CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In mountain socioecological systems, the interaction between nature and people is at the core of planning local long-term sustainable development strategies. Pastoralism is the main traditional socioeconomic livelihood in dryland mountains. It is strongly associated with long-established land-use practices that provide essential material and relational contributions, both of which shape human populations and nature. The aim of this work is to characterize the traditional pastoralist system of the Puna (NW Argentina) in a framework that highlights its diverse values and valuations within nature-people co-productions. We use the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) conceptual framework as a tool to analyze and understand these socioecological systems. We also identified three co-production types at different steps of the benefits flow from ecosystems to quality of life. Pastoral livelihood persists in the Argentine Puna, co-creating a landscape with natural and anthropic (water sources, grasslands, wildlife, livestock, techniques) elements interacting through complex mechanisms embraced by environmental conditions and cultural and economic practices. Some drivers that threaten the system sustainability are overexploitation and land-use change, which are visible as poaching or conversion of pasturelands into mining areas. We also identified some knowledge gaps that include: lack of information on some regulatory Nature?s Contributions to People (NCP), biodiversity status and trends, statistical information on indigenous peoples and local communities, the flow of relationships and co-productions related to the local expression of the quality of life, and the need for spatially explicit information and comprehensive knowledge of drivers and socioecological dynamics of the landscape.Keywords: pastoral livelihood; camelids; Puna Argentina; highlands; rangelands; socioecological systems

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