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A Life-Changing Experience

2002-05-01

Photo Caption: Catherine Potvin participating in a workshop on the techniques and myths of body painting. (Photo courtesy of Catherine Potvin)

For a Canadian researcher at McGill University, an IDRC project to promote sustainable use of plant biodiversity in Panama was a life-altering experience.

In 1994, while on sabbatical from McGill University, Catherine Potvin started working in Panama to see how the Emberá people interacted with their environment.

"The meeting with the Emberá completely changed my life," she recalls. "When I arrived in the village, I wanted to say things like: ‘Why are you cutting down this forest? It has a value in itself.’ Then I realized it was impossible. These people had to obtain resources from the forest. You couldn’t just tell them, ‘Don’t use things.’ This started, for me, a process of growth."

This encounter motivated Potvin to submit a research proposal to IDRC to work with Panama’s Indigenous people on the sustainable use of biodiversity. During the course of the two-year project, her thinking underwent a further transformation. Where she once was a scientist preoccupied with plants for their own sake, she became someone more concerned with how these species sustained traditional lifestyles.

"I’ve learned from the Emberá that there is a forest to preserve, but there is also a way of life and a culture to preserve. I think I’ve reached an extreme viewpoint now. I would be sadder if people lost their way of life than if one of the plants they used disappeared."

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