Iemanjá Day: Groups try to have a more sustainable party – 02/01/2024 – Environment

The Iemanjá festivities, celebrated in most of the Brazilian coast on February 2 with the delivery of offerings to the orixá, are gaining a more ecological dimension.

As the party has grown in public and now also attracts people who are not practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions, concern has also increased about the trash left on the beaches after the rituals and which ends up in the sea.

Religious leaders from Candomblé and Umbanda created a movement to raise awareness among party participants about environmental issues, which includes beach cleaning efforts and requests for offerings to Iemanjá to be biodegradable, without plastic materials, metal or glass.

One of the supporters of this movement is the anthropologist Rodney William, babalorixá of the terreiro Ilê Obá Ketu Axé Omi Nla, in Mairiporã (SP). As he lives between São Paulo and Salvador, William participates every year in the centenary Iemanjá festival in Rio Vermelho and has noticed an increase in the flow of participants.

In 2023 alone, the year the celebration resumed after the pandemic, the party received around 400,000 visitors, including residents of the Salvador metropolitan region and tourists.

After research into the environmental impacts of waste left at parties carried out by babalorixá together with biologists and sustainability experts, some guidelines were developed to create a collective commitment to make the party more sustainable.

One of the points is the replacement of gifts traditionally offered to the orixá, such as perfumes, soaps, combs, mirrors and dolls, with offerings such as flowers, aromatic herbs and food, which can be absorbed by nature, without polluting the sea.

Even traditional baskets and boats, containers in which gifts are placed and sent to sea, can be made from more sustainable materials, such as straw and natural fibers.

“This awareness is already beginning to be built among the people of terreiro, as it is the religious authorities who can promote this change, give new meaning to the rites and bring the tradition to a more current context”, says William. “Everyone is more sensitive to environmental issues, climate change and looking for alternatives.”

According to the babalorixá, these changes have already been incorporated into the terreiros of African-based religions for at least a decade. In Salvador, one of the voices that promoted this discussion was Maria Stella de Azevedo Santos, the ialorixá Mãe Stella de Oxóssi, who died in 2018.

A member of the Academy of Letters of Bahia and a columnist in the Bahian press, Mãe Stella was emphatic in the defense that Candomblé is a living religion and that it must be attentive to contemporary issues.

Now, with more people joining the festivities, as they take on a more cultural and touristic character, the idea is to ensure that tributes and offerings are not affected by a consumerist logic.

“Many people think that the more they offer, the more they receive, so there is also a concern about the enormous amount of offerings”, says the babalorixá.

Another recommendation from religious people is that people return gifts to contributions to axé houses that carry out social work on the outskirts of cities.

Last year, after the Iemanjá festival in Salvador, 81 tons of waste were collected from the sand strips and the Rio Vermelho circuit, 15% more than in 2020, the last event held before the pandemic.

Mutirão

In Rio de Janeiro, Arpoador beach, in the south zone, will host this Friday (2), for the second year, an Iemanjá party that promises to celebrate the Afro roots of Rio culture and, at the same time, draw attention to care for the environment.

There will be 14 artistic attractions —including caboclo sambas, afoxés and Candomblé ogans— and 120 religious leaders and sons of saints, members of the network of traditional communities in Madureira and also members of quilombos in the state of Rio, for a collective ritual that will end with a cleaning action.

“The idea of ​​the event is to bring the centuries-old Candomblé and Umbanda houses back to the scene in the south zone and invite the public to join in a joint effort to clean the sands, promenade and rocks of Arpoador”, says Marcos André Carvalho, artistic director and organizer of the event.

An Umbanda fan, Carvalho reports that he was guided by a spiritual guide to promote the party. Last year, when he debuted at Arpoador, an audience of a thousand people was expected. However, at the end of the afternoon, there were already more than 10 thousand people gathered on the stone, the promenade and the sands of Arpoador to pay homage to Iemanjá.

The fathers and mothers of saints who will participate in the festival recommend to devotees that all ritual offerings be biodegradable — preferably flowers and fruits.

“We ask the public not to take plastic, glass or wood. It is a salute to the Queen of the Sea, to her home and to the forces of nature”, says babalorixá Pai Dário, descendant of Casa Branca do Engenho Velho, one of the oldest houses of Candomblé from Brazil.

Sustainable terreiro

In Sepetiba, in the west zone of Rio, the celebration of Iemanjá has been taking place on the beach of the same name for 30 years. In the last three years, it has gained a more sustainable connotation through the work of babalorixá Rodrigo Carneiro.

Biologist and professor at the Rio state network, he created the Instituto Terreiro Sustentável to continue the work started during his master’s thesis research, which seeks more ecological alternatives for those present in Iemanjá.

Thus, Carneiro created a methodology for environmental education and production of offerings with biodegradable materials and began consulting for other African-based houses.

This year, it launched a campaign linked to SDG 14 (Sustainable Development Goal on protecting the seas) with the support of the UN Decade of Oceans, to promote the idea of ​​sustainable gifts in the celebrations of February 2, which received the support of religious people from the western region of Rio and Niterói.

“The houses are understanding the importance of worshiping Iemanjá beyond the offering, that we can be a stage for discussions about the climate crisis and care for the oceans”, he states.