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Mountains are home to a considerable share of the human population. Around a billion people live in mountainous areas, which harbor rich natural and sociocultural diversity. Today, many people living in mountainous areas worldwide face fundamental changes to their cultural and economic living conditions. At the same time, mountain communities have defied harsh environments in the past by adapting to changing natural conditions and showing remarkable levels of resilience. In this review paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of English language scientific literature on resilience-related topics in mountain areas based on a systematic review of the Scopust literature database. We propose a structured starting point for science–practice interactions and concrete action-based activities to support livelihoods and strengthen resilience in mountain areas. We suggest that existing knowledge gaps can be addressed by relying on local knowledge and co-creating solutions with communities. In this way, we can build innovative capacity and actively buffer against the impact of crises while supporting deliberate transformation toward sustainability and regeneration to further enhance resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Andean region presents specific challenges related to its globally important natural heritage, the broad range of pressures on landscapes and ecosystems that accentuate the effects of climate change (CC), and a great diversity of institutional arrangements and policy tools to increase the adaptive capacity of socioecological systems and related disaster risk reduction strategies. In this context, regional readings are needed to generate a multiscale and multisectoral analysis of the responses of Andean countries in public policy and at the grass roots. This paper examines institutional challenges and local perceptions regarding the implementation of CC adaptation policies in the Andean countries. We analyze the regulatory, institutional, and policy framework related to CC policies in Andean countries over the last 5 years. Further, we analyze synergies and opportunities, as well as possible tensions and resistance, that the implementation of CC adaptation policies may generate among diverse actors (civil society organizations, peasant/indigenous communities, and local/regional authorities, among others). For this, we analyze 7 case studies at the subnational level across the Andes. These were chosen to reflect the diversity of local governance contexts across the region and the progress and challenges faced in implementing CC adaptation policies on the ground. This analysis reveals how the implementation of CC adaptation policies in diverse territorial contexts often lacks articulation and coherence with the governance tools and platforms typically used by local actors. In response to this overall limitation, various representative strategies derived from the case studies are highlighted, illustrating different modes of multiactor and multiscale cooperation. Finally, based on our sociopolitical analysis, we propose some key recommendations for the different stakeholders, which could inform the development of an agenda for multiscale and multiactor CC adaptation governance in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the Andes, a critical challenge for mountain socioecological systems is securing water for future generations. Pastoral communities are especially vulnerable because their livelihood practices are often unseen or perceived as a threat to natural resource conservation. In addition to the challenges of climate change, socioeconomic and political processes complicate the drivers of pasture degradation and sustainable water management. Often overlooked systems in assessments of Andean water towers are bofedales (high-altitude peat wetlands), which are critical to supporting mountain pastoral livelihoods. While "natural" azonal mountain peatland and humid meadow development occurs across the Andes, we posit that bofedales are sociohydrological systems created through pastoral management practices over generations. Drawing on the results of applied research on bofedales across the Andes and a literature review of published papers, we present a conceptual reframing of bofedal typologies and change analysis, which prioritizes the role of pastoralists in interdisciplinary research and comparative assessments of land-use and land-cover change in Andean highland regions. We identified key socioecological challenges to sustainable bofedal management, related to herder decision-making and articulated within broader socioeconomic processes. Reframing bofedales as sociohydrological constructs permits the identification of actionable knowledge and the support of water conservation practices applied by pastoralists across Andean water tower regions. If Andean pastoralists are recognized as stewards of sociohydrological systems that are critical to water towers, rather than perceived as threats to natural resources, bofedal conservation planning may be prioritized and locally supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Montology, the transdisciplinary science of mountains, applied to education incorporates several pedagogical approaches that could be used to energize the transformative change from sustainable to regenerative development from different perspectives. We include pedagogies with learning outcomes that apply 9 different educational methodologies, and we revisit them in the context of montology to focus on integrative, holistic mountainscapes as subjects of scholastic and nonscholastic educational initiatives. We discuss how these pedagogies must engage different stakeholders, including students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. We conclude that the future of mountain education relies on incorporating the new narrative of regenerative development, not only sustainable development, for the convergent science of mountain teaching and learning to be effective. This paper encourages educators to change paradigms to address the future agenda for education about mountains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International sustainable development and conservation agendas can help regional decision makers to frame their own agendas. Agendas can guide programs and initiatives that drive funding and capacity development for research, and the research, in