Last December our project partner Fundación TIERRA ran a workshop with local leaders from the Chiquitania region in preparation of our collaborative research on the field. The meeting intended to present the initial ideas of the research project, to identify the most prominent social-ecological characteristics and problems and…
Many local farmers worldwide gained their knowledge through practices in daily interaction with ecosystems and biodiversity. This knowledge can provide key ideas for transforming agriculture towards a more sustainable and resilient system (Šūmane et al. 2018). Today, I want to share an example of such knowledge that has…
English version below!In unserem Forschungsprojekt beschäftigen wir uns mit biokultureller Diversität in Agrarlandschaften des globalen Südens. Biokulturell bedeutet, die Vielfalt des Lebens in all seinen Erscheinungsformen, inklusive aller ökologischen, kulturellen und sprachlichen Ausprägungen, zu betrachten. Das Konzept wird in der Regel mit der traditionellen Art und Weise in…
Consensus decision making enables all members of a group to reach an agreement. Instead of having an authority rule or a majority vote, which often neglects individuals or minorities, a consensus decision ensures that everyone can actively support it, or at least live with it. If everyone agrees…
Camila BENAVIDES1 & Stefan ORTIZ2 1Agroecologist, Research Associate and PhD Candidate, Social-Ecological Sciences Institute, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg-Germany 2Ecological Economist, Research Associate and PhD Candidate, Social-Ecological Sciences Institute, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg-Germany The alarming fires in the lowland forests of Bolivia are often linked to the lack of control of…
By JAN HANSPACH The global pandemic is influencing research in many different ways. Especially, projects that entail empirical field work suffer from a range of constraints and uncertainties. This is not different for our project – we had been looking forward to our first field season this year…
The common opossum (Didelphis marsupialis) thrives well near human settlements and therefore understanding its ecology could help taking management decisions in anthropogenic landscapes. Although this specie is very common near human communities in Bolivia, no density estimations have been made up to now. Using direct observation data collected…
by Stefan Ortiz Przychodzka Farming landscapes in the Global South are increasingly suffering the pressures of multiple global crises involving social, economic, environmental and political factors. Narratives on how to resolve this situation and to guide the design of public policies often juxtapose two idealized development models: agroindustrial…
Sustainability science is a discipline actively seeking solutions to current sustainability challenges. Core components include the adoption of a social-ecological systems perspective, the implementation of inter‐ and transdisciplinarity, and the commitment to solution-oriented work. For sustainability science to foster equality and amplify marginalized voices, the plurality of human–nature interactions and worldviews needs to be accounted for. To that end, a concept called biocultural approaches is increasingly perceived as a valuable tool. In their recent paper, Hanspach et al. (2020) present a systematic review of the application of biocultural approaches to sustainability in scientific journal articles published over the last 30 years.
We made a short video explaining the concept of biocultural diversity and introducing our research project. Have fun watching!