K'ellu Mayu Pedestrian Footbridge Technical Report; To Petition and Listen: How NGOs Work to Stop Deforestation in the Amazon 243 views

How can nonprofits help protect the Amazon Basin’s ecological system and people? How may safe cross-river connections over the Río K’ellu Mayu best be established? Parts of the Amazon have unsafe river passages. Local people often make trips across moving bodies of water for essential needs. Often this is a risk. Designing a footbridge across the Río K’ellu Mayu serves the Pocona community in Bolivia. A student-led team along with University of Virginia faculty and professional advisors completed this task with NGO, Engineers in Action (EIA). Students performed design work and construction management. A standard design approach by EIA was used by students first. A custom design was produced by students to satisfy location restraints. The custom design was verified by EIA. A viable bridge was designed over the Río K’ellu Mayu for the Pocona people. How have NGOs protected the forests that indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin depend upon? Indigenous peoples resist deforestation to protect the ecosystems that sustain them materially and culturally. NGOs combat deforestation and protect indigenous people’s rights in the Amazon by fighting for land use rights and raising awareness. Governments, lawyers, spokespeople, and indigenous groups engage with NGOs fighting against invasive land use. Indigenous people and their lives must be included in sustainable conversation.

BS (Bachelor of Science)

Amazon; NGOs; Indigenous

School of Engineering and Applied Science Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering Technical Advisor: Jose Gomez STS Advisor: Peter Norton Technical Team Members: Jessica Brown, Sacha Choubah, Ronald Orellana, Gabriel Witter

English

2024-05-07