turn, provides knowledge, evidence, capacity building, and impetus for action. Deficits in research capacity, knowledge, and funding confound efforts on the impact pathway from agenda to outcome. Small-grants programs can play an important role in filling these gaps. In this paper, we evaluate a suite of impacts of a small-grants program linked to a regional research agenda for the Andean forest landscape. Using the concept of additionality, and analyzing the database of applications for the solicitation process and responses to a questionnaire by awardees, we evaluated the effects of the funding on research input, outputs and outcomes, and transformative application to sustainable development. We found that the solicitation process, which yielded 180 applications, fell short of its goal of attracting applicants well distributed among the Andean countries, applications from women, and applications for interdisciplinary transformative research projects. Nevertheless, the 15 projects that were funded did ultimately cross disciplinary lines, result in diverse outputs and outcomes, and help to advance work toward achieving sustainable development and biodiversity conservation in the Andean forest landscape. We recommend that small-grants programs that focus narrowly on a topic or region be supported and that they strive to elevate regional researchers and women in the community of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agroforestry is seen as a promising set of land use practices that can lead to increased ecological integrity and sustainable benefits in mountain areas. Agroforestry practices can also enhance smallholder farmers' resilience in the face of social and ecological change. There is a need for critical examination of existing practices to ensure that agroforestry recommendations for smallholder farmers are socially inclusive and grounded in local experience, knowledge, and perceptions. In this paper, we present a transdisciplinary systems approach to the identification and analysis of suitable agroforestry options, which takes into account gendered perceptions of the benefits and values of natural resources. The 4-step approach consists of an appraisal of local perceptions of the social-ecological context and dynamics, an inventory of existing agroforestry practices and species, a gendered valuation of agroforestry practices and species, and the development of locally adapted and gender-sensitive agroforestry options. In a study using this approach in the Peruvian Andes, data were collected through a combination of participatory tools for gender research and ethnobotanical methods. This paper shares lessons learned and offers recommendations for researchers and practitioners in the field of sustainable mountain development. We discuss methodological considerations in the identification of locally adapted agroforestry options, the understanding of local social-ecological systems, the facilitation of social learning processes, engagement in gender research, and the establishment of ethical research collaborations. The methodology presented here is especially recommended for the exploratory phase of any natural resource management initiative in mountain areas with high environmental and sociocultural variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, attention in regional, national, and international water governance arenas has focused on high-altitude wetlands. However, existing local water management practices in these wetlands are often overlooked. This article looks at the irrigation activities of alpaca herders in the community of Ccarhuancho in the Central Andes of Peru. For more than two centuries, they have been constructing smallscale irrigation canals to maintain and expand the local wetlands, called bofedales. The seminomadic character of alpaca herders complicates irrigated wetland activities, such as operation and maintenance. Climate change and human and animal population pressure have increased not only the importance of these irrigation systems but also of local conflicts and communal decision making. Local irrigation activities in Ccarhuancho go unnoticed in broader water governance arenas because of its remoteness, limits to what popular new analytical tools can measure, a general undervaluation of wetlands, and a tendency of the canals to merge over time with the surrounding bofedales, making them less visible. Nevertheless, these man-made systems account for 40% of the wetlands in the study area and risk being seriously degraded or destroyed without local water management. With climatic changes affecting existing natural wetlands, the local herders were the first to recognize and respond to these changes and to defend the wetlands against degradation. Their efforts are, however, largely overlooked, even though such local water governance practices are crucial for the success of regional and national water governance in the Andes and other mountain areas. (Note: The title of this paper is an adaptation of Netting's [1974] paper ''The system nobody knows'' about small-scale irrigation in the Swiss Alps.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-term survival of Andean forest landscapes (AFL) and of their capacity to contribute to sustainable development in a context of global change requires integrated adaptation and mitigation responses informed by a thorough understanding of the dynamic and complex interactions between their ecological and social components. This article proposes a research agenda that can help guide AFL research efforts for the next 15 years. The agenda was developed between July 2015 and June 2016 through a series of workshops in Ecuador, Peru, and Switzerland and involved 48 researchers and development experts working on AFL from different disciplinary perspectives. Based on our review of current research and identification of pressing challenges for the conservation and sustainable governance of AFL, we propose a conceptual framework that draws on sustainability sciences and social-ecological systems research, and we identify a set of high-priority research goals and objectives organized into 3 broad categories: systems knowledge, target knowledge, and transformation knowledge. This paper is intended to be a reference for a broad array of actors engaged in policy, research, and implementation in the Andean region. We hope it will trigger collaborative research initiatives for the continued conservation and sustainable