Victoria Reyes-García

• Professor
• Professor at Autonomous University of Barcelona

Cultural and ecological dimensions of agriculture are often considered as contrasting in agricultural research. This is well reflected on approaches to variety evaluation and selection that privilege a narrow set of agronomic indicators that do not account for the complexity of farmer-crop interactions. In this work, we explore the concept of ‘crop...

The review corresponds to the IPBES transformative change assessment. The IPBES Scoping document for the transformative change assessment describes that the assessment should inform decision-makers on options to implement transformative change in order to achieve the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity and the Sustainable Development Goals. The assessment...

Climate change impacts on biodiversity have been primarily studied through ecological research methods, largely ignoring other knowledge systems. Indigenous and local knowledge systems include rich observations of changes in biodiversity that can inform climate change adaptation planning and environmental stewardship. We reviewed literature documen...

Drawing on a global literature review describing and characterizing the use of landraces by Indigenous and Local Communities (IPLC) in the context of climate change, we found that economic factors seem more important than climate change in explaining the worldwide decline in landraces. We identified that structural agricultural policies lead to far...

Economic sectors that drive nature decline are heavily subsidized and produce large environmental externalities, for which calls are increasing to reform or eliminate subsidies and internalize the environmental costs of these sectors. We compile data on subsidies and externalities across six key sectors linked to biodiversity loss— agriculture, fos...

Pastoral traditional knowledge is increasingly recognized for its inherent adaptability in addressing contemporary challenges and increasing the resilience of pastoral communities. To deepen our understanding of how this knowledge system demonstrates adaptive characteristics, we employ a functional lens to examine its dynamic nature in this systema...

While community-based fisheries management (CBFM) is promoted as a promising approach to achieving sustainable fisheries management, its inclusiveness is increasingly questioned in the literature. Studies that explore the inclusion of gender along other intersectional social identities in CBFM are scarce. This research gap may limit a comprehensive...

Indigenous Peoples and local communities with nature-dependent livelihoods are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts, but their experience, knowledge and needs receive inadequate attention in climate research and policy. Here, we discuss three key findings of a collaborative research consortium arising from the Local Indicators of C...

Researchers agree that most people value happiness, but they debate whether happiness is universal or varies according to culture. A major setback in the research on cultural explanations of happiness is its bias toward industrial societies, urban areas of the developing word, and student populations. In this chapter, I explore explanations of happ...

Subjective well-being (SWB) is often described as being U-shaped over adulthood, declining to a midlife slump and then improving thereafter. Improved SWB in later adulthood has been considered a paradox given age-related declines in health and social losses. While SWB has mostly been studied in high-income countries, it remains largely unexplored i...

Assessing how different users of a Marine Protected Area perceive environmental changes can contribute to design management strategies. We assess how locals and tourists perceive environmental changes in the Cap de Creus protected area (NW Mediterranean, Spain). To identify locally perceived changes, we first conducted semi-structured interviews wi...

Although women contribute substantially to the small-scale fisheries sector globally, in many countries there is a severe lack of gender-disaggregated data on fishing activities. This gender data gap hampers a comprehensive understanding of small-scale fisheries dynamics with implications for fisheries management and food security. In this study, w...

Respuestas prácticas a barreras políticas. Factores que limitan la adaptación transformadora al cambio climático en Lonquimay, Chile RESUMEN Estudios recientes demuestran que los pueblos indígenas pueden contribuir a la adap-tación transformadora-entendida como la reducción de la vulnerabilidad a largo plazo mediante cambios profundos y sistémicos...

Climate change poses severe threats to coastal social-ecological systems (SES) worldwide. Recent calls recognize the importance of including Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in research on climate change impacts. Yet studies that have attempted to weave ILK and scientific knowledge have seldom considered the gendered nature of climate change im...

The cultural keystone species (CKS) concept (i.e. ‘species that shape in a major way the cultural identity of a people’ as defined by Garibaldi and Turner in 2004) has been proposed as part of a common framing for the multiple entangled relationships between species and the socioecological systems in which they exist. However, the blurred and proli...

Indigenous Peoples and local communities are heavily affected by climatic changes. Investigating local understandings of climate change impacts, and their patterned distribution, is essential to effectively support monitoring and adaptation strategies. In this study, we aimed to understand the consistency in climate change impact reports and factor...

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Abstract 1. In small-scale societies, people learn to identify plan...

In small‐scale societies, people learn to identify plant species during childhood. Plant recognition is an important baseline knowledge, immediately useful to avoid intoxication risk due to wrong identification. Plant recognition is the basis of other ethnobotanical knowledge essential for safeguarding biocultural diversity. However, despite many s...

