Season 1 Episode 04 Podcast Transcript
Interview with Priyanka Bista and Rajeev Goyal
Host: Priyanka Bista / Mary Anne Funk
Audio Engineer and Editor: Mary Anne Funk
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Welcome to Design for Spatial Justice Podcast Series launched by the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Environment. This podcast brings you insights into the work of Visiting Faculty Fellows in Design for Spatial Justice Initiative. They are designers, researchers, and activists from around the world working on spatial justice issues at the intersection of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and income inequality. For the first four episodes, I’ll be your host, Priyanka Bista, a design for spatial justice fellow. My own work, which we’ll talk about in the final episode, is focused on biodiversity conservation and participatory design in Nepal.
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Priyanka
We’re at the final episode today, and it’s been quite a journey where we talked about many ways in which we can look at spatial justice issues and also injustices from Portland, to Colombia to Egypt.
Today, for our final episode, we are discussing a project that I’ve co-founded in Nepal called the Vertical University project. To elaborate more and discuss the work we’ve been doing, I’ve invited Rajeev Goyal, the co-founder to join me here.
Rajeev is a lawyer, an activist, a rural development worker, and also former Peace Corps volunteer from Long Island, New York. He is a graduate of Brown University, NYU Law school and Cornell’s Agriculture and Plant Science Department. He has been written about in the New Yorker and he himself has published an award-winning book called “Springs of Namje” with Beacon Press.
To give you a little bit of background on myself, I am a Nepali Canadian architect working at the intersection of biodiversity conservation and participatory design. I have degrees in Architecture, Shelter after Disaster and Architectural Regeneration and Development from Toronto and Oxford Brookes University. Over the past decade, I have worked in Toronto, Nepal, Nigeria and India.
For the past five years along with Rajeev I’ve helped co-found a project called the “Vertical University” which embraces the vertical gradient of Nepal, spanning from Koshi-Tappu, the low planes at 67 meters elevation all the way to the high himalayas Mount Kanchenjunga, the third tallest peak in the world at 8,586 meters. The project has won multiple awards from: Energy Globe Award, What Design Can Do Climate Action Challenge, SEED Public Interest Design Award, and UIAA Mountain Protection Award.
Today to host our interview, I invite Mary Anne Funk.
Mary Anne Funk
Thank you, Priyanka, for letting me be a part of this from editing, to being a host today. And I’m glad that I could be here today to help and talk with you and Rajeev, and to learn more about this project that you’ve been working on, which is the Vertical University. So I’m really curious to learn more about that, what is the Vertical University?
Rajeev
So the idea of the vertical University is to create a continuous biodiversity corridor from Koshi-Tappu in the plains of Nepal, all the way to Kanchenjunga, which is the third tallest peak in the world to teach and protect the biodiversity found along this vertical gradient. And it’s actually a subversion of the traditional way we think about education so that the farmers are the professors, the village landscapes are actually the classrooms and the curriculum of the Vertical University is indigenous knowledge.
And in order to sort of give focus to the idea, you know, Priyanka has been leading the creation of six campuses, there’ll be six different quote unquote, campuses. They won’t be like sort of you know, the University of Oregon buildings, let’s say, but there’ll be the sort of what we call learning grounds that are situated in different climatic zones. And those will be the physical space where young people can come in, and they can take in that knowledge through kind of a pull out program, tied to the government schools that are located in that vicinity and then the six campuses are connected with community forest that spanned from the plains all the way, you know, to the to the Kanchenjunga region. And so we’re also working with the community forest now at to create trails, you know, where the children can walk through those trails, learn about, you know, butterflies, plants, fungi found along the trail and have this kind of really direct interaction with nature. So the idea is to take the kids, you know, out of the kind of four walls of the classroom into Vertical University, which is a kind of open air type of experience. we’re trying to make the knowledge kind of living and interactive.
