About David Felipe Rodriguez Mora
PhD (c) in Environmental Anthropology University of Texas at San Antonio
I am a passionate and dedicated ethnobiologist and environmental anthropologist who loves to create informative and engaging content. My work aims to foster mutually beneficial relationships between people and their environments, co-constructing a thriving bioculturally diverse future. During my undergraduate studies, I researched the traditional uses of plants by rural and Indigenous communities, mainly in Colombia and Panama. My passion for conserving the biocultural heritage of my ancestral territory in the Boyacá department led me to document more than 300 species of plants traditionally used in the Colombian Andes mountain range for my undergraduate thesis. This research has been published as an illustrated field guide entitled "The traditional uses of non-timber plants of Santa María, Boyacá (Colombian Andes)." After completing my undergraduate studies, I led the restoration of a four-hectare tropical coastal farm in the archipelago of Bocas del Toro, Panama. Leading a team of ten people, we propagated more than 10,000 plants to implement the design of a sustainable tropical agroforestry system with edible and medicinal gardens and fruit forests. I have also led the implementation of other Indigenous gardens and food forests in Mexico, Panama, and the U.S., through various non-profit organizations. As part of Duke University's Talent Identification Program, I taught ethnobiology in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, leading research expeditions in Indigenous communities on the medicinal plant uses of local healers.
Current Research
In my master's work in plant biology, I studied the diversity of uncultivated Yagé lianas (also known as Ayahuasca) among Southwestern Colombia's Indigenous Cofáns. In this study, my Cofán colleagues and I co-discovered three species of Yagé not previously reported to Western science, belonging to three genera of the Malpgihiaceae family, but different from the genus Banisteriopsis. The botanical identity of these species will remain confidential, as a way to protect the Cofán Intellectual Property Rights, and the collected voucher specimens will have restricted access in a special collection at the Herbario Nacional Colombiano (COL).
Through my doctoral studies in environmental anthropology, I have been advancing my research on the mutual constitution between the Colombian Cofáns and Yagé in their recent history. My study focuses on the identification of a possible process of mutual benefit between, on the one hand, Cofán Yagé taxonomy and that of Western science, and on the other hand, the Yagé diversity conservation and Cofán self-determination and sovereignty. My work aims to contribute to the establishment of sustainable socioenvironmental dynamics and good living in the ancestral territory of the Cofán people and the tropical rainforests of the Colombian Andes-Amazon region.
Additionally, mydoctoral work has a practical component concerning the propagation of Yagé stem cuttings and seeds that the Cofáns buy in the adjacent territory outside their communities and for Yagé tourism. These stem cuttings and seeds will be planted on the Cofán family farms to support the local economy via Yagé tourism and the Yagé diversity conservation. Integrating ethnobotanical and ethnographic methods has offered me a unique vantage point to effectively address the broader relationships between people and plants, communities and ecosystems, and for strengthening the socio-political, economic, and ecological management of territories.