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Institutional partnerships for ecosystem management (SES+IAD) and participatory capabilities among self-organizing associations of water users.
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Promotion of educational tools for optimal water use and biodiversity conservation.
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Technology to improve food security, sanitation, and adaptive capacity under climate change.
Local capacity building
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Publication of six research open access peer-reviewed papers and Ph.D dissertation, including attendance at international conferences.
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Workshops to share and promote scientific data and regulations from public agencies, problems and solutions across communities.
Research and knowledge
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Support and teaching about water as a Common Pool Resource within a social-ecological system (SES), with a focus on rights, interests, and priorities for local communities.
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Case-study selections for institutional design and policy demands that embrace traditional and modern knowledge and information.
Policy and societal engagement
The project is a research project that aims to enhance the sustainable development of rural and dispersed communities living in tropical dry areas of Colombia. Given the complexity of the the climate-water-biodiversity interactions and the urgency of response, we expect that cooperation is a real challenge to planning for and addressing sustainable solutions. The project will address the deficits in knowledge through participatory cartography, customary law diagnostic tools, and field-framed experiments on water extraction caps.
The project is highly relevant to several stakeholders: local community associations, including households and individuals; farmers and hunters, and micro-entrepreneurs (change of activities); landowners and private firms (changes in land use); local environmental authorities (research and knowledge about the governance of the commons across communities); universities (prioritization of research needs and demand for local knowledge); international development organizations, including Swedish agencies, (research to guide their interventions) and national, sub-national, and municipal governments (quality of policymaking and regulation).
Colombia´s water resources are important for the world as it provides 5% of the worlds surface water resources. Given the interaction between surface and groundwater resources, aquifers and their ecosystems must be managed and protected. In this line, the project´s objectives are to generate data and knowledge for decision making, strengthen local capacity building within and outside rural communities, and stimulate their policy and societal engagement through education.