SAFA and GeoGebra Allies to Evaluate Natural and Cultural Sustainability: Yasuni Biosphere Reserve

Abstract

The Yasuni Biosphere Reserve (YBR) occupies a unique biogeographic position in the world, where the richness of the four taxa (amphibians, birds, mammals and vascular plants) reaches maximum diversity. However, threats to species conservation are latent: the opening of roads, illegal logging, the advance of the agricultural frontier, oil extraction and the trade of wild meat in the western sector of the reserve. This paper aims to evaluate the sustainability of natural resources in multicultural communities: 1) Waorani Indigenous and 2) Migrant settlers, settled in the Diversity and Life Strip (DLS) in the YBR. Three households were defined per community, selected from the snowball sampling method. Thus, three methodological processes were applied: 1) Sustainability of natural resources using the SAFA program (version 2.4.1), it has four dimensions Good Governance (GG), Environmental Integrity (EI), Economic Resilience (ER) and Social Welfare (SW); 2) Direct observation; and 3) Lacing algorithm with the GeoGebra program used for the calculation of areas of simple polygons. The results showed that the dimension of least sustainability was ER in indigenous households and in-migrant settler households it was ER and SW. The largest sustainability area of 25,12 u2 in the migrant settler household1, while in Waorani indigenous the worst sustainability area had a value of 18,69 u2. The programs allow to promote a better understanding of the dynamics of the sustainability of natural resources. The issues identified as limited in the communities are a priority to improve sustainability.