Research Team Colombia - Environmental Justice Implications of Protected Areas: Evidence from Misiguay Forests, Colombia

Project description

BIO-JUST investigates NbS to promote biodiversity conservation and water security while being perceived as socially just.

The Research Team assesses area-based conservation's socioeconomic and environmental outcomes at the "Misiguay Forests" Natural Park. It develops policy recommendations to increase its equitable governance and ecological effectiveness of public protected areas. The Team works with local stakeholders and integrates multiple methods to identify how area-based conservation costs (e.g., land use restrictions) and benefits (e.g., water) are distributed across societal groups and how participation processes around it are organized. It will look at the extent to which different stakeholders, use rights, forms of knowledge, and worldviews were included in the protected area design, implementation, and evaluation and the institutional frameworks that guide these processes. It also co-designs indicators for socially just and ecologically effective NbS. Ultimately, the research supports the identification of enabling conditions for just long-term conservation outcomes and equitable governance of NbS. The research team will develop a standard report and a scientific publication but will also be using GIS-supported methods and visual ethnographies to increase the impact of our research.