Priyanka
And we’ve actually, in the Yangshila started to prototype this education program as well. It’s on its third year now. And so what we’ve done is worked with local government schools. These schools have very little to no funding. The kids that go to the schools are from the poorest economic backgrounds, they can’t afford private education. And so we are working with six to eighth graders of the government schools in the Yangshila. So there are three different schools that are partnering with us right now. And a total of 180 students now and initially, we started by just very basic introduction courses: this is the trail this, this is your vegetation, like let’s start collecting the vegetation. Let’s start doing research online about about the vegetation that we’ve collected. And so slowly and slowly, over the last three years, they’ve done many different modules, that is an amalgamation of both indigenous knowledge but also the scientific knowledge as well. I’ve actually personally taught courses on GIS, and got them to map the trails as well, so that they also understand their landscape through a scientific lens and they don’t look at it only as this backward poverty stricken area, that they see the scientific potential in there as well, along with the indigenous knowledge as well, we’ve had farmers come into to teach kids about medicinal properties of different plants. And we’ve also had the trained students to actually record that knowledge using an iPad or a camera And so through through all of these efforts, I think what we are trying to emphasize is the importance of their landscape and importance of their knowledge to give the same level of confidence to a rural child who may not consider their background, their landscape as being anything important or on the equal level as somebody from the city. And so now kids are are so much more educated, they understand what ecosystem services is. They understand what pangolins are, they understand its evolutionary history. They’ve also turned into eco police’s where they they go and like monitor pangolin habitats. And just a few weeks ago, they actually were trained to use camera traps, which to document pangolin movement and pangolin habitat. So these are tools that scientists use, not kids from rural villages, and we are breaking those barriers and boundaries and saying, you know what, we need to start teaching them because they are the future of that community. They will be the ones who will one day make the decision of whether to poach that pangolin or to let it live or to safeguard its habitat. Pangolins are these highly trafficked mammals that are found in the Yangshila. It is the most trafficked mammal in the world and it has an evolutionary history of 50 to 55 million years old.
And so what we’re trying to do is actually create a cohort of maybe young female or male, you know, from rural communities who can also participate in conservation, who have the language or the education to be able to interact with a scientist, if they choose to do that. It’s incredibly inspiring to see you know, the future science faces or the future policy makers.
Mary Anne Funk
I bet that’s got to be really exciting to kind of witness these kids learning something new and then they’re taking on knowledge that they can move forward now and maybe they’re like, wow, I never even thought this was possible, and go on to higher education, to fully develop that. That’s going to be exciting for both of you
Rajeev
Yeah, seeing the children, you know, recognize their own landscape and for them to see their own landscape in a different way, I think is really the objective of the project so that, you know, when they grow up, they have that same love for the nature around them that you know, a lot of the political leaders don’t have right now, which is why so much destruction is happening. You know, there’s there’s bulldozers in every ward, every municipality, creating roads haphazardly everywhere across the country. And it’s a real threat to these incredible treasures that are, you know, all around them that also are going to be the basis of their livelihood. And I think once the, you know, children start to understand that this generation through the Vertical University starts to understand the importance of biodiversity to their own livelihood, in terms of aesthetics in terms of the importance of ecosystems, then I think that’s really kind of where the, you know, real change will come from, so we believe that you know, through the Vertical University project, the documentation and archiving of that knowledge and passing it on to the next generation is incredibly vital.
Priyanka
The way in which we arrived at even understanding what this knowledge was, was actually through an individual named Kumar Sir who is a fourth grade teacher a Dalit from an untouchable caste group, and also a passionate conservationist from a village named Yangshila. And so from that region what what Kumar Sir did actually around 2012 was actually invited us to to visit his village and to learn about the landscape. And so he had told Rajeev and I, that okay, it’s going to take you five hours just pass by here and I just want to show you you know how diverse this landscape is. Through Kurmar sir, what we realized was that the Yangshila, which is located at Terai, which starts from 180 meter elevation, all the way to 1950 meter elevation, that this area actually had enormous biodiversity. If you walked, you know five hours across this region, you could actually pass by and witness sort of plants, you know, that grow in a warm climate all the way to cold, temperate climate. So, within the journey that that Kumar Sir brought us into Yangshila didn’t end up taking five hours, it took us 17 days to document 500 different plant species.
