Identification and Assessment of Livestock Best Management Practices (BMPs) Using the REDD+ Approach in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Abstract

Deforestation is a severe threat to diversity in the Ecuadorian Amazon Region (EAR). To mitigate deforestation, it is necessary to know the relevant stakeholders’ roles and interactions and deepen our knowledge of the local livelihoods, objectives, potentials, limitations, and “rights of being” among farms, as well as the best management practices (BMPs). In this study, our aim was to identify and assess livestock BMPs along an elevational gradient to foster sustainable production and reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). This approach could be environmentally and economically beneficial. Data were collected from 167 households along three elevational gradients, as well as from 15 interviews held among a multidisciplinary panel of key stakeholders and researchers in the EAR. The results showed that most of the Kichwa population lives in the medium zone, which features a larger agricultural and forest surface. Conversely, in the lower and upper areas, livestock predominates, where the upper area is specialized in milk production and the lower area in dual-purpose cattle (meat and dairy). The stakeholder assessment provided several key results: (a) social, structural, and technical factors have complementary effects on BMP adoption; (b) the sixteen assessed BMPs facilitated the implementation of existing financial incentive programs and enabled public–private partnerships to develop REDD+ projects. The policy implications of implementing these approaches are also discussed.

The socioeconomic determinants of timber use in the buffer zone of the Sumaco Napo Galeras National Park, Ecuadorian Amazon

“…Los ingresos por cultivos agrícolas en los hogares kichwa representan el 21% y para los hogares colonos/mestizos el 20%; seguido de los ingresos proveniente de la ganadería que en los hogares kichwa representa el 13% y en los colonos/mestizos el 18% (Tabla 2), concordando con otros estudios de la RAE (Gray et al 2008;Vasco et al 2015) que afirman que las poblaciones kichwa son más dependientes de actividades agropecuarias y muchas veces poco sostenible (Heredia et al 2020a(Heredia et al ,2020b, por lo cual es necesario promover buenas prácticas agropecuarias identificadas y evaluadas para esta zona (Torres et al 2021).…”

Global Evolution of Research on Silvopastoral Systems through Bibliometric Analysis: Insights from Ecuador

“…Bibliometric analysis (BA) is a robust tool that can be used to systematically assess changes in the concept of silvopasture. In addition, it can be used to identify research leaders and the most relevant collaboration channels and networks, and it can even be used to evaluate the quality of institutions and peer reviewers themselves [1][2][3][4][5][6]. This type of study has received wide coverage in recent years [7,8].…”

“…a-c Means with different letters show significant differences among groups within the same column (p < 0.001). 1 Standard deviation,2 Coefficient of variation, %.…”