About the Project

This project integrates a group of multi-disciplinary scholars from environmental and veterinary sciences, cultural and historical geography, anthropology, economics and design, working with an understanding of the social and ecological nature of the challenges of the páramo of Boyacá. At the heart of the project is our conviction that peace and reconciliation between the different users and inhabitants of páramo land in order to facilitate and legitimise decision-making is not an add-on to conservation efforts but an essential condition to the effective conservation of páramo land.

This component of the research will explore historical and cultural geographies of land use conflicts: namely how are these conflicts reflected on the landscape?

Peace and reconciliation between the different users and inhabitants of páramo land in order to facilitate and legitimise decision-making is not an add-on to conservation efforts, but a precondition to the effective conservation of páramo land. To this end, this component of the research will explore historical and cultural geographies of land use conflicts, and how these conflicts are reflected on the landscape. A range of participatory and visual qualitative research methods will be employed to map the conflicts, identify their impacts, create a narrative of them for the communities and feed into policy-making. Specifically, these will include:

  • Conflict mapping: Map the conflicts affecting páramo inhabitants, their actors and their impacts on livelihoods, farming practices, productivity, access to water, etc. This will be in collaboration with the ‘Land cover dynamics’, and the outcome of the conflict mapping will feed into the final ‘Reconciliation of the Paramo’ component of the project.
  • Identify the impacts of conflict: Map the social, cultural, economic and environmental impacts of the conflicts above identified, tracing them in the páramo landscapes of local farms.
  • Narratives of conflicts: Build and narrate a collective memory of the conflicts and their environmental impacts as imprinted on the landscape. This will produce a visual media that will remain as the community’s property.

Researchers: Dr Maria Paula Escobar-Tello, Dr Lauren Blake

The research will analysis of hydrological resources and ecosystem services. Please see the slideshow below for more information:

Researchers: Dr Mark Mulligan, Dr Jorge Rubiano

The research will investigate historic and present-day land cover change to understand the pressures on the Páramo Ecosystem. More specifically, we will study:

  • Historic land cover change analysis (Dr Chan)
  • Fire dynamics analysis and modelling (Dr Millington)
  • Human-environment interactions and projections of future change (Prof Eisler)

Researchers: Dr James Millington, Dr Kris Chan, Prof Mark Eisler

Páramo land cover change analysis example with LandTrendr

The research will map ecosystem service values related to agricultural production in páramo areas including more sustainable livestock farming and its place in people’s livelihoods.

Researchers: Prof Dominic Moran, Prof Mark Eisler

The final aim of the research is to facilitate stakeholder mutual understanding and conflict resolution using design methodologies; what would a reconciled landscape look like?

Researchers: Dr Carolina Escobar-Tello