Speaker: Dr. Bob Walker
Professor
Department of Geography
University of Florida
Co-speakers: Dr. Joel Correia, Dr. Cynthia Simmons, Miguel Acevedo, Michael Esbach
Thursday, February 16, 2023
3:00-3:50 PM (Period 8)
Turlington Hall 3018 and Zoom
University of Florida
Abstract: Amazonia’s Indigenous peoples are capable of conserving their natural environments in the face of significant development pressures. Nevertheless, little is known about the conservation efficacy of their social-environmental practices. The study to be presented is a new NSF project that addresses this issue through a partnership with several Indigenous nations in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Specifically, it will ascertain how they have been able to achieve cultural and biodiversity conservation, even with threats arising from resource extraction and large-scale infrastructure projects. The project study focuses on the Indigenous territory (IT), an integrated socio-environmental system capable of maintaining sustainable interactions between a human population and the natural environment. ITs can be resilient to external threats by virtue of biocultural heritage: the language, knowledge, and practices Indigenous peoples use to sustain the ecological integrity of their homeland environments. The study problem resides in our incomplete knowledge about how such resilience functions, and the goal is to fill this gap.
Biography: Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (DISES) supports research projects that advance basic scientific understanding of integrated socio-environmental systems and the complex interactions (dynamics, processes, and feedbacks) within and among the environmental (biological, physical and chemical) and human (“socio”) (economic, social, political, or behavioral) components of such a system.
All are welcome to attend.
For more information, email Dr. Sadie Ryan at sjryan@ufl.edu