In the emerging literature on reparation ecology, “what is seen or felt as broken” (Blanco-Wells, 2021, p. 2) ranges from broken relationships, damaged ecosystems, and obsolete institutions to constructs around nature (Yakamovich, 2019). Relationships seem, however, to be in focus, especially when other aspects, such as atrocities committed during slavery or the stable state of the climate, appear beyond repair (Buck, 2019; Cadieux et al., 2019): “It is, principally, relationships that need to be repaired, not just landscapes, the atmosphere, the climate” (Apprich, 2020). Some studies emphasize the reparation of the metabolic rift, a Marxist term that can denote, more specifically, the rupture in nutrient cycling between town and city, or more generally, the rupture between humans and the land or humans and nature under capitalism (Schneider and McMichael, 2010; Montenegro de Wit, 2021). Damages that require reparation might also be psychological. For instance, the environmental philosopher Albrecht developed the concept of solastagia to understand the psychological trauma or place-based distress that people experience because of environmental change (Askland and Bunn, 2018). For the purpose of this paper, one of the most stimulating readings about “what is broken and in need of repair” comes from Latin-American environmental history, which emphasizes the historical impact of colonialism and its extractive practices on ecosystems, people and places. Palacio (2001) unravels the historical thread of the enormous biodiversity loss that Colombia suffered between the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including how the transformation and exploitation of landscape and resources revert in daily details, such as the scarcity of certain products on the main popular markets in the squares of Bogotá. Of relevance to the budding field of reparation ecology, Latin-American environmental history has a distinctive methodological approach in which the notion of loss embraces a unity of meaning made up by culture, territory, the local economy and traditions, and the rights of the people (Gallini, 2009).

At the heart of the idea of reparation ecology is resistance from below from Indigenous, Black, and women's groups, climate activists and labor unions (Patel and Moore, 2017). In other words, such groups are not merely victims but agents, and they are increasingly connected: Patel and Moore (2017) call the emerging horizontal alliances between such movements “an antidote against pessimism” (p. 49). To Papadopoulos et al. (2022), reparation “redirects attention from more visible players […] toward those typically absent or silenced [such as] rural laborers, Indigenous communities, urban activists, grassroots infrastructure maintainers, practitioners of ecological transitions in the global North and South, but also inorganic actors, natural elements, animals, the dead, spirits, objects, and landscapes” (p. 3–4).

Reparation implies an underlying ethics of care and responsibility, rather than just “patching up what has been damaged”; such practices “encourage novel alliances, sensitivities, affectivities, intimacies, and material relations” (Papadopoulos et al., 2022, p. 4). Reparatory processes may take the form of “novel organizational arrangements, as new forms of inter or multi-species interaction, as forms of reconciliation between production, self-reliance, and consumption, as preservation and restoration actions, as forms of healing and self-care, as expressions of artistic creation” (Blanco-Wells, 2021, p. 7). Patel and Moore (2017), departing from a critical view of both society and its view of nature (e.g., as pristine, untouched, that can be “damaged” and then “restored”), outline a historically-informed program for reparation based on 5 R's: recognition, reparation, redistribution, reimagination, and recreation. In the case of patriarchy, for instance, they imagine that the redistribution of domestic work is a central part of reparation, but that this cannot be considered separately from the energy needed to warm or cool homes, or food regimes for healthy diets.

While agency and protagonism of grassroots is central to the literature on reparation, there also is a relational aspect present. Reparation suggests a debt or obligation (Sharife and Bond, 2013): for instance, an ecological debt that is owed, be it to living people, or more-than-human subjects such as other organisms, rocks, spirits, ancestors or future generations (Sharife and Bond, 2013; Blanco-Wells, 2021). In line with this, reparations and compensations might be owed from governments, corporations, or the international community. In addition, systemic change often requires engagements beyond the local level. For instance, granting reparation to Black Americans through improved access to healthcare could mean recommodifying healthcare (Patel and Moore, 2017). Similarly, in the case of multinational corporations responsible for major environmental disasters and supporting dictatorships, reparation could include putting an end to the tax havens that sustain them (Sharife and Bond, 2013). This is not without challenges, especially since states often have conflicting roles as both perpetrators and enforcers of rights (Sharife and Bond, 2013).

