The complex socio-ecological landscape in Latin America: Transdisciplinary knowledge production to address diversity

Abstract

We start this article by seeking analogies between the cultural landscape and socio-ecological system concepts. Whereas the former has played a pivotal role in geographical research since its introduction in the nineteenth century, the latter has only recently become popular in inter- and transdisciplinary science. The results of this theoretical and conceptual endeavour are used to build a distinctive analytical category: the ‘complex socio-ecological landscape’. We then apply this novel concept to the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011. In doing so, we demonstrate that this landscape in fact exhibits complex adaptive behaviour. We end the article with an analysis of the Cañamomo-Lomaprieta indigenous reservation in the north of the Coffee Cultural Landscape. Participatory mechanisms of transdisciplinary knowledge production have stimulated the emergence of an ancestral governance system in Cañamomo-Lomaprieta, which has reduced the vulnerability of its socio-ecological systems to the effects of small-scale gold mining activities. This case provides important insights into how to stimulate transdisciplinarity in other complex socio-ecological landscapes in Latin America that bear the brunt of extractive activities.