Sustainable management for the Andes: insights from the 2024 Regional Dialogues

Summary

The Regional Dialogues on the Comprehensive Management of the Andean Mountains were held as three events during March, April and May 2024, organized by the Adaptation at Altitude- Andes program, the Conéctate A+ Network and the NDT (Neutrality in Land Degradation, Ecuador) project.

This article summarizes key messages and insights from the Regional Dialogues and is based on the recently published proceedings of the meetings, which can be downloaded from the right-hand column in Spanish. Please access the original text for more detail, research purposes, full references, or to quote text.

The Regional Dialogues, 2024 edition

In promoting a comprehensive view of sustainable management for the Andes, the Adaptation at Altitude-Andes program considers the interchange of experiences across the whole mountain range to be key. This year, the second edition of the Regional Dialogues for the Comprehensive Management of the Andean Mountains provided a virtual space for such exchange, designed with the first experience in 2021 in mind. A series of webinars in March, April and May this year presented the vision of a diversity of actors, institutions and disciplines, on the science, politics and practice of sustainable development.

Participants addressed, in each event, one of the three axes identified as key to the issue: Governance and Participation, Knowledge Management, and Management, Conservation and Restoration of Landscapes and Ecosystems. Each Dialogue included a general talk providing a regional perspective of the subject, followed by a series of case studies shared by practitioners from different places in the Andes. Participants then engaged in a discussion session, and an expert then offered a summary and final thoughts.

The fourth important outcome of the experience is the systematization of the shared experiences, discussions and recommendations for future action. These have now been collected in a publication, Regional Dialogues 2024: Governance, knowledge and conservation: three axes for the comprehensive management of Andean territories, in the October 2024 issue of the Propuestas Andinas (Andean Proposals) series, edited by CONDESAN. A short summary of each Dialogue is given below.

Articulate: Governance happens at many levels

The first dialogue, in March 7, was devoted to Governance and Participation. The Technical Secretariat of the Andean Mountain Initiative (AMI) was invited to the initial conference, as a regional platform of key importance for promoting dialogue and sustainable development initiatives in the Andean mountains. The AMI experience was complemented by a short talk by the representative of the Alpine Convention, providing the perspective of the oldest Mountain Convention in the world. As an example of processes at the national level, Chile’s recent experience in the development of water policies was presented. The important role of the communities of practice in mountain governance at the local level was addressed with two talks: the formation of the Pact on the Antioquia Forests in Colombia and the achievements of the Minga de la Montaña after one year of operation.

Participants agreed that the unifying concept in this dialogue was to articulate different visions and different scales, understanding governance as a process of complex interactions at many levels. The synthesis document identified a series of recommendations stemming from the discussions, in order to achieve a key goal.

Key goal: Decision makers design evidence-based policies and promote collaborative governance.

It is recommended to:

• Ensure that governance begins with an understanding of the local reality; scales up to the national level; and then flows back to the territory and its needs.
• Promote a three-party dialogue: Community-Science-Politics.
• Expand participation of the community by identifying common goals.
• Strengthen the Initiative-Implementation-Incidence chain of action.
• Improve the visibility of mountains on the global agenda with a strong participation on international fora.

Integrating knowledge: all disciplines, all actors, all ecosystems

The second dialogue, on April 4, focused on the integrated management of knowledge on climate change and the state of the region. Institutions and professionals in the Andes are recognizing the importance of a comprehensive agenda for monitoring the socio-ecosystems, encompassing all actors and disciplines, and with common protocols that allow for analysis at the regional level, encompassing all the Andes. The initial conference gave an overview of the current situation of monitoring in the Andes and advances in continental integration. The short talks included several local experiences: initiatives to incorporate the participation of Colombian community actors; the experience of the Earth Degradation Observatory in Ecuador in integrating actors and capacities; and the contributions of the study of primary succession in the Humboldt glacier in Venezuela. An example of fostering integrated monitoring, there was the proposal to create a continental network of observatories: ROSA.

The focus of the discussion was understanding socio-environmental systems as part of a network of connections, which require deploying all possible dimensions of integration, the key word of this dialogue.

Key goal: South-south collaboration and networking between researchers, implementers, decision makers and communities is increased

It is recommended to:

• Work on the development, and encourage the use, of a common language that allows all actors to be integrated.
• Strengthen integrated knowledge networks at the regional level.
• Promote a transdisciplinary and participatory approach, that integrates the social dimension and the specific problems of the communities in the territories.
• Guarantee the long-term sustainability of socio-environmental monitoring, by supporting scientific networks and collaborations.
• Ensure that local information, in the form of scientifica data and analysis, is used as the basis for the development of public policies.

Conservation, restoration, sustainable production: a matter of values

The final dialogue, on May 9, considered the issues of conservation and restoration in the context of land management in a changing scenario, as well as the challenge of sustainable production. In the Andes, respect for nature is part of the ancestral culture, and the native population has always understood the importance of preserving the ecosystems while exploiting their natural resources. Many initiatives are taking advantage of this vision, and some of them were presented in this dialogue.

The initial conference covered experiences of the sustainable management of high-altitude landscapes and ecosystems, focusing on land degradation as a complex process that touches on a wide variety of topics. The first two short talks highlighted experiences in productive systems: the community of Cotacachi, in Ecuador, which is revaluing the ancestral practice of the Andean chakra; and the Resilient Andes Project in Bolivia, which is an example of adapting agricultural production to new realities. Restoration was addressed in the recovery experience of a high-Andean peat bog in Peru, and the final talk exposed the global perspective of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on ‘conservation’ as a current and urgent topic.

The key word in ths Dialogue was to value: value conservation, local views, the historical traditions and ancestral knowledge, and in particular, value all voices and listen to what the actors in the territory can contribute.

Key Goal: Implementers design and execute projects that incorporate new knowledge and lessons from other experiences.

It is recommended to:

• Keep a hierarchy of priorities: first conservation, then sustainable production, and only if needed resort to restoration.
• Value the landscape level as a scale of articulating actions.
• Understand the history and dynamics of the territory, its past conflicts and problems and how they lead to the current reality.
• Incorporate all voices and respect local visions, including the ancestral knowledge of the land of native populations.
• Support the organization and articulation of processes, including all actors and encouraging synergies.
• Articulate producer-consumer chains, and promote the rural-urban dialogue on responsible management of the natural resources.

Suggested Citation:

Melfo, A. 2024. Regional Dialogues 2024 – Governance, knowledge and conservation: three axes for the comprehensive management of Andean territories. Synthesis and perspectives. Andean Proposals, year 12, number 20, October 2024. CONDESAN, Conéctate A+, COSUDE, Adaptation at High Altitudes, NDT Project, Quito, Ecuador.