Based on our reading of the emerging literature, we tentatively suggest four key dimensions of reparation ecology (see Figure 1):

This case concerns the community of Vila Nova Esperança, located on the outskirts of the Jequitibá Park, close to the border that separates the municipality of São Paulo (Brazil) from its neighboring municipalities Taboão da Serra and Osasco. Vila Nova Esperança (the Vila, for shorthand) has long been at the forefront of a harsh socio-environmental conflict. The area occupied by the community (Figure 2) has multiple owners, among which the Basic Sanitation Company of the State of São Paulo (SABESP) and the Housing and Urban Development Company of the State of São Paulo (CDHU) stand out. In addition, an essential fact is that the village is located inside a preservation area, Jequitibá Park (former TIZO Park), an important remnant of Atlantic Forest in the middle of the urban area, between São Paulo and Cotia⁴ (SIMA, 2019). As early as 2006, the Vila underwent a judicial process for the removal of the households occupying the land accused by the authorities and environmentalist association of being not only illegal land occupiers, but an environmental threat to the park.

The city of São Paulo was one of the first western metropolises to industrialize and densify, as early as in 1920 (Pompeu de Toledo, 2015). The expansion of Metropolitan São Paulo in the last century unleashed a set of dynamics centered on intensive patterns of land, energy, and material consumption (Campello Torres et al., 2019). This produced lasting impacts that we only nowadays can fully appreciate in terms of climate risk magnification and implications for human wellbeing (Lampis et al., 2020). The high vulnerability to the impact of extremes, such as rainfall events, is accredited to social, economic, and demographic factors, lack of access to urban infrastructure, water and sanitation (Meida et al., 2017), as well as to the loss of natural coverage in the city's urbanization process (cf. Figures 3, 4) (Bueno Machado and Dias de Freitas, 2021).

The socio-environmental struggle of the Vila Nova Esperança local foundation is spearheaded by Lia Esperança. With emphasis in the 2010s, hence in a pre-pandemic scenario, she gained the confidence of fellow residents and won an election to become the community leader. A small group of close followers helped to set up several strategic projects, beginning with the reorganization of waste collection, disposal, and recycling. Between 2010 and 2014, with the support and networking of NGOs and universities, the initiatives of the newly founded Organization Vila Nova Esperança grew to include an organic garden of approximately 1 ha. The garden produces food for sale on local markets, generating income that is also spent to support the most vulnerable members of the community, and guarantees basic food security for those working in the organization, a floating group of some 30–50 people in those thriving years. Through these efforts, the community managed to revert the perception of key environmental institutions and gained legitimacy within the public opinion and the local press. In 2014, the environmental activism of what had become a twin organization (the Vila Nova Esperança Organization at the popular level and the Vila Nova Esperança Foundation managed by Lia Esperança) received the Milton Santos prize for work related to the Consolidation of Territorial and Social Rights.

While beginning by a simple intuition—the need to clean the garbage from the Vila to show that its residents could look after the environmental dimensions of their community—the initiative grew to include organic garden, a communal kitchen catering to the members of the foundation and the community at large, and educational programs for children. Nowadays, Vila Nova Esperança contributes to the mitigation of climate risks in São Paulo through their work of stewardship of the Jequitibá park, thus helping to reduce climate risk. This has led the local water company (SABESP) to agree in 2015 to allow them to occupy the land without further proceeding in the actions aimed at forced removal. However, the economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged the continuity of some of the initiatives.

In this experience, it would be hard to disentangle the perspective of reparation as biocultural engagement, from that of resistance (see Table 2). In Vila Nova Esperança, sustainability is the articulating category of a set of actions and strategies to legitimate the community as a socially and environmentally proactive actor, including more traditional social struggles, such as the right to stay-in-place, and access to decent housing, health, education and other public services. Around this notion, the community has produced and mobilized a powerful imaginary that connects their own struggles with the environmental and planning priorities of formal institutions and society.

The case concerns two traditional Afro-Brazilian territories or Quilombos, Camorim and Vargem Grande, where climate-related hazards like slope erosion and landslides are entangled with other issues such as cultural heritage protection and value conflicts over the use of peri-urban space (Santos, 2018; Santos and Brink, 2022). Quilombos (Palenques in Spanish-speaking Latin America) were the first free territories founded by formerly enslaved Brazilians. Today, Brazil's more than 5,000 Quilombos are at the frontline of struggles against environmental destruction; however, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the loss of traditional knowledge resulting from the death of elders, has been particularly hard on traditional communities (Coelho-Junior et al., 2020).

