Percepción de la comunidad campesina sobre los servicios ecosistémicos del municipio de San Bernardo, Cundinamarca

Abstract

Currently there is a growing need to integrate social actors with the comprehensive assessment of ecosystem services (ES), which recognizes their perception and relationship with the socio-ecological system. Although numerous studies have been carried out based on this approach, it is a priority to advance its inclusion in territorial planning, towards the definition of management measures that guarantee the sustainable provision of ecosystem services. For this reason, the National Association of Peasant Users of Cundinamarca (ANUC, in Spanish: Asociacion Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos) has undertaken the task of compiling information on the perception of its members about the different benefits they receive from nature and their relationship with the socio-ecological system, which is essential to advance in territorial planning. The purpose of this work was to analyze the perception that the community of peasant users of the ANUC has on 13 ecosystem services of provision, regulation and cultural identified in the municipality of San Bernardo in the Department of Cundinamarca. 25 semi-structured surveys were conducted to local ANUC member actors, who were selected by non-probabilistic sampling, each service was assessed by the categories of importance, exchange value and vulnerability using a Likert scale. The data was studied from frequency tables and simple correspondence analysis (SCA) using the free Infostat software. The results show that the community prioritizes provision services over regulation and cultural services, and also conceives a threat to its long-term sustainability due to the current practices of expanding the agricultural frontier and the possible execution of fracking projects, for the oil exploitation in your municipality.