Biodiversidad desde las perspectivas técnico-ecológicas y políticas

El curso presenta conceptos técnicos y políticos sobre la biodiversidad discutiendo la interacción entre ambos y en qué medida estos se complementan para dar lugar a las perspectivas políticas sobre la biodiversidad. El curso analiza desigualdades socio-ecológicas (eje C del programa trAndeS) y también desigualdades socio-políticas (eje B) y su relación con el desarrollo sostenible enfocándose en los Objetivos del Desarrollo Sostenible 2 (”hambre cero”) que incluye la agricultura sostenible, 14 (“vida submarina”), 15 (“vida de escosistemas terrestres”) y 16 (“paz, justicia e instituciones sólidas”) (Naciones Unidas 2018). El curso se centra en el aprendizaje de conceptos teóricos, por un lado y su repercusión en la práctica desde el análisis de lo técnico-ecológico, y su aplicación a la política existente en Latinoamérica y especialmente el Perú. El curso se divide en cinco partes: aportes teóricos, métodos y el análisis del material empírico en tres ejes: A) Ecosistemas y comunidades biológicas, B) Comunidades humanas, C) Genes

Land Use Changes and Their Perception in the Hinterland of Barranquilla, Colombian Caribbean

The coastal strip of the western peri-urban area of Barranquilla in the Atlántico Department (Colombia) is experiencing changes in human-environment interactions through infrastructure, residential, and tourism projects in a vulnerable landscape. In the hilly area, fragments of biodiverse tropical dry forest still exist in various states of conservation and degradation. To understand the interrelated social, economic, and ecological transformations in the area, we analyzed land use change on the local scale including the local community’s perception, because the local community is a key actor for sustainable land use. For the analysis of the interrelated social, economic, and ecological processes, we combined visual interpretation of high-resolution satellite imagery, on-site field land use mapping, and a spatial statistical analysis of the distribution of land use classes with in-depth interviews and a participatory GIS workshop, thus benefitting from the complementary methodological strengths of these approaches. The case study is the rural community of El Morro, which exhibits the typical social, economic, and ecological changes of the coastal strip of the western peri-urban area of Barranquilla. The local community perceives a continuous loss of forest area, but observations from on-site field mapping cannot confirm this linear trend. We observed a gradual replacement of traditional land uses such as smallholder agriculture, charcoal production, and cattle breeding by services for tourism, gated community projects for urban dwellers, and infrastructure projects; these spatial developments have several characteristics of rural gentrification. We conclude that the drivers of environmental degradation have changed and the degradation increased. The development projects of external companies have been rejected by the local community and have induced environmental consciousness among community members. Thus, the local community has become an advocate for sustainable land use in the study area

Las tensiones entre agricultura y sostenibilidad en la regulación política

La agricultura se puede entender como una forma de interrelación entre la sociedad, la tecnología y la naturaleza. Esta interrelación entre sociedad y naturaleza mediante la tecnología es regulada políticamente. Para analizar la regulación política de las tecnologías agrícolas nos enfocamos en la sostenibilidad –que nace como concepto en el siglo XVIII y que ganó gran relevancia en el debate político y académico a partir de los años 1980– como un plan de acción política que sirve como base de la política agraria y, al mismo tiempo, como un concepto analítico para investigar la política agraria y los conflictos locales que surgen alrededor de la misma. Analizamos la realización de la sostenibilidad en la política de dos tecnologías agrícolas claves en diferentes momentos del siglo XX y XXI: El cultivo de plantas y de semillas es la tecnología clave de la agricultura desde sus inicios. Con la Revolución Verde en los años 1940 y 1950 aparecen los agroquímicos como otra tecnología clave de la agricultura “moderna”

The Role of Territoriality and Coloniality

The concept of “enclosures” provides useful perspectives for thinking about social inequalities. In this paper, we overcome the conceptual limits posed by Polanyi’s focus on the particular history of England as the trigger of the global transformation of economy and society. We follow the recent critique made by Nancy Fraser that inner-societal conflicts resulting from enclosures need a more decided and explicit analysis. We argue that these can be best addressed from the perspective of coloniality and territoriality. As examples of this post-Polanyi approach, we present research results on contemporary enclosures represented by exclusive urbanism in Mexico, agricultural plantation expansion in Colombia and seed regulations in Argentina

Assessment of Land Cover Changes in the Hinterland of Barranquilla (Colombia) Using Landsat Imagery and Logistic Regression

Barranquilla is known as a dynamically growing city in the Colombian Caribbean. Urbanisation induces land use and land cover (LULC) changes in the city and its hinterland affecting the region’s climate and biodiversity. This paper aims to identify the trends of land use and land cover changes in the hinterland of Barranquilla corresponding to 13 municipalities in the north of the Department Atlántico. Landsat TM/ETM/OLI imagery from 1985 to 2017 was used to map and analyse the spatio-temporal development of land use and land cover changes. During the investigation period, the settlement areas grew by approximately 50% (from 103.3 to 153.6 km2), while areas with woody vegetation cover experienced dynamic changes and increased in size since 2001. Peri-urban and rural areas were characterized by highly dynamic changes, particularly regarding clearing and recovery of vegetated areas. Regression analyses were performed to identify the impact factors of detected vegetation cover changes. Computed logistic regression models included 20 independent variables, such as relief, climate, soil, proximity characteristics and socio-economic data. The results of this study may act as a basis to enable researchers and decision-makers to focus on the most important signals of systematic landscape transformations and on the conservation of ecosystems and the services they provide