Camorim and Vargem Grande are situated in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro, adjacent to the rapidly urbanizing Jacarepaguá Lowlands, and in the buffer zone of what is now the State Park Pedra Branca (established in 1974) (see Figure 5). Conservation in the park is under multiple pressures, with environmental and climate-related impacts such as erosion of slopes, landslides, and microclimate changes. The accelerated urbanization of Jacarepaguá, including Olympic facilities and a near-lying high-end condominium, have also negatively impacted the two Quilombos, especially the more urban Camorim. Construction has brought heavy vehicles, uncomfortable noise and dust, reduced mobility, and the loss of archaeological heritage sites, and the Quilombo residents have faced verbal threats and racism from militia, developers, and new residents.

Quilombo territories are important sites of Afro-Brazilian resistance and culture, often with elements of agroforestry and Afro-diasporic knowledge, kinship, faith, and herbs for ritual use. In 1988, 100 years after the country's abolition of slavery, their residents were given protection in the new Brazilian constitution as a traditional population. Quilombos are thus both a legal category for collective land ownership and a wider notion of Afro-Brazilian resistance against social-economic and cultural domination and racism. The reparative actions performed by the residents of Camorim and Vargem Grande tie in with such social justice dimensions in their struggle to get officially recognized as Quilombos and obtain their land titles, as well as more general urban socio-environmental repair through the multiple values (historical, religious, environmental, pedagogical, cultural, etc.) they provide for the city of Rio de Janeiro. Both Quilombos constitute archaeological sites that bear witness of the past oppression, colonial relationships, and production of social hierarchies.

Both Quilombos perform a range of ecological and agro-ecological functions, through preserving of sacred flora and fauna, agroforestry production (mainly of banana), and monitoring of ecological risks. A local commission in Vargem Grande works to assess the risks of landslides on the trails that they used historically, and in Camorim, there is a group that inspects the trails to contain the risk of landslides or falling of old trees or trees attacked by pests. However, this empirical knowledge often collides with that of the organization managing the conservation unit (Rio de Janeiro State Environmental Institute, INEA); for instance, one of the trails abandoned and deactivated a decade ago by Quilombo residents, due to the fragility of the slope, continues to be used by INEA agents and park-goers. The hydro-ecological function should also be highlighted, since these territories preserve the riparian forests of the springs and water bodies where the Rio de Janeiro water utility carry out essential water abstraction to meet the service demands of its West Zone.

The Quilombos have a pedagogical role in passing on traditional ecological knowledge and Quilombo identity to descendants, but also through environmental education, awareness raising, and partnerships with local public and private schools and universities. The latter bears particular significance for reparation, since the teaching of Afro-Brazilian history in schools has always been precarious, despite Federal Law 10.639/2003 created with the aim of bringing more African and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture to classrooms, and to value and emphasize the African presence in society.

This last ties in with their alliance-building and legal struggle to receive their collective land titles based on their protection in the Constitution, and to resist real-estate development in the quickly urbanizing area. Recognition of Camorim as an archaeological site of interest in 2016 was an important win, but the titling process of both Quilombos finds itself stalled in 2022. What is at stake is not only the right to land, but also guarantee of rights linked to land—including health, education, religious exercise, security, water supply, supply of energy, and public lighting. For this purpose, Quilombo representatives stress the importance of occupying political spaces outside the territory: universities, public hearings, the municipal legislative chamber, the thematic chambers of INEA, and marches and popular demonstrations for traditional people.

All four dimensions of reparation ecology feature in and are intrinsically linked in this case. There is the aspect of reframing nature (see Table 2) through a sacred and ancestral perspective with deities (orixás) based in nature. This cosmovision guides the everyday biocultural engagement with the territory, such as agroforestry, preserving sacred flora and fauna, and remembering, rescuing, and commemorating historical and contemporary cultural heritage. The communal structure, improvements to the landscape, and archaeological traces of past generations are, in turn, necessary criteria for the process toward obtaining collective land titles as per the constitutional rights of Quilombo populations. This right (albeit hard to access) can be seen as an attempt toward recognition and compensation for harms suffered by their ancestors. Finally, the resistance dimension permeates life and the cosmovision of Quilombos since their inception. In sum, reparation here consists of the use value, food security, local and matriarchal protagonism, ecosystem management, education, and horizontal legislation which aim at the reconstruction of memory and relations of collective struggle and resurgence.

