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Bottom-up communitarian collaborative actions in the Napo Sumaco Aspiring UNESCO Global Geopark territory: implications for sustainable development

Abstract:

UNESCO Global Geoparks play a crucial role in promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through research, geoeducation, and geotourism. In the case of the Napo Sumaco Aspiring UNESCO Global Geopark, this is being implemented through the collaborative and organized work of the local community, combining bottom-up actions with top-down strategies. The aim is to demonstrate that the efforts of geopark collaborators can lead to the establishment of a geopark and contribute to the sustainability of communities. To board sustainability, it is proposed to evaluate the following actions: a comprehensive analysis based on human potential and the economic valuation of their time in geopark construction, organizational strategies, and management actions in line with the SDGs. The results of this study highlight the crucial role of community social capital in promoting actions for territorial and community sustainability, promoting beneficial and sustainable tourism, and protecting natural and cultural heritage. The various actions are closely linked to 82% of the SDGs, promoting knowledge exchange, community organization, sustainable use of natural resources, appreciation of human capital, and ancestral knowledge of the Ecuadorian Amazon. It is concluded that the economic valuation of the time contributed by collaborators is essential to propose new models of management and construction of global geoparks, which recognize and properly value bottom-up actions by implementing ancestral communitarian activities as Minka (community-based organizational processes) and Turkana (exchange-barter-reciprocity).