Estrategia para la valoración y pago por servicios ambientales culturales. Estudio de Caso: Área Arqueológica Protegida Serranía de La Lindosa, San José del Guaviare

Abstract

Due to their characteristics of biodiversity, landscape, cultural richness and ethnic importance, protected areas have always been a point of tourist interest. This fact raises the need for strategies that respond to the natural flow of people who visit protected areas, taking into account that, although Colombia has more than 160,000 square kilometers of continental natural protected areas, this figure must increase based on what has been agreed at the Paris Climate Summit (COP21) (García, et al., 2015).

For this reason, based on the country's recognition of incentives for conservation in areas with strategic ecosystems (Decreto Ley 870 - 2017), a methodology is proposed to determine incentives for cultural environmental services in the municipality of San José del Guaviare, specifically around the Protected Archaeological Area La Serranía de La Lindosa; emphasizing that the potential of the Amazon region is not in the exploitation of hydrocarbons, or in deforestation, but in the use of its biodiversity around ecotourism and its protection encouraged through payment for environmental services.

Due to its ecotourism potential, the Cerro Azul archaeological site was chosen to apply this study. Based on its characteristics, an assessment of the cultural environmental services that represent the potential to receive the incentives was determined. It was obtained based on the approach of an equation for the Valuation of Cultural Environmental Services (VSAc), which integrates criteria of Visual Quality of the Landscape, Sociocultural Factors and Environmental Factors.