Relaciones curriculares

Water is vital for supporting life on earth and drives freshwater ecosystems, and it urgently needs to be given conservation status equivalent to terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The future of freshwater biomes in the South of the Amazonian Trapezium ecosystem relies in part on maintenance of connectivity (between aquatic ecosystems, within the riparian zone and floodplain and with subterranean systems, and along the river system from its source to its mouth) to support conservation of freshwater biodiversity. Consequently, freshwater conservation initiatives must include an ecosystem vision where the conservation of ecological processes (important evolutionary phenomena and community assemblages) and singles species and habitats operate together. Conservation programmes in the area must also consider the division and management of the territory as a whole in all conservation and poverty reduction activities.

Worldwide the lack of an appropriate classification of wetlands and water bodies, incomplete inventories of their flora and fauna, and insufficient knowledge about their ecology and species diversity is contributing to their rapid degradation and disappearance. The indirect drivers of these changes are population growth and an escalating economic development enhanced by direct drivers like the need for food, space, clean water, recreation, and alternative sources of income. In the Colombian Amazon, the high dependency on the freshwater ecosystems and the way this has changed through time need to be considered by decision makers and conservationist during their planning processes. For this reason it is vital to integrate social initiatives into conservation programmes and to create new income and training opportunities to improve livelihoods. Inclusion of local communities in the formulation, implementation and monitoring stages of all conservation initiatives is crucial to success. It has been proven that sustainable use of resources works best when working together with the resource users.

The use of environmental education constitutes one of the more powerful weapons for any society and especially in a developing region where rapid changes are taking place. Education should have a better place within the national and local governments. It is urgent to formulate and implement educational policies especially for the local area. Transfer of experiences with native communities from other parts of the country might not be successful where the realities of those communities differ enormously from the ones in the south of the Colombian Trapezium. However, transfer of successful experiences with other communities within the Amazon region must be done. More training experiences for the youth, adults and elders are needed. More places in Amazonian and National universities and funding opportunities will give them the chance to improve their livelihoods and the life of their

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communities as well as giving them a greater representation in the national and regional government and enable them to be more influential in all decision making processes.

Local communities’ currently conduct their daily activities according to the ancestral knowledge they have inherited and Christian beliefs taught by missionaries centuries ago. Elders and adults try to maintain a little bit of both worlds, but the younger generation struggles to find a place where their indigenous life matches the western lifestyle. These situations are vital to understand the changes happening within these communities and that are driving the way they think and live. Assuming isolated, uneducated and pristine indigenous communities to formulate and implement conservation strategies is mistaken misconception. To protect the cultural heritage of the Amazonia and to ensure the survival of a culture new and updated characterisation and anthropological studies of the current society and ethnicities of the south of the Colombian Amazon should be conducted to understand their needs and aspirations for the 21st Century. The combination of ancestral knowledge and scientific information is a successful combination.

National and regional conservation strategies comprise the creation and implementation of management tools such as indigenous reserves, national parks, forest reserves and private protected areas that up to now have been managed to isolate some elements of the freshwater ecosystems from indiscriminant users. Possibly the story would have been different if these management tools had not been created in the first place. For local people the ownership of their territories reaffirms their culture and identity. However, multiple territorial divisions holding multiple and disorganized managers is something that stops these areas accomplishing their conservation aims. Problems arising from overlapped territories (Ticoya/NNP Amacayacu – Ticoya/Puerto Nariño Municipality) and unclear stakeholders’ jurisdictions are problematic. For this reason it is urgent to provide legal entitlement to those areas that are still waiting to be recognized as indigenous reserves and to enforce the current legislation regarding the conservation of the Amazonian Forest Reserve to ensure no further land is lost to human and economic development. To help to close the conflict in the National environmental policy, all territorial planning needs to be done based on ecological criteria.

The Indigenous Territorial arrangement should be seen as a way to ensure the sovereignty and integrity of the Amazon region. Indigenous governments must be empowered to have complete control of their territories and resources (including the subsoil). The stronger the indigenous communities, the greater the opportunities to protect the environmental and cultural capital of the country.

To overcome problems related to stakeholders’ performance and efficiency, further strategies need to be formulated to facilitate stronger communication and exchange of experiences, ideas and information among stakeholders. Maintaining strong networks of stakeholders (local communities, civil society, researchers, academics, volunteers, governmental personnel

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and policy enforcers) is vital to protect (or prepare) the area from predictable and probably irreversible environmental and social changes.

Regional conservation initiatives like ACTO, the CBD, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, CITES and IUCN have the power and motivation to encourage governments and institutions work together towards the conservation of the Amazonian ecosystems and their cultural heritage. National and local environmental, social, economic and development plans need to take this into consideration and drive their activities towards achieving goals established by international protocols.

Amazonian and Colombian initiatives, regulations and policies must aim to achieve a balance among the agricultural production, the extension of the urban centres and the quality of the water, the exploitation of fish and freshwater biodiversity, and the development of tourism strategies as well as the maintenance of the cultural identity of the local peoples. To ensure this, national (economic, social, educational, health and cultural) policies must be formulated using environmental criteria and based on the importance of Colombia as a mega-diverse country to the world.

Finally, as a continuous system, the River Amazon and its freshwater habitats in the South of the Trapezium are more vulnerable to changes taking place upstream in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia and downstream in Brazil. So far there are few common policies and regulations applicable to the Trapezium Area (Colombia/Brazil/Peru) regarding fisheries management, endangered species conservation, water quality and infrastructure development. The future of the area is therefore dependent on collaboration among the three governments and formulation and application of policies and management plans to control the impacts generated by infrastructure development initiatives (navigation channels and dams) and to regulate daily activities like fisheries, logging and navigation.

7.2. Elements of the local freshwater biodiversity (species, habitats and ecosystem