In drylands, where resources are scarce, wild edible plant (WEP) knowledge is crucial to overcome food scarcity. Understanding the distribution pattern of local ecological knowledge (LEK) about WEP and identifying knowledge holders are key steps to assessing the resilience and vulnerability of knowledge systems. However, little is known about how W...

Knowing what happens over time to the lifeways of people in contemporary small-scale non-industrial societies of the rural Global South matters because it helps assess changes in the quality of life of underrepresented groups. It has been hard to answer the question because longitudinal information is rarely collected in such settings. A longitudin...

Global polls have shown that people in high-income countries generally report being more satisfied with their lives than people in low-income countries. The persistence of this correlation, and its similarity to correlations between income and life satisfaction within countries, could lead to the impression that high levels of life satisfaction can...

The effects of climate change depend on specific local circumstances, posing a challenge for worldwide research to comprehensively encompass the diverse impacts on various local social-ecological systems. Here we use a place-specific but cross-culturally comparable protocol to document climate change indicators and impacts as locally experienced an...

In south-eastern Senegal, Bassari farmers have historically cultivated and consumed a wide diversity of varieties of sorghum, fonio, and Bambara groundnut, most of which thrive in poor soils, are nutritious, and withstand drought. These crops are now on the verge of disappearance from the fields of the Bassari despite their potential fit in the pre...

Around the world, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are exposed to different climate change impacts to which they respond in a myriad of ways. Despite this diversity, there are few comparative studies assessing the magnitude of livelihood system change resulting from Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ responses to climate change impa...

Oral histories about supernatural gamekeepers (i.e., spiritual beings who own and protect wildlife) are widespread among Indigenous Peoples across the Amazon Basin. Many Indigenous communities have strict culturally prescribed practices and rituals to build relationships of reciprocity with these non-human entities that inhabit the natural world. I...

Indigenous and traditional practices based on ethnoecological knowledge are fundamental to biodiversity stewardship and sustainable use. Knowledge partnerships between Indigenous Peoples, traditional local communities, and ecologists can produce richer and fairer understandings of nature. We identify key topical areas where such collaborations can...

While women globally make up nearly half of the fisheries workforce, their contribution to the sector has long been overlooked with implications for fisheries management. To assess women’s participation in small-scale fisheries (SSF) management and related socio-cultural, environmental, and economic impacts, we conducted a systematic review of peer...

Tamarillo is an exotic fruit consumed regionally in Mexico, that contains a considerable amount of bioactive compounds, like antioxidants and fibre. Since its prebiotic potential was recently established, the aim of this work was to encapsulate two probiotic LAB strains with tamarillo extract and maltodextrin (15% and 20%) as encapsulant agents. Tw...

In answer to the question “Should ethnobiology and ethnomedicine more decisively foster hypothesis-driven forefront research able to turn findings into policy and abandon more classical folkloric studies? ”, in this essay I argue that a major strength of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine is their ability to bridge theories and methods from the natural...

CONTEXT Agroecosystems' social-ecological resilience largely depends on the crop diversity generated and maintained by farmers, which provides insurance against changing environmental and socio-economic conditions. In turn, crop diversity generation, maintenance, and distribution is influenced by seed circulation networks. Thus, patterns of seed c...

Human responses to impending extinctions are complex, highly dependent on cultural and socioeconomic context, and have typically been far less studied than the ecological and genetic aspects of extinction. Specifically, the way in which science and societies respond to population decline, extirpation, and species extinction can also have a profound...

1. The harvest of wild plants with medicinal uses is increasing globally, both for self-treatment and as a source of income. The increasing demand for these remedies could lead to the over-harvest of some species. Despite a recent surge in the number of studies analysing wild medicinal plants management, little is known about the effects of non-com...

Mainstream discourses frame anthropogenic climate change as a biophysical apolitical problem, thus privileging Western science and silencing other worldviews. Through a case study among the Bassari, an ethnic group in South-Eastern Senegal, we assess the local, embodied, and situated understandings of climate change and the tensions that arise when...

This study investigated the gender dimensions in the adoption of CSA technologies among smallholder farmers in Benin. A multistage sampling procedure was used in selecting 272 respondents for the study, comprising equal proportions of maleand female-headed households. Focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and structured interviews were...

The relevance of local ecological knowledge to conservation and development agendas is gaining momentum, and the Amazon biome features as one of the most promising areas for its empirical application. Considerable attention has been given to forest composition and Indigenous land use, while coastal and marine environments have only received cursory...

