Towards BIOSmart livestock farming in Colombia: cultural landscapes, silvo-pastoral systems and biodiversity

哥伦比亚是世界上第二个生物多样性最丰富的国家，拥有大量低收入小农。随着对肉类和奶制品需求的增加，畜牧业继续扩大到不适合耕种的土地上，通过森林砍伐、生物多样性丧失和土地退化造成环境破坏。不同的国家举措旨在鼓励更密集和可持续的耕作，支持农民的生计，保护环境及其丰富的生物多样性。森林畜牧业是其中一项举措，因为它结合了林业和放牧。然而，由于文化和社会因素，结合可能的经济和农业影响，吸收仍然很低，森林砍伐继续。这个跨学科的项目汇集了文化地理学，行为经济学和生态学的专业知识，从英国和哥伦比亚调查的文化和社会经济原因低采用林牧畜牧业的做法，可以支持生计和保护生物多样性。通过对农民的访谈和焦点小组以及现有的社会经济数据集，我们将通过传播、农民对农民的参与和政府政策来制定和测试有效的机制，以促进有效吸收和实施最佳做法。此外，我们还将开展大规模的实地试验，量化森林-畜牧业实践和森林保护对生物多样性和生态系统服务的规模效益，为在景观尺度上促进森林保护和森林-畜牧业实施的最佳方法提供景观尺度政策相关指导，这些方法将有助于可持续地加强畜牧业生产，同时保护森林和其他自然区域，以支持经济发展。哥伦比亚的发展、生物多样性保护和社会福祉。

Colombia is the second most biodiverse country in the world with a large rural population of small-holder, low income farmers. As the demand for meat and dairy increases, livestock farming continues to expand onto land that is not appropriate for farming, causing environmental damage through forest clearance, loss of biodiversity and land degradation. Different national initiatives aim to encourage more intensive and sustainable farming that support farmers' livelihoods and protect the environment and its rich biodiversity. Silvo-pastoral farming is one of those initiatives as it combines forestry and grazing. However due to cultural and social factors, in combination with possible economic and agronomic influences, uptake remains low and deforestation continues.This interdisciplinary project brings together cultural geography, behavioural economics and ecological expertise from both the UK and Colombia to investigate the cultural and socio-economic reasons for low adoption of silvo-pastoral livestock farming practices that can support livelihood and protect biodiversity. Through farmer interviews and focus groups and existing socio-economic data sets we will develop and test effective mechanisms through dissemination, farmer to farmer engagement and government policy that promote effective uptake and implementation of best practice. Furthermore we will undertake a large scale field trial and quantify the scale dependent benefits of silvo-pastoral practices and forest protection on biodiversity and ecosystem services to provide landscape scale policy relevant guidance on the optimal approaches to promote forest protection and silvo-pastoral implementation at the landscape scale, beyond just the individual farm.These approaches will help sustainably intensify livestock production whilst protecting forests and other natural areas in order to support economic development, biodiversity protection and social wellbeing in Colombia.