This case study of Tamalameque, Colombia, targets the relationship between climate risk and human wellbeing, particularly regarding food security, as the river is the main source of food for the local community. The effects of climate change are severely felt by local communities: seasonal weather patterns are increasingly unpredictable, whereas floods and droughts arrive at unexpected times of the year. The impact of flooded lands on human wellbeing is major as floods occur more frequently, three times per year instead of two; meanwhile, the timing of water absorption has slowed down due to the physical limits presented by a landscape largely consisting of wetlands and marshes.

Tamalameque is a municipality of some 13,000 inhabitants (2015) in the department of César, northern Colombia, occupying an area of 512 m² along the Magdalena River—the country's longest and most important river in terms of fisheries and fluvial transportation (Municipios de Colombia, 2022). Located in a flood risk-prone area, at just 25 m above sea level, Tamalameque is also part of a strategic marshland complex, the Ciénaga de Zapatosa, long-since a focal point for socio-environmental conflicts and an area of great agro-industrial expansion. The Regional District for Integrated Management of the Zapatosa Swamp Complex stretches from the department of César to the Magdalena, in the Colombian Caribbean region, between the Momposina depression and the Magdalena River delta (see Figure 6). In its preliminary 2021 report focusing on ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction, the Ministry of Environment of Colombia proposed to turn the marshland of Zapatosa into a protected area to preserve the ecosystem and support sustainable production systems linked to local cultural traditions (Nieto, 2021).

Colombian environmental historians have described the agro-modernization expansion that took place in the area between the 1920s and the end of the 1970s (Palacio, 2001). Agricultural modernization was introduced at the expense of more traditional livelihoods that combined fishing and small agriculture. Meanwhile, its by-products in terms of pollution and ecosystem destruction meant that many communities were pushed to the brink of subsistence.

They were also exposed to severe health effects caused by the mercury found in the fishes that play a key role in the local diet (Calao and Marrugo, 2015). Such impacts are severely worsened by climate-related reductions to rainfall, since decreases in the daily water flow result in a diminished capacity to dilute pollutants.

The project analyzed in this case study received support by the Pequeñas Donaciones (Small Donations) initiative of PNUD channeled through the Natura Foundation. The beneficiaries were twelve individuals from the local of the community, eight farmer women and 4 fishermen and farmers who had lived there all their lives, some of them experiencing harsh socio-economic conditions, all integrating the Asociación de Pescadores de Tamalameque⁵ Cesár (ASOPETAM). The project provided them with an opportunity to learn about ecosystem restoration, reforestation, artisanal fishing as well as the importance of caring for water resources to fight against climate change.

The reforestation project was carried out in Tatogo and El Cristo marshlands of the Zapatoca complex. They built a plant nursery and restored six acres of native forest. By picking native seeds or young plant specimens up from the streets of small towns and villages and transplanting them to the native forest, people managed to increase the density and resilience of local forest with native species such as mangrove (Avicennia germinaias), false pepper tree (Schinus molle), calabash tree (Crescentia cujete), orejero tree (Entereolobium cyclocarpium), pigeown wood tree (Guazuma ulmifolia). The most visible impact of such ecological reparation is the partial recuperation of biodiversity, as ishermen learned the art of artisanal fishing and more sustainable management of fishing nets. The community also started sowing plants that brought about the benefits of erosion prevention. Over time, the community built a plant nursery with a stock potential of some 3,000–4,700 plant specimens after transplanting, and now there are 700–1,000 plants ready to be transplanted. Twelve people are now working in the association, with a multiplier effect that has attracted other associations to participate. On the whole, the process of ecological reparation seems to reverberate at the social level, as interviewed project participants relate to have improved their ability to deal with conflicts arising within their community more peacefully and effectively, taking on proactive approaches to combat climate change at a local level. Furthermore, participants felt more empowered and informed about how to preserve nature resources. The RAMSAR zone, that is, a wetland area of international importance according to the convention on wetlands, helped building the plant shelter (nursery) and develop the restoration and reforestation project.