Rajeev
And it was amazing, because with him, it was like every other tree like you, you couldn’t even walk 10 seconds before he would stop and explain the use and the importance of a different tree or tell a story about somebody who was, you know, saved from medicine that was taken from the bark of some plant. And it was an amazing kind of window into this knowledge system. And the man is, you know, so it was so passionate himself about, you know, protecting nature and as a teacher, I think he really wanted the children to be engaged in all of this and he knew every single person in the community, which was also amazing and he also knew who had knowledge about what plant and that was pretty spectacular.
Priyanka
that knowledge and really through being inspired by Kumar sir and his view of looking at the landscape, we came up with the idea of the Vertical University. And so when we first started around 2012, it was just me, Rajeev and Kumar Sir, the three of us, you know, who lived in Kumar Sir’s house and we had come up with this idea, and we were starting with this vision. And we put out a call for a youth fellow who was interested in technology from the local community. That’s when we came across, Ganga Limbu. who actually became our first youth fellow. She was an indigenous person, she was a rural youth, a female, and also somebody extremely interested in technology. So with her and with Kumar sir and with all the farmers, we actually started to document this knowledge. And so 4 years ago, we started with our first indigenous knowledge video, and now we have 75. It is all led and directed and edited by Ganga Limbu, who has since then, been trained in filmmaking and editing in Adobe Premiere Pro and AutoCAD and research and everything technology related which is what she was interested in. And just two years ago, she went and spoke about the indigenous knowledge in front of 300 different scientists about the importance of this knowledge. A year ago, she was featured on CNN, again about this indigenous knowledge work that she’s doing. And just a few weeks ago, she actually won the young naturalist award. And in in her speech, she actually ended up thanking her late parents, and also the indigenous professors who actually showed her how to read her own landscape. And so through her story,and she is one of many, what we started to realize was that young people you know, who live in these landscapes who are really marginalized, also have the capacity and the potential to engage in conservation and documentation of knowledge, editing of knowledge and archiving of knowledge that if you provide them the skills and the tools, they will actually start the conservation themselves. And if you just focus on dedicating time and energy and effort, they can actually lead their own conservation project in their own landscapes.
Mary Anne Funk
Something I’m thinking about right now, Priyanka, because you are here at the University of Oregon doing a fellowship in architecture and you are so focused on the conservation and protecting of land. And so I’m kind of wondering, you know, is there some conflict within you sometimes between being this architect and wanting to build things in places and also understanding that you have to respect the land. So, you know, is there some conflict or, or are you just trying to really kind of bring these two things together and how and how so?
Priyanka
So there’s definitely I think fundamental conflict with construction building and nature conservation and we saw that initially, you know, two, three years ago when we, when we were building our first learning grounds, the contractor that we had hired, love to excavate everything and, and pour concrete over everything. And so it took me a very long time to like, talk to him about that’s not what we’re doing we’re actually doing nature conservation, but then you couldn’t get around you know, the excavation process as well as pouring concrete, you have to have foundation but you know, to what level where, you know, these, these are issues. These are, these are sort of conversations that you can have with a slightly more sensitive individual.
So, what I did at that time was actually I worked with young builders from Yangshila again to train them not just in building, but also to think about nature. So every week we actually looked at different documentaries. And we talked about pangolins because also many of them were poachers who actually poached pangolins and this was also due to boredom and you know young people being young and not really having anything else to do and so knowing that fact we, we started to like you know, slowly start to get them to become more curious about pangolins be more interested about nature conservation. We also walked on the trails, the same trails that we walked with the kids we walked on the trails with them to talk about the river system of Budhikhola or the wetland ecology or other things, just to start to get them to think beyond you know, just walls and buildings and foundation and concrete being poured over everything. And so one of the successes that we’ve had is actually the poacher, who was a poacher three years ago has turned into a hardcore conservationist now, and to the point where he’s just like, I just want to build butterfly gardens and I want to think about insects and, and, and all of these things. And so I do think that definitely there is a conflict, there’s a fundamental conflict. But I think if we put energy to educate, whether it’s an architect or a builder, with zero to no education that I worked with in Nepal, there is the potential to have a conversation about architecture that doesn’t destroy nature.
