Many South American countries like the Republic of Ecuador are enduring the paradox of the plenty, and driven by the increasing worldwide demand for resources, they are suffering the rapid loss and degradation of ecosystems... [ view full abstract ]
Many South American countries like the Republic of Ecuador are enduring the paradox of the plenty, and driven by the increasing worldwide demand for resources, they are suffering the rapid loss and degradation of ecosystems and the extinction of ancient communities and their biocultural heritage. From this crisis scenario arises the necessity for new resilient social-ecological systems based on different governance paradigms. Part of the Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena Biodiversity Hotspot, the coastal forests of Ecuador, have been reduced to only 2 percent of their original coverage and their conservation is highly threatened by legal and illegal logging, oil palm plantations and mining activities. After two centuries some Afro-Ecuadorian communities inhabiting these territories gained land rights over forests nowadays not included in legally protected areas and successful results in conservation have been obtained under their authority. The aims of our work were 1) to study the governance framework of two of these Afro-Ecuadorian ancient communities, 2) to identify the key components of their resistance and resilience against external environmental pressures, and 3) to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their social structure. To those ends, we applied a Social Network Analysis, by the means of a focus-group mapping approach. The participants were asked to list the actors involved in conservation, the relationships between them (technical information exchange, control, authorization, advice, money flow and conflicts) and assign a value for the perceived influence level of each actor. Our results show that, both communities share the same non-hierarchical commune organization, with shared land ownership, assembly based consensus decision-making and communal economy. The assembly, formed by all the local inhabitants, has a key role, acting as a node for the majority of the relationships identified in the network (for the ones occurring inside the community and also for those connections with the outside world). This structure enables an autonomous, local-level decision-making that politically empowers the people. The result is a more efficient, flexible, equitable, accountable, participatory and adaptive governance, that helps creating a strong interpersonal subjectivity, a commune identity with shared objectives, values and responsibilities. Additionally, through the participation on the assembly, every person learns about the conflicts and challenges the community is facing, gains a critical and well-grounded opinion and directly exercises his political rights, enhancing capacity building in the system. The outcome is a cohesive and stable social structure, with an underlying flexibility that results in a resilient socio-ecological organization with adaptive and autonomous management capacity over the territory. Summing up, these communities are exemplary socio-ecological models of forest conservation, planning their livelihood around sustainable activities. They represent a successful model of socio-political organization that could be replicated in other territories with similar characteristics.
Keywords: ancient communities, biocultural heritage, socio-ecological systems, participatory governance, social network
6b. Urban and rural development
