A first approximation to the Colombian Amazon basin remnant natural capital. Policy and development implications

The Amazon basin is one of the most extensive, biodiverse, and dynamic tropical forest ecosystems on the earth. The Colombian Amazon basin occupies an area of approx. 34 million hectares, located in the country's southeast. The literature about the economic valuation of ecosystem services (ES)...

Full description

Autores:
Ruiz Agudelo, Cesar Augusto
GUTIÉRREZ BONILLA, FRANCISCO DE PAULA
Cortes Gómez, Angela María
Suarez, Andrés
Tipo de recurso:
Article of investigation
Fecha de publicación:
2022
Institución:
Corporación Universidad de la Costa
Repositorio:
REDICUC - Repositorio CUC
Idioma:
eng
OAI Identifier:
oai:repositorio.cuc.edu.co:11323/9593
Acceso en línea:
https://hdl.handle.net/11323/9593
https://repositorio.cuc.edu.co/
Palabra clave:
Colombia
Amazon basin
Ecosystem services
Remnant natural capital
Economic values
Spatial models
Rights
openAccess
License
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacional (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Description
Summary:The Amazon basin is one of the most extensive, biodiverse, and dynamic tropical forest ecosystems on the earth. The Colombian Amazon basin occupies an area of approx. 34 million hectares, located in the country's southeast. The literature about the economic valuation of ecosystem services (ES) and the spatial information on remnant natural resources in the Colombian Amazon basin was revised through various information sources to document the earliest approximation to the state, spatial distribution, and economic value of the remnant natural capital at the scale of biomes, specific ecosystems, and political-administrative units. Our assessment estimated a natural capital loss of 18.1 billion $/year (equivalent to 6.7% of Colombian GDP in 2020) and a remnant natural capital worth 153.9 billion $/year (57% of Colombia's GDP in 2020) for eight ecosystem services. This research founds that a potential expansion in extensive and intensive livestock production systems (in a ten-year projection) will generate an additional loss of remnant natural capital of approximately 9.1 billion $/year. Finally, considering that 63% of the remnant natural capital is represented in indigenous reservations and 28% in protected areas, it is essential that the political management of the Amazon Basin concentrate on strengthening these land management figures. Improving the governability of indigenous lands and incentive sustainable agricultural and cattle ranching production, are the principal political challenges.