Colombia

A case of social-ecological rupture

Governing biodiversity and ecosystem services in Colombia

Current environmental policy is not having any real impact in Colombia. While the concept of sustainable development and ecosystem services are often being thrown around, they are rarely being embedded into the social processes designed to manage the environment. In other words these concepts have not been operationalized in a proper manner, and this is by no means a problem specific to Colombia. However, in a move to tackle this, the Government of Colombia has been assessing its approach to biodiversity management over the last four years, seeking to reach higher impacts for its conservation and sustainable use.

Brigitte Baptiste, founder and general director of the Humboldt Institute in Colombia, held a Stockholm Seminar recently highlighting the long and difficult road to reaching a new policy that encompasses a social-ecological resilience approach to ecosystem service governance.

About Brigitte Baptiste
Baptiste is the founder and general director of the Humboldt Institute in Colombia. In her career she has focused on building bridges between ecological research and policy. A biologist by training, she is the co-founder of the Environmental and Rural Faculty at Universidad Javeriana, and has lectured for many years on landscape ecology and the history of ecology.

Published: 2012-11-23

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