And so that’s that’s the kind of architecture that I like to focus on and in Portland, here this semester, we are actually in the architectural studio, I started the studio by thinking about birds. And so the students had an exercise to become a bird and translate that, that experience into into an architectural intervention. So this was a very odd proposition to them. Because, you know, we like to think about our own needs. As humans, we don’t really think about non human species. And so they had to twist their minds into thinking about, okay, how does a bird navigate through space, you know, from using the magnetic receptors to looking at like how vultures are actually cleaning up the environment. And so, the students actually very sensitively looked at all of these different aspects and tried to translate that into architecture. So I think whether you’re working with builders in Nepal or students of architecture in Oregon, there are opportunities to engage the non human, the natural landscape. And I think we have to be open to that. Because we are living in the Anthropocene and we as architects, it is our job to engage and to work with non human species. We can’t just think about that as a responsibility of a landscape architect or or conservationists, we need to actively participate in in these conversations.
Mary Anne Funk
what are some of the greatest lessons either words of inspiration you’ve received or you know, lessons that you’ve learned in your time with the farmers? What are some of your takeaways from them and the time you’ve spent with them?
Priyanka
I think for me, I what I’ve always been amazed at has been how people, whether it’s that former poacher who turned into a pangolin conservationist or a farmer whose now sharing knowledge about, about conservation or Ganga. I mean, how how people have the power to, to either destroy their landscape or to become stewards that if we engage with them, and if we are able to speak with them at at an equal level, in an intelligent way, maybe they will decide to actually, you know, steward the landscape versus killing pangolins. I think it’s very, very important for us to engage people at an intellectual level and on an equal platform and not to patronize you know them or not to point fingers at them as you’re destroying the landscape. I think we lose the conversation when we point fingers, immediately before we even open our mouths, and I think it’s important for us to remember as we walk into these communities that they’re not illiterate. They are not, you know, people who are only poachers and illegal hunters, that they have the capacity to safeguard their landscape. Let’s work with them and let’s let’s build them up to do that.
Rajeev
I think for me, one of the really big lessons has been the power of inspiration. So like, you know, we were working on trying to protect this landscape in Papung, which is kind of the highest node of the Vertical University. And there were like 20 different hydropower companies that had bought permits on all of these lakes and rivers is pristine glacial kind of landscape that was just going to be destroyed. And, you know, we were trying to say, protect this, protect this protect this and it wasn’t working. And it’s funny because, you know, we, in one of our meetings with the local community leaders, we showed the video of Greta Thornburg, her speech to the world leaders, and I still remember like when she said, How dare you How Dare you? Oh, and those images of her speech and why am I doing this? I’m 16 years old because you stole my future. And we were sitting in a room with the local leaders and the local politicians. And they might not have understood all the English but man that completely changed the direction of the project. That night, this community created a committee to stop the hydropower. They said, We have to save our lakes. They said they kind of woke up, they said, what are we doing these are these are the lakes that we worship. These are like, the lakes that actually we believe are gods and we’re killing them. We’re destroying them. And it was when they got inspired by this girl, you know, her voice, that this whole project changed. But last night, I was at one of these leaders homes and we were actually reflecting on that, like what was the inflection point. And they actually now have they traveled to Darjeeling, they’ve they’ve gone to all of the local people and they’ve used her video actually, to even convince the local people. So the biggest lesson for me is, you know, is really like they say aspiration creates inspiration And that I think is one of the most powerful lessons for me.
Mary Anne Funk
All right. Well, at this point now as the guest host, I’m going to say my goodbyes and turn it over to Priyanka, for her to bring this to an end. And thank you again. And Rajeev, it was really nice meeting you today.
Rajeev
Thank you so much.
Priyanka
Thank you so much, Mary Anne. It has been really wonderful to talk about all of these very complex issues in this episode.
Priyanka
This is the final episode of our four part series and I’m happy to end with the discussion surrounding bio-diversity indigeneity and architecture. I really want to thank Professor Erin Moore, the Director of the School of Architecture and Environment for bringing together a cohort of fellows from around the world and for providing us the platform through the podcast series to amplify our voice to spread our voice. I want to thank our editor Mary Anne Funk and the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication for providing us the equipment and the space in the Portland campus to record our podcast.
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This is Priyanka Bista, your host, signing off, along with Mary Anne Funk, our editor, from Portland, Oregon, with music by Chicoco Radio – all the way from the waterfront settlements of Port Harcourt Nigeria.
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