Abstract
Few studies analyze people’s preferences for ecosystem services (ES), disservices (ED) and drivers of change in less populated, tropical municipalities. Understanding such preferences and needs by the community and stakeholder groups before actually assessing, modelling, and measuring the supply of ES is key for decision-making and planning in municipalities, as well as for the conservation of nearby neotropical dry forests. We studied these dynamics in a small rural municipality in Colombia with limited data availability using semi-structured interviews and surveys, as well as ES-proxies and geospatial analyses. We then analyzed the supply and importance of two community identified ES and one ED from adjacent neotropical dry forests during 2005–2017. We found that respondents recognized air purification and food production as the most important ES. Increased temperatures and fires were the most important ED, while fires were also identified as an important driver of change. Air purification, via pollutant deposition to forest cover, remained approximately constant (116 ton/year), while food production (49 ton/ha) and fire occurrence, an ED, increased. Findings show how transdisciplinary research and participatory knowledge co-production among local communities, researchers and land management institutions can improve governance, decision making, policy uptake and planning efforts.
Highlights
Published: 15 July 2021Human settlements depend strongly on adjacent ecosystems as these provide the necessary functions and resources for human well-being [1]
To reduce redundancy and the number of ecosystem services (ES), ecosystem disservices (ED). Drivers of change, these were collapsed into 10 ES, 11 ED and 9 drivers of change that were later used as response items in the survey instrument
We found sex was significantly related to the respondents living in the municipality and who chose fire as one of the main drivers of change (p = 0.016), with females having the highest percentage of choice (53% females and 47% males)
Summary
Published: 15 July 2021Human settlements depend strongly on adjacent ecosystems as these provide the necessary functions and resources for human well-being [1]. The importance of ecosystems for society is regularly undervalued in some medium and low-income tropical countries, as documented by the unbalanced number of ecosystem services studies from temperate and high-income countries [2]. The role of ecosystem disservices (ED) and their effects on tropical socio-ecological systems and cities has been less studied compared to studies on ES [4]. Such science-based information for supporting urban planning and neotropical forest conservation instruments that take into consideration community-defined ecosystem services assessments are often lacking [2]. Explicit information on ES in Colombia exists, yet ineffective conservation goals, planning instruments, and degradation of ecosystems, such as Andean forests and the paramos (mountain grasslands), continue
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