Doctoral Dissertation Reseach in DRMS: From individual decisions to collective action for biodiversity conservation: Networked governance of private reserves in Colombia.

哥伦比亚是世界上生物多样性最丰富的国家之一，迫切需要更广泛的社会参与，以防止生态系统退化、不可替代的特有物种灭绝和自然资源惠益的公平分配。然而，在哥伦比亚农村，生物多样性、生态系统服务和当地生计相互交织，普遍存在的不平等和社会动荡持续了几十年，对可持续发展进程构成了挑战。尽管如此，在这些困难中，一些农村社区已经自我组织起来，将他们的生计与生物多样性保护结合起来。这些基层倡议的例子是民间社会保护区网络，它在当地被称为“社会公民保留地红土”，20年前作为哥伦比亚南部安第斯山脉的一项保护和发展倡议出现，现在拥有400多个保护区，其中大多数由小农拥有。这些保护区在保护生物多样性和生态系统服务方面发挥着重要作用，许多保护区被正式视为哥伦比亚国家保护区系统的一部分。这项研究探讨了促使农民和农村土地所有者通过这些基层倡议努力在保护和农村发展之间取得平衡的因素，并评估了这些保护区在保护和可持续生计方面的有效性。将生物多样性和生态系统服务视为迫切需要可持续管理的共同池塘资源，研究人员将重点放在资源使用者和治理系统上，这是已故诺贝尔奖获得者埃莉诺·奥斯特罗姆发展的社会生态系统理论框架的两个组成部分。本研究从社会经济因素、农民心理特征以及个人社会/职业网络三个方面进行了探讨。结合社会心理学中的价值信念规范理论和自我决定理论对个体层面的决策进行分析。社会网络分析被用来理解土地所有者的非正式和正式个人网络的结构属性如何影响社会学习和参与自然资源治理的决策。这项研究将从农村小土地所有者代表性不足的角度提供新的见解--这些信息可以直接有助于制定促进生物多样性保护和社区福祉的公共政策。改善农村生计对于促进经济稳定、粮食安全以及更好和多样化的合法就业来源至关重要；并最终推动实现社会稳定、国家安全和民主的目标。这项研究的结果将为促进或阻碍保护和可持续农村发展的因素提供新的见解。

Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, and broader societal participation is urgently needed to prevent ecosystem degradation, extinction of irreplaceable endemic species, and fair distribution of natural resource benefits. In rural Colombia, however, where biodiversity, ecosystem services, and local livelihoods intersect, pervasive inequity and social unrest has persisted for decades and challenged sustainable development progress. Nonetheless, in the midst of those difficulties, some rural communities have self-organized to integrate their livelihoods with biodiversity conservation. Examples of those grassroots initiatives are the Networks of Reserves of the Civil Society, known locally as "Redes de Reservas de la Sociedad Civil" which emerged 20 years ago as a conservation and development initiative in the Southern Colombian Andes and now boasts of more than 400 Reserves most of them owned by small farmers. These reserves play an important role in protecting biodiversity and ecosystem services, and many are officially considered part of Colombia's National System of Protected Areas. This research explores the factors that motivate farmers and rural landowners to strive for a balance between conservation and rural development through those grassroots initiatives, and to assess the effectiveness of these reserves in terms of conservation and sustainable livelihoods. Considering biodiversity and ecosystem services as common pool resources in urgent need of sustainable management, the researchers focus on resource users and the governance system, two components of the theoretical framework for socio-ecological systems developed by the late Nobel Laureate, Elinor Ostrom. This research explores both socio-economic factors, the farmers' psychological characteristics, and personal social/professional networks. Elements of social-psychology theories of Value-Belief-Norm and Self-determination are incorporated to analyze decision making at the individual level. Social networks analysis are used to understand how structural properties of land owners' informal and formal personal networks influence social learning and participation on decisions for natural resource governance. This study will provide new insights from the under-represented perspective of small rural landowners - information that can directly contribute to the design of public policies that advance both biodiversity conservation and community well-being. Improvement of rural livelihoods is vital to foster economic stability, food security, and better and diverse sources of legal employment; and ultimately, to advance the goals of social stability, national security and democracy. Results from this research will provide new insights on the factors that foster or hinder conservation and sustainable rural development.