This is an example of reparation based on biocultural engagement with factors such as co-management, the strengthening of community organization, the building or improvement of individual and collective capacities including behavioral and attitudinal shifts, and the capacity to plan ahead, as well the interest in sustainable practice, are all part of the successful story conveyed by this case of study. It suggests that for the climate crisis to be tackled most effectively, a simultaneous top-down, bottom-up approach is a key component.

The case of the urban farmers of the AGRUPAR project in Quito is an example of resistance to urban pressure and inequality, with important nutritional and economic outcomes in terms of hunger and poverty, but also very significant gender implications. Sellers and colleagues have pointed out that in north-eastern Ecuador, household livelihood dynamics are strongly affected by exogenous factors, such as the price of oil and the level of government investment in social development projects. Meanwhile, the adverse impacts of other development policies to promote forest resource extraction are also felt within and among households, such as on women's health, summing up to environmental pressures and migration drivers (Sellers et al., 2017). Some of the impacts on women's health and their families concern forest and oil extraction, processes that often produce contamination of soils and waterbeds. The aforementioned two activities are the cause to women and their families of greater environmental pressures often resulting in environmentally driven rural-urban migration.

The Quito Metropolitan District is located in the Pichincha Province, situated in the north-central zone of the Andean Cordillera, which bisects Ecuador from north to south. The province has a total area of 1,358,100 hectares (IMQ, 1997) (see text footnote 1) of which the Metropolitan District comprises over 290,746 hectares, including the city of Quito proper as well as 24 suburban and rural parishes surrounding the urban core (FAO, 2014). As a result of anthropogenic drivers, agriculture is one of the most sensitive sectors to climate change-related disasters, such as those caused by the encounter between social vulnerability conditions, physical exposure and increasing climate variability (Soares et al., 2014).

In the city of Quito, Ecuador, the Participatory Urban Agriculture Project (AGRUPAR, by its acronym in Spanish, which also reads as “grouping” or “joining together”) promotes urban agroecological production and food sovereignty (Figure 7). Urban agriculture was promoted by twenty-two Latin American and Caribbean countries through the 2000 “Quito Declaration” as a measure to address poverty, achieve food security, and improve environmental management and governance of cities (Veenhuisen, 2014). As a result of the Declaration, Quito was chosen as a city site to implement a pilot project to test if urban agriculture could be a solution to develop a sustainable food system capable of improving household nutrition while also alleviating poverty. The pilot project was successfully conducted for 2 years and as a result of this experience, the Municipality of Quito created the funding mechanism that led to the creation of the AGRUPAR Project (Renard, 2019). AGRUPAR is financed by CONQUITO, a corporation promoting financial and economic self-reliance, that follows a co-operative and mutual enterprise business model, i.e., a “hybrid” that operates between state-owned enterprises, not-for-profit social enterprises, and for-profit organizations (Mazzarol et al., 2018).

In that context, AGRUPAR has delivered 16,000 training courses in urban agroecology and provided 82,000 visits for technical assistance, supporting more than 21,000 people, of whom 84% are women (Martin-Moreau and Ménascé, 2019). According to Heifer (2014), the AGRUPAR project provides support to 66 peri-urban, urban and rural parishes in the Metropolitan District of Quito (Heifer, 2014). In this segment, women farmers, participants are mostly older adults and many of them are second-generation migrants from rural areas with Indigenous heritage (FAO, 2014). According to data from the Municipality of Quito, there is a positive relationship between the prevalence of child chronic malnutrition and the interest of people to be part of AGRUPAR (Rodriguez-Martinez, 2019).

Participants who are part of this urban agroecology initiative produce a variety of vegetables, herbs, and fruits, especially for household self-consumption. The urban farmers associated with AGRUPAR can sell their products in agroecological farmer markets in different parts of the city, sponsored by the Municipality of Quito, called Bioferias (Rodríguez Dueñas and Proaño Rivera, 2016). The leadership of women in looking after urban gardens serves as a guarantee toward the protection of the right to food security and sovereignty and promotes an economy focused on self-consumption and savings. They promote food sovereignty by cultivating Andean products that are in risk of disappearing and applying ancestral knowledge and techniques to produce them, such as the use of the planting calendar according to the phases of the moon and association planting (Revista Líderes, 2017).

According to an in-depth analysis of the benefits of urban agriculture (Carrasco-Torrontegui and Cardenas, 2021), the urban farmers of Quito generate multiple benefits to their communities, quantified as thirteen different social benefits, three economic benefits, fourteen ecological benefits, and four health benefits.

