Juanita Aldana-Domínguez

1. Habitat loss and transformation are among the primary drivers of the current global biodiversity crisis (Pereira et al., 2010; Wilson et al., 2016). Although forests constitute the largest terre...

The Tubará municipality, a forested landscape historically occupied by Indigenous communities, is located at the frontier of imminent and significant regional landscape transformations driven by urbanization, infrastructure development, and cattle farming. These landscape processes have impacted nature’s capacity to deliver survival resources for local people and the adaptive capacity of human–nature systems to deal with land use and climate change. Eighteen semi-structured interviews explored perceptions of local landscape change in Tubará and its associated potential environmental justice problems. Three themes emerged after using the content analysis method: (1) cascading effects of forest cover loss; (2) degradation of traditional food systems; and (3) exclusion from participation and a lack of recognition underlie distributive injustices. Narrative accounts also unveiled various forms of community resistance to these land structural and functional changes. Our study makes a valuable contribution to socio-ecological systems research by advancing the inquiry of environmental justice matters and shedding light on the role of knowledge and power in determining the environmental and social outcomes of human–nature interactions.

Rapid urbanization trends and urban lifestyles challenge urban populations to recognize ecosystems’ contributions to their well-being, and urban planners to integrate nature at the core of urban development. This study assesses the relationships between ecosystems and people in the rapidly expanding Barranquilla Metropolitan Area (BMA) and extracts lessons for its planning as a BiodiverCity. Using 22 interviews and 400 face-to-face surveys we evaluated: 1) the perception of positive and negative contributions of specific types of ecosystems to human well-being (HWB); 2) the importance and vulnerability of multiple ecosystem services (ES) and disservices (EdS); and 3) the relationships between ES, EdS and relational values (RV), and the influence of socioeconomic factors in providing HWB, using a Structural Equation Model (SEM). Open-ended answers in the survey showed that rural and certain natural ecosystems, such as wetlands, mangroves and tropical dry forest were the least valued ecosystems and included some EdS. In contrast, urban and peri-urban ecosystems, namely the river, beaches, crops, urban green, and backyards, were the most valued. Overall, regulating ES were perceived as critical, as well as important and vulnerable. The results of the SEM model indicate that HWB is not only explained by socioeconomic factors such as income and education, but also by ES. We argue that the necessary sustainable socio-economic development of the BMA should be coupled with an urban planning that integrates ES and their contributions to HWB.

Urban growth is one of the major sustainability challenges due to its regional and planetary impacts. In the Colombian Caribbean, one of the most biodiverse places in the world, the Barranquilla Metropolitan Area (BMA) is the main urban agglomeration that has driven landscape transformation. We performed a historical analysis of human–nature relationships in the BMA using a social–ecological approach and the adaptive cycle metaphor to identify the main drivers of change and to point out emergent lessons for sustainability transition. Based on the analysis of existing literature, time series data and ecosystem distribution changes through time, we found that the natural capital has been degraded, human–social capital has had periods of crisis and recovery, while physical–financial capital has increased. The BMA is currently in a highly vulnerable situation and faces great challenges to be sustainable. We discuss the system´s possible future paths: a new collapse due to natural capital depletion, stagnation in a very vulnerable state, or a reorganization. We argue that viewing and managing the BMA as a social–ecological system would contribute to move forward in a sustainable direction.