Swamp Cosmologies is a series of peatland community based and transdisciplinary projects and processes which takes place across four different bogs, swamps, and diversely named peatlands connected by rich wet realities: Pakeliah Hol Hol in Tierra del Fuego, the Papyrus Peatlands at Lake Victoria in East Africa, the Medio Mundo y Dagao Mangroves in Puerto Rico and the wetlands of Lake Nyasa in southern Tanzania. Each of the ecosystems is linked to the transterritorial community of peatland custodians, the Venice Agreement. 

Co-organized by local community organisations with Indigenous authorities and practitioners, artists, scientists, researchers and peatland inhabitants of various backgrounds with the transdisciplinary arts and research platform Sensing Peat at Michael Succow Foundation / Greifswald Mire Center and the Venice Agreement for Peatlands community, Swamp Cosmologies gathers diverse philosophies and lived approaches to surviving in and with peatlands based on mutuality between non-human and human beings. 

The Swamp Cosmologies projects combine on site participatory research and arts formats with online publications and translations between the different local languages and English to connect knowledges and practices from different regions, communities and environments, from ancestral knowledge and experience through arts, science, bottom up nature conservation and ecological education initiatives. While the processes on site support ongoing bottom up nature conservation and the amplification of ancestral and scientific peatland knowledge, the online publications document a series of widely accessible examples of peatland cosmologies and peatland literacy. Thus Swamp Cosmologies offers tools for reimaging contemporary cultures in the face of planetary climate catastrophe through peatland based experiences and bottom up protection models. 

#1 Pakeliah Hol Hol in Tierra del Fuego / Chile

by and with Hach Saye

#2 Papyrus Peatlands of Lake Victoria in Kenya

Translating Venice Agreement into Local Actions for Conservation of Lake Victoria Peatlands

by and with Ecofinder Kenya

#3 Medio Mundo y Dagao Mangroves in Puerto Rico 

The Bog School / Puerto Rico

#4 Lake Nyasa in Tanzania 

Project by Turakella Editha Gyindo