
Hidden in the forests of northern Colombia lies the most important mountain you may never have heard of: Gonawindua. The Heart of the World.
The tallest peak in the world’s highest coastal mountain range, Pico Cristóbal Colón, as it is called in Spanish, cradles what scientists have called the most irreplaceable biosphere on the planet. From the ultramarine waters of Caribbean beaches, through dense rainforest and dry altiplano, it rises almost six thousand metres to a land of bare rock, blue ice and bottomless crevasses, all in just 42 kilometres. Its snows feed 36 rivers and 700 tributaries, life for thousands of species of birds, insects, reptiles and mammals and a million and a half people.
Under the mountain’s shadow live the remnants of the Americas' last undefeated pre-Hispanic civilisation. Six hundred years before the foundation of Macchu Picchu the Tairona built a city in the jungle. Its stone terraces fed eleven thousand people. Merchants from as far away as Florida and Peru came to trade gold and chew coca leaves in its palaces.
Then the Spanish came. The Tairona abandoned their city and retreated into the depths of the mountain. The conquistadors, writing admiringly to Spain about the tribe’s military prowess, did not follow. The descendants of the Tairona, the Kogi, remain. They are named after the jaguars that haunt its forests, and they worship Gonawindua as the source of all life.
Then, in the second half of the 20th century, a new conflict came to the mountain. As Colombia disintegrated into a bloody civil war, its lower slopes became a battlefield between Marxist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the Colombian army. Hundreds of Kogi, and neighbouring Aruhuac and Assari, were slaughtered. Millions of hectares of forest were uprooted for illicit drug plantations. With the violence came a new isolation. Few dared pass under the mountain. Its inhabitants were left to fend for themselves.
Today, a fragile peace has come to Colombia with the demobilisation of some armed groups. But the mountain and its people now face their greatest threat yet. The snows of Gonawindua are rapidly disappearing. In the last fifty years, its glaciers have shrunk by two thirds. By 2050, they will have disappeared. The mountain is being bled dry by climate change. With it will go its rivers, animals and people.
This is a story about a journey, a journey through Latin America’s ancient history and Colombia’s violent past. It is a journey through one of the last truly isolated wildernesses of the world. It is the journey of a people who have twice warned their ‘Little Brother’, the white man, of the damage he is wreaking on the environment, and now must face the consequences of his failure to listen. It is a journey up a mountain.
The Social Activist
Lloyd Belton
A historian of Latin America by training who studied at Columbia University and LSE, Lloyd now works as a researcher for J-PAL, a think-tank focused on international development, poverty and inequality issues. Originally from South Africa, he speaks fluent Spanish having previously lived in Colombia for several years. There he carried out fieldwork focused on the country's marginalised Afro-Colombian communities and also researched historical land claim disputes between indigenous communities and commercial farmers. With several 5000m+ peaks in the Andes and Africa already under his belt, in 2017, Lloyd decided to combine his passion for mountaineering and environmental and social justice issues and join the Sacred Summit Project.
The Journalist
Oliver Harvey
Oliver is a journalist and economist. He studied at Oxford and then at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, where he took a masters in political science. Before embarking on a career as an economist, he worked for the Colombian news magazine Semana, and has also been published by the Guardian, ISN Security Watch, Open Democracy and The City Paper with his articles focusing on the Colombian environment, the displacement of internal refugees and the FARC. Today, he works for Deutsche Bank, where as chief UK economist, he regularly features in broadcast and print media.
The Environmentalist
Edward Davey is Director of the Geographic Deep Dives of The Food and Land Use Coalition, a new global initiative to transform the world's food and land use systems, co-led by WRI. Edward is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Coalition's in-depth country work in Colombia, Ethiopia and Indonesia, working in partnership with WRI colleagues and other local partners. Prior to joining WRI, Edward was Senior Programme Manager at The Prince of Wales' International Sustainability Unit, where he co-led a number of international initiatives on REDD+, zero deforestation commodity supply chains, forest landscape restoration and climate change. Prior to the ISU, he served as Lead Adviser on Environment in the Colombian Presidency's International Cooperation Office in Bogotá.