Agroforestry education in the context of the Kichwa chakra in the Ecuadorian Amazon
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55892/jrg.v9i20.3142Keywords:
Agroforestry education, Kichwa chakra, Traditional ecological knowledge, Intercultural education, SustainabilityAbstract
This paper examines agroforestry education contextualized through the Kichwa chakra in the Ecuadorian Amazon, arguing that the chakra should not be understood merely as a productive agroforestry system, but as a socioecological and educational space where traditional ecological knowledge, food sovereignty, biodiversity conservation, and cultural identity converge. The study adopts a qualitative approach based on a systematic literature review guided by PRISMA 2020. The authors searched Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and AI-supported tools such as Consensus and scite, focusing on publications from 2020 to 2025 related to indigenous agroforestry systems, education, sustainability, and traditional ecological knowledge. The review shows that learning in the Kichwa chakra occurs mainly through situated practice, oral transmission, observation, family work, and community participation rather than through formal school curricula. Across the studies analyzed, the chakra emerges as a living environment for teaching cultivation practices, forest care, species management, and collective values linked to territorial stewardship. The evidence also indicates that the chakra contributes to biodiversity conservation, soil resilience, food and economic sustainability, and intergenerational knowledge transmission. The main conclusion is that the educational value of the chakra is evident but often implicit in the literature. Therefore, the central challenge is not to prove that the chakra educates, but to recognize, systematize, and integrate it more explicitly into intercultural and territorially relevant educational processes for Amazonian Kichwa communities.
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References
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