{
  "id": 6393187,
  "title": "Colombia’s Indigenous guardians adapt as pressures mount on the ‘Heart of the World’",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/09/colombias-indigenous-guardians-adapt-as-pressures-mount-on-the-heart",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-09T07:00:31.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Mongabay",
    "slug": "mongabay",
    "url": "https://news.mongabay.com/2026/09/colombias-indigenous-guardians-adapt-as-pressures-mount-on-the-heart-of-the-world/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "RIOHACHA, Colombia — Families of the Wiwa community in Gomke are constructing a new residence on lower slopes of a tropical dry forest. Their ancestral settlement sits atop a lush mountain overlooking Colombia's Caribbean coast. Like many Indigenous communities in this region, Gomke's residents have been displaced by climate disasters or armed actors. However, their relocation to lower terrain is voluntary, aimed at safeguarding social cohesion, education, and spiritual well-being amidst escalating climate pressures and paramilitary violence. The community calls their new settlement Shegunamke, a recently rebuilt Wiwa village. Severe weather and paramilitary threats have rendered their original home increasingly isolated and perilous. To preserve its social and spiritual fabric, the Wiwa have acquired additional land elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, including higher elevations. \"We have left those untouched so that rivers, springs, and bodies of water do not perish,\" says Roberto Carlos Coronado Calvo, rector of Shenzhawimaku, the Wiwa educational institution that integrates conventional learning with cultural knowledge and the community's relationship with the land. Across the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the heart of the world remains under threat.",
  "summary": "RIOHACHA, Colombia — Amid the low slopes of a tropical dry forest, families from the Wiwa community of Gomke are building a new home. Their ancestral settlement lies higher on a lush mountain in the town of Dibulla, overlooking the Caribbean coast in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Across this region, many Indigenous communities […]",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}