Land use planning in the Amazon basin: challenges from resilience thinking

RUIZ AGUDELO, CESAR A.; MAZZEO, NESTOR; DÍAZ, ISMAEL; BARRAL, MARIA P.; PIÑEIRO, GERVASIO; GADINO, ISABEL; ROCHE, INGID; ACUÑA-POSADA, ROCIO JULIANA

ECOLOGY AND SOCIETY

RESILIENCE ALLIANCE

Año: 2020 vol. 25

1708-3087

Amazonia is under threat. Biodiversity and redundancy loss in the Amazon biome severely limits the long-term provisionof key ecosystem services in diverse spatial scales (local, regional, and global). Resilience thinking attempts to understand themechanisms that ensure a system?s capacity to recover in the face of external pressures, trauma, or disturbances, as well as changes inits internal dynamics. Resilience thinking also promotes relevant transformations of system configurations considered adverse ornonsustainable, and therefore proposes the simultaneous analysis of the adaptive capacity and the transformation of a system. In thiscontext, seven principles have been proposed, which are considered crucial for social-ecological systems to become resilient. Theseseven principles of resilience thinking are analyzed in terms of the land use planning and land management of the Amazonian biome.To comprehend its main conflicts, challenges, and opportunities, we reveal the key aspects of the historical process of Latin America?sland management and the Amazon basin?s past and current land use changes. Based on this review, the Amazon region shows twoconcrete challenges for resilience: (1) the natural system?s fragmentation, as a consequence of land use limiting key ecological processes,and (2) the cultural and institutional fragmentation of land use projects designed and partially implemented in the region. In addition,the region presents challenges related to institutional design, the expansion and strengthening of real participation spaces, and thepromotion of social learning. Finally, polycentric and adaptive governance is itself a major, urgent need for this region and its socialecological complexity.