The IPSI Secretariat is proud this month to share one of our recent case studies from Corporación Ambiental y Forestal del Pacífico (CORFOPAL) in Colombia. The case study is titled “The San Antonio Forest Key Biodiversity Area Governance Scheme: collective construction based on differences”, and was also included as a chapter in the Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review vol. 5.

According to the case study, The San Antonio Forest (SAF) is a key biodiversity area (KBA) located in Valle del Cauca in the Colombian Andes, and one of the regions most threatened by human intervention, with less than 30 percent of its natural ecosystems conserved. This productive and biodiverse landscape is a dynamic mosaic of ecosystems and land uses, including villages, crops, forests, pastures and private properties containing luxury country houses and small farms. Even though this area connects six protected areas, the laws that regulate the use and conservation of these areas are not respected. As a result, the agricultural and livestock frontiers have extended over the past few years, causing habitat loss, fragmentation and overpopulation, which in turn have increased the pollution of water sources and threatened biodiversity. However, these threats have not been properly quantified. CORFOPAL, with the support of other organizations working in the area, used the Toolkit for the Indicators of Resilience in SEPLS to obtain information about the SEPLS, the communities and local stakeholders, and then developed a governance model called the “SAF-KBA Governance Scheme”. This participatory scheme seeks to build a strategic and inclusive vision among the stakeholders, taking into account their different beliefs, attitudes, roles and responsibilities towards nature in order to facilitate inclusive and consensual decisions in the implementation of conservation strategies.

For the full case study, please see the IPSI website here.