Formación de capacidades entorno a la restauración de ecosistemas y servicios ambientales

Noviembre 2020-enero 2021 clavigero.iteso.mx 18 núm. Experiencias mexicanas en la restauración de ecosistemas Sociedades que restauran En México, alrededor de 48% del área cubierta por vegetación muestra cierto nivel de degradación y desertificación, lo que hace necesario un trabajo coordinado. 6 y 7 5 Foto: Marinés de la Peña HACIA LA RESTAURACIÓN DE NUESTRO MEDIO AMBIENTE La restauración ecológica realizada por organizaciones de la sociedad civil y pobladores de diferentes zonas es relevante pues la degradación de la naturaleza aumenta el riesgo de transmisión de enfermedades entre especies.

Latin America (including Mexico and Central and South America) hosts a substantial proportion of global biodiversity, but suffers from increasing rates of deforestation, land degradation, and dryland expansion. Low-cost modification of local management practices integrating ecological restoration could play a major role in abating ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss. A regional ecological restoration network would identify the major challenges, both practical and intellectual, and generate protocols for assisting land managers and stakeholders through shared databases and experience. Such a network would enhance the critical mass of practitioners working under similar, though diverse social, cultural, and ecological contexts. Una proporción sustancial de la biodiversidad mundial se encuentra en América Latina (la cual incluye a México, Centro y Sudamérica); sin embargo, esta región sufre de tasas crecientes de deforestación, degradación del suelo y expansión de las zonas áridas. Algunas prácticas locales de manejo, con modificaciones de bajo costo que integren la restauración ecológica, podrían jugar un papel muy importante en el abatimiento de la degradación de los ecosistemas y en la reducción de la biodiversidad. Una red de restauración ecológica regional identificaría los principales retos, tanto prácticos como intelectuales, y generaría los protocolos para auxiliar a los administradores y los dueños de terreno a través de experiencias y bases de datos compartidas. Esta red incrementaría la masa crítica de investigadores que trabajan en contextos sociales, históricos y ecológicos similares.

Global initiatives such as the Aichi Targets and Bonn Challenge have inspired governments to pledge to restore millions of hectares of degraded lands. Many of these calls to action and policy frameworks identify capacity development as important for implementing and scaling-up restoration activities to meet global targets. However, there is little explanation about what capacity development actually involves. How is capacity development approached in the context of restoration? What makes it more or less effective? This article aims to help fill that gap by identifying four components of what an effective approach to capacity development might look like, drawing upon a number of examples in practice. We believe that capacity development initiatives can more effectively support stakeholders to address the complex nature of forest landscape restoration (FLR) if they include the following four components: (a) activities tailored to stakeholder needs and context, (b) knowledge and applied experience from diverse sources and disciplines, (c) skill sets for selecting among a suite of restoration interventions, and (d) inclusion of multiple subjects and skill sets (e.g., social, financial, legal, etc.) in addition to technical or ecological themes. As exemplified by the organizations discussed in this article, these four elements of capacity development can help to support restoration professionals and other stakeholders to think holistically, moving from the scale of an individual farm or plot to the landscape scale where they must address more diverse stakeholder interests, societal trade-offs, and socioecological heterogeneity. This more holistic approach to FLR planning and implementation is needed to more effectively accomplish ambitious FLR targets worldwide.