To what extent do extractive and industrial development pressures affect Indigenous Peoples' lifeways, lands, and rights globally? We analyze 3081 environmental conflicts over development projects to quantify Indigenous Peoples' exposure to 11 reported social-environmental impacts jeopardizing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigen...

Citizen science is growing and increasingly realizing its potential in terms of benefiting science and society. However, there are significant barriers to engaging participants in non-Western, non-educated, non-industrialised, non-rich and non-democratic contexts. By reflecting on the experiences of 15 citizen science project coordinators, this pap...

We review 34 quantitative studies that have measured individual-level variations in ethnobotanical knowledge, analyzing how those studies have conceptualized and operationalized ethnobotanical knowledge. We found that this type of research is recent but growing, and is concentrated in indigenous peoples of developing countries. We also found that s...

We argue that solutions-based research must avoid treating climate change as a merely technical problem, recognizing instead that it is symptomatic of the history of European and North American colonialism. It must therefore be addressed by decolonizing the research process and transforming relations between scientific expertise and the knowledge s...

List of Spanish wild plant species with the ethnobotanical references in which they have been reported as medicinal and their cultural importance index (CI). Accompanied as well by data about origin (wild or cultivated), abundance, occupancy area, endemicity, conservation status, protection status. We also provide the complete list of references an...

A knowledge gap in the cognitive processes regarding socioeconomic variables and younger people exists in relation to different elements of nature. This study aims to analyze young people's knowledge and perception about a dry forest, and to associate their knowledge with socioeconomic variables. The first stage of the research consisted of collect...

Social-ecological systems are complex and adaptive, for which their governance requires holistic understanding of the different components of the system and their relations, capacity to respond to change and uncertainty, and well-functioning institutional frameworks. Probably because Indigenous and local knowledge systems often entail these charact...

In drylands, where resources are scarce, wild edible plant (WEP) knowledge is crucial to overcome food scarcity. Understanding the distribution pattern of local ecological knowledge (LEK) about WEP and identifying knowledge holders are key steps to assessing the resilience and vulnerability of knowledge systems. However, little is known about how W...

Introduction In the quest to improve the understanding of climate change impacts on elements of the atmospheric, physical, and life systems, scientists are challenged by the scarcity and uneven distribution of grounded data. Through their long history of interaction with the environment, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have developed compl...

There are growing calls for conservation frameworks that, rather than breaking the relations between people and other parts of nature, capture place-based relationships that have supported social-ecological systems over the long term. Biocultural approaches propose actions based on biological conservation priorities and cultural values aligned with...

Unlabelled: While we know that climate change is having different impacts on various ecosystems and regions of the world, we know less how the perception of such impacts varies within a population. In this study, we examine patterns of individual variation in climate change impacts reports using data from a sample (n = 238) drawn from 33 mountaino...

Climate-related changes taking place in Amazonia substantially impact social-ecological systems, affecting local livelihoods strongly reliant on natural resources. Here, we investigate climate change impacts on different livelihood activities in western Amazonia, through the lens of local ecological knowledge. We conducted semi-structured interview...

Around 7% of the 350,000 vascular plant species are useful, mostly as medicine (25,791 species)1. Medicinal plants are used for self-treatment, and as source of income2. The growing demand has led to unmonitored commercial gathering, which could result in the over-harvest of some species3. Here, we explore the connection between the cultural import...

As an Indigenous community of Algeria and the broader Sahel, the Tuareg hold unique ecological knowledge, which might contribute to broader models of place-based climate change impacts. Between January and April 2019, we carried out semi-structured interviews (N=23) and focus group discussions (N=3) in five villages of the province of Illizi, Alger...

Human cultural diversity is reflected in many different ways of knowing, being, and doing, each with specific histories, positionalities, and connections to ecosystems, landscapes, and the world. Such diversity results in plural knowledge systems. This white paper describes the characteristics and complexity of knowledge systems in the context of c...

Over recent decades, Indigenous knowledge (IK) systems, people, and territories have increasingly been recognized in mainstream conservation practice. However, recognition of the value of Indigenous knowledge by governing bodies varies and is often a result of colonial and “development” history and the strength of hegemonic attitudes. Through regio...

The harvest of wild plants with medicinal uses is increasing globally, but we know little of the effects of non-commercial harvesting in their conservation status. Here, we explore the connection between the cultural importance of the 1,376 wild medicinal vascular plants traditionally used in Spain for self-treatment (22% of the autochthonous flora...

Time use studies quantify what people do, over particular time intervals. The results of these studies have illuminated diverse and important aspects of societies and economies, from populations around the world. Yet, these efforts have advanced in a fragmented manner, using non-standardized descriptions (lexicons) of time use that often require re...