First, from a social perspective urban agriculture promotes intergenerational cohesion and recovers ancestral techniques. Second, urban agriculture generates economic benefits to the community, and as such it is a poverty alleviation mechanism that generates a supplementary income and allows participants to have savings. It is estimated that urban farmers can save between $30 and $70 dollars when they grow food for self-consumption and can generate extra income of up to $150 dollars when they sell in the Bioferias (Carrasco-Torrontegui and Cardenas, 2021). Third, urban farming in Quito, from an ecological perspective, is a measure that helps to adapt and mitigate climate change (Carrasco-Torrontegui, 2019).

Finally, from a health perspective, urban agriculture in Quito helps to reduce under-nutrition, promotes physical activity, and improves mental health (Carrasco-Torrontegui and Cardenas, 2021). Urban agriculture improves the health of those who practice it and of those who consume the food produced in urban areas organically and/or agroecologically. For instance, urban farmers tend to have a more balanced diet, rich in nutritious and fresh foods and urban farming practice serves to improve physical fitness and mental health (Carrasco-Torrontegui and Cardenas, 2021).

The work of the urban farmers of Quito is an example of biocultural engagement, but it also has elements of “do-it-yourself” forms of resistance and reframing nature, from the perspective that their work represents acts of care to their communities and repairs of their socio-ecological conditions of life. An example is that the urban farmers in Quito to face climate threats and risks have generated several adaptation measures to climate change. For instance, Quito's urban farmers have put into practice different effective strategies inspired by agroecological principles such as reusing water, recycling waste, wind barriers, mulch application and natural pest control strategies. The development of these measures to adapt to climate change evidence their resilience and autonomy capacities. Their participation in solving problems and carrying out actions to protect nature and their families. For example, according to the work of Carrasco-Torrontegui and Cardenas (2021), Pilar, who is one of the participants of AGRUPAR in her garden, is able to grow more than 20 products on her 80-m plot. She is the head of the household, her daughter, grandson and disable husband depend on her. Through her work in the urban garden, she is able to provide food to her family and provide some products to her fast-food business.

The case of the Ch'orti' Mayan community inhabiting the Dry Corridor of the Eastern region of Guatemala, is a good example of urban-rural relationships and local development initiatives severely affected by increasing extreme climate events and associated disaster risks such as recurrent, seasonal droughts and advanced soil erosion (Hernández et al., 2012a; Imbach et al., 2017). Even though it is an important ecotone of semi-arid ecosystems and a trading region connecting with Honduras and El Salvador transboundary communities, this area continues suffering extreme poverty and food insecurity conditions with lowest adaptive capacity (Donatti et al., 2019). Yet, local Ch'orti' communities and their natural ecosystems still have great potential to participate in just markets based on innovative restoration and community engagement initiatives (Johnson, 2006; Hernández et al., 2012b).

Due to the regional effects of global environmental change and the rising evidence regarding the tangible impacts of climate change, over the last two decades smallholder farmers have been directly experiencing the practical meaning and implications of climate risks, particularly of extreme climatic events within an already highly vulnerable context (Hannah et al., 2017). Small-scale producers and rural communities in the Dry Corridor of Central America, as well as up near the more remote Petén region, remain the most vulnerable landscapes to drought and with lowest adaptive capacity (Holland et al., 2017).

Rural–urban relationships are central to the development of fair markets in Guatemala as they are a historic legacy that shaped the social, ethnic, and economic circumstances of small-scale agricultural systems. Climate vulnerability in Guatemala is shaped by economic and land inequalities along ethnic lines (Johnson, 2006; Pons, 2021). With more than 16 million inhabitants (INE, 2018), Guatemala has the largest population of Central America. The country presents a young population structure within which 43% is made up of Indigenous people belonging to 21 socio-linguistic Maya groups, primarily settled in rural areas. The Indigenous people from the northern and western regions (Alta Verapaz, Quiché, Huehuetenango, and Sololá) present the country's highest poverty indices. Guatemala is the most unequal Latin-American country as far as land tenure inequality is concerned, with 2.25% of the population owning 64% of arable land (Johnson, 2006).

