Neotropical Mountains Beyond Water Supply: Environmental Services as a Trifecta of Sustainable Mountain Development

Abstract:

The anthropogenic system of the northern Andean highlands, including Páramos and high woodlands of the tropical cloud forests, is as important as the tropical glaciers in providing environmental services of capture, sequestration, and delivery of water toward the lowlands. The Páramos have been misconstrued as natural ecosystems, but archaeology and ethnoecology show that they are filled with human structures, representing a coupled nature–society complex cultural landscape in the tropical cloud forests biome. Andean communities have long considered these areas as mythic, prompting ethnographic recognition of deep ecology and including the sacred to inform their construed environment. The spiritual dimension of water and the notion of sacred waters are central to understanding water capture and delivery in the highlands by Kichwa and Aymara indigenous people. This spiritual dimension of water is an important driver of change in tropical Andean landscapes and relevant for winning the trifecta of sustainability. Successful mountain conservation and sustainable management calls for the integration of the sacred and the secular, with the affirmation of indigenous visions of water and pragmatic action for watershed conservation.

Año de publicación:

2016

Keywords:

• Sacred sites
• Reciprocity
• cloud forest
• Andes
• Biocultural landscape
• Paramo

Fuente:

scopus