Research activities generate considerable carbon emissions. Some universities and research centers have implemented voluntary measures to reduce academia's carbon footprint. To contribute to the debate on pathways to decarbonize the academic sector, this work calculates the carbon emissions of an international research project in relation to 1) res...

Dado que los impactos del cambio climático varían entre ecosistemas y sociedades, es difícil determinarlos con precisión. Basándonos en tres ejemplos de Sudamérica, exploramos algunas de las múltiples evidencias de que los diferentes sistemas de conocimiento y experiencias locales aportan al entendimiento del cambio climático y sus impactos. En el...

Direct human pressure on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) adds to climate change impacts on marine habitats, especially in coastal biodiversity hot spots. Understanding MPA user perception towards the Coastal marine Habitats (CMHs) could improve awareness of the challenges that such areas have to face, eventually providing insights for the design of c...

Transformative governance is key to addressing the global environmental crisis. We explore how transformative governance of complex biodiversity–climate–society interactions can be achieved, drawing on the first joint report between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and E...

Local ecological knowledge systems have been the basis of Sierra Nevada’sSierra Nevadasocial-ecological systemSocial-ecological system, which has co-evolved over more than ten centuries until nowadays, based on the knowledge, practices, and innovations deriving from the relationship between people and the ecosystems on which they depend. In Sierra...

Climate change is an indisputable reality, but it seems that we still consider that it does not concern us directly, as if it only affected the melting ice in the Arctic, the polar bears or the glaciers of the Himalayas. We intend to show, through interviews with elderly people who live in rural areas and who have worked in activities in close cont...

The use of wild edible plants and mushrooms can help to counteract the homogenisation of diets and decreasing resilience of food systems. We performed a systematic review to consolidate information about perceptions of wild edible plant and mushroom changes from the perspective of local communities. We found that 92% of all perceived changes of wil...

Understanding local knowledge about wild edible plants (WEP) is essential for assessing plant services, reducing the risks of knowledge extinction, recognizing the rights of local communities, and improving biodiversity conservation efforts. However, the knowledge of specific groups such as women or children tends to be under-represented in local e...

Ethnobiology is the study of the relationships that different societies establish with nature, through the anlysis of knowledge, uses and perceptions. Bolivia is a country with great biological and cultural diversity. In the last two decades, Bolivia has initiated a political process in view to defend indigenous identity and governance, which inclu...

Featured Application Tamarillo is a fruit that contains several bioactive molecules with probed antioxidant properties, due to the relatively higher polyphenols content, as well as simple (mono-, di-, and oligo-saccharides) and complex (poly-saccharides as pectin) structural sugar-based molecules. Abstract Tamarillo is an alternative for the consu...

To the Editor — Wyborn and Evans argue that global priority maps for conservation have questionable utility and may crowd out local and more contextual research. While we agree with the authors’ central argument that effective and equitable conservation must be rooted at local scales, the assertion that “conservation needs to break free from global...

Understanding local knowledge about wild edible plants (WEP) is essential for assessing plant services, reducing the risks of knowledge extinction, recognizing the rights of local communities, and improving biodiversity conservation efforts. However, the knowledge of specific groups such as women or children tends to be under-represented in local e...

The dependence of hunter-gatherers on local net primary production (NPP) to provide food played a major role in shaping long-term human population dynamics. Observations of contemporary hunter-gatherers have shown an overall correlation between population density and annual NPP but with a 1,000-fold variation in population density per unit NPP that...

The knowledge, values, and practices of Indigenous peoples and local communities offer ways to understand and better address social-environmental problems. The article reviews the state of the literature on this topic by focusing on six pathways by which Indigenous peoples and local communities engage with management of and relationships to nature....

Beyond the observation of climatic variations and their impact on livelihoods, farmers' knowledge about climate change can help to understand how rural populations respond to environmental changes and what factors should be considered when planning rural adaptation. This study documents Sereer farmers' observations of local environmental changes in...

The fast and widespread environmental changes that have intensified in the last decades are bringing disproportionate impacts to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. Changes that affect water resources are particularly relevant for subsistence-based peoples, many of whom already suffer from constraints regarding reliable access to safe water....

Current climate change is responsible for the greatest food scarcity ever known in the extreme south of Madagascar. Knowledge of wild edible plants has never been so crucial in this area to limit the food risk. Consequently, there is an urgent need to document this knowledge. However, the knowledge of specific groups such as women or children tends...

Indigenous Peoples and local communities have implemented myriad responses to deal with and mitigate climate change impacts. However, little effort has been invested in compiling, aggregating, and systematizing such responses to assess global patterns in local adaptation. Drawing on a systematic review of 119 peer-reviewed publications with 1851 re...