Just food markets can be understood as special types of partnerships aiming not only toward sustainable development conditions for producers tackling strong trading disadvantages but also to provide guidance for consumers (Garcia, 2014). In practical terms, these types of markets should work as a repairing mechanism that brings different production and trading conditions for land smallholders supporting innovative development and climate-smart solutions (Hernández et al., 2012b).

Other agents of reparation could be ministries of Environment and Agriculture and other government agencies as well as international cooperation agencies. Such actors have the knowledge and institutional capacity to catalyze reparative mechanisms for local actors in terms of enhancing production conditions and related capacity-building to get involved in targeted just markets. Indeed, these markets seen as development-promoting instruments have the potential to both revalue the cultural asset of Ch'orti' peoples within the Guatemalan multicultural society and support their engagement in local trading opportunities such as just markets and community entrepreneurships.

When analyzing the case of coffee fair trade, as of 2005, only 17 coffee and 4 honey small producing organizations and the cooperative federation of the primary producers of the sector, FEDECOCAGUA, were certified by the International Agency of Fairtrade Certification (FLO-Cert), hence benefitting from a minimum price or more according to market conditions. Some reparation activities could promote the engagement of local base organizations like the Association of Producers and Farmers of the Ch'orti' region, known as ASPACH, by replicating the know-how experience and taking advantage from the learned lessons on fair trade opportunities of the leading cooperative organizations mentioned before.

The solidarity market is put in place through respectful and mutually beneficial relationships between producers and consumers following criteria based on prices, quality, minimal intermediation, etc. As it occurs with fair trade, solidarity trade is more determined by the relationship established between the producer and the consumer than by the type of product and is difficult to identify on-the-ground (Johnson, 2006).

As in traditional Guatemalan productive landscapes, we observed both basic grains and coffee being grown together within the same plots, along with forested land and pasture. Cardamom cropping systems emerged as an additional example of smallholder crops, often mixed with coffee and basic grains in the central-western region of the country. While migration dynamics among smallholder farming landscapes is the case for most landscapes in Guatemala, another common trend has been for household women to take over the role of head-of-household while men practiced temporary migration for work (Holland et al., 2017).

The opportunities for fair trade growth in Guatemala can strongly benefit from the cooperativism development in other agricultural areas and must be strengthened from both the supply and demand actors of the market. Regarding the supply side, the inclusion of new Guatemalan products in the fair market must overcome the deficiencies on the product and commercialization in terms of infrastructure (roads, lands), training and credit (Johnson, 2006).

The opportunities for productive diversification have to take into account both local potential and market requirements. Current alternatives include traditional products (apiculture, cardamom (Verapaces, Quiché), certified timber (Petén), cashew and macadamia nuts; non-traditional products (vegetables and fruits, such as broccoli, sesame, snow peas, raspberry, and melon) (van Zonneveld et al., 2020), non-traditional forest products: Ramón nuts (Petén), local palm trees (e.g., Xate), and tourism. In less than a decade, Guatemala has reached the first place in exports of cardamom, having the Middle East as its main client (Johnson, 2006).

Rural-urban relationships in the Eastern Highlands and other vulnerable regions within the country have evolved and been shaped more by temporal assistance subsidies from national ministries and less damaging climate events and risks over the last century (MAGA, 2016). As the COVID-19 Pandemic struck in March 2020 and quarantine conditions restricted the usual distribution and trade of products and goods, an array of innovative mechanisms led by grassroot organizations and based on family farming and the agroecology movement influenced the dynamics of rural-urban relationships not only in Guatemala but in different Latin American regions (e.g., Ucayali region in Peru). The reparation, mainly taking place through the dimensions of biocultural engagement and resistance (see Table 2) took place at the level of economic regions such as the municipalities of Jocotán, Camotán, Olopa and San Juan Ermita within the Dry Corridor and Chiquimula, the capital city of the Department. The list of multi-actor mechanisms has included direct producer-to-consumer food sales, short value chains that linked rural and urban organizations and individuals supported by national or local governments, newly developed programs on local commerce in rural, urban and peri-urban settings (Tittonell et al., 2021).

Both collective societal reactions and climate adaptation needs of smallholder farmers framed by global trends and triggered by a global public health issue raise reflections toward the suitability of a time for an environmentally-friendly balance of economic opportunities. Reparation ecology can help analyze the possibilities of this case study in search for better human wellbeing and risk management under current climate trends.