governance of AFL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human mobility and connectivity between cities are key features of globalization that foster urban expansion, landscape transformations, and changes in species distributions. Andean ecosystems which function as biodiversity reservoirs, are vulnerable to environmental changes and to the introduction of exotic species. Through this study, we assess the association of migratory flows and other socioenvironmental characteristics with the prevalence of exotic woody species in the Andean region. We collected data on urban and demographic dynamics, migration proxies, and topographic and climate indicators for every first-order administrative unit of the Andean region. We used global biodiversity databases to obtain occurrence records of woody plants and estimated the proportion of exotic species records in each administrative unit. We performed multiple regression models that assessed the association of this prevalence with socioenvironmental information, and we compared them using the Akaike information criterion. We obtained 2,461,168 records of native species and 891,579 records of exotic species. Topography, climate, and immigration were included i the 10 best models, suggesting that the social connectivity of administrative units (through immigration) is a driver of changes in species composition of local communities. We consider that the prevalence of exotic species in woody plant composition is highly influenced by cultural drivers through the introduction of exotic species and through their use in urban and periurban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Alps and the Andes are both considered water towers in their respective continents and are thus significant not only for their own water needs but also for those of lowland regions farther downstream. As climate change impacts on the hydrology of mountain regions are increasingly observed, attention is turning to the adaptive capacity of the water governance regimes in mountain communities. This paper explores the adaptive capacity of two contrasting water governance regimes in the Swiss Alps and the Chilean Andes. It assesses adaptive capacity by analyzing a set of governance-related adaptive capacity indicators in the context of recent extreme events, which serve as proxies for future climate change. Across these highly contrasted governance contexts, analysis reveals both similar and distinct institutional challenges for developing and mobilizing adaptive capacity in relation to climatic uncertainty and change. It also identifies emergent tensions related to temporal and spatial scales. Conclusions point to the need to focus on challenges relating to trust, integration of hydroclimatic information, and flexibility and iterativity of rules and plans across governance scales to better manage the exacerbating impacts of both climate variability and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The health of soil, a fundamental resource for life on Earth, is severely compromised by global environmental change. Evidence shows that the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and local communities influences sustainable land management, hence the importance of understanding Indigenous soil classification. Using a participatory approach, we conducted semistructured interviews, focus groups, and collective mapping of soils in 4 Aymara communities of the Bolivian Altiplano. We found that families in the 4 communities organize their territory in homogenous zones, based upon characteristics perceivable by sight, touch, smell, and taste. The description and meaning of the zones refer to characteristics such as location, soil color, preferred land use, and topography. We argue that homogenous zones are kaleidoscopic and polysemic units of spatial organization of the Aymara territory. Each meaning conveyed is like a face of a kaleidoscope and refers to different features of the zone. They are polysemic because the descriptions of the zones refer to multiple elements of different kinds (eg color and fertility). Indigenous and local knowledge of soils has coevolved with thousands of years of Altiplano farming, leading to prescriptive and flexible homogenous zones of sustainable land management. These knowledge systems and the cultures they belong to constitute crucial elements for generating knowledge supporting transitions to sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northern Peru is the center of the so-called Andean ''health axis,'' where the continuous use of more than 500 medicinal plants has been documented. Local healers as well as patients purchase a large portion of their plants at local markets. While scientific studies of medicinal plants are under way, concern has arisen over the preservation of both the large diversity of medicinal plants and the traditional knowledge of healing methods that accompanies them. To promote further conservation work, this study attempted to document the sources of the most popular and rarest medicinal plants sold at the markets of Trujillo (Mayorista and Hermelinda) and Chiclayo (Modelo and Moshoqueque), as well as to create an inventory of the plants sold in these markets. The present paper reports on the complete market flow from collection to middlemen to vendor from the perspective of an herb collector/vendor. Although prior studies have indicated that at least some plants, mostly introduced species, are grown in home gardens on the coast, this study shows that increasing plant demand in the large coastal markets has not led to significant cultivation of medicinal plants in home gardens. The vast bulk of the plant material sold in the markets of northern Peru consists of plants collected in the wild. Both collection of plants and their transport to the coastal markets require long-distance travel. Low profit margins indicate that the herb trade is very fragile, since collectors might decide to engage in activities that offer higher income or higher turnover. This, coupled with the fact that most plant material is wild-crafted, could easily lead to overharvesting of rare medicinal species in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Páramo is a biodiverse, high-elevation humid grassland ecosystem mainly found in the northern Andes. Since Spanish colonization, páramo lands in Ecuador have been used locally for grazing cattle that roam freely, known as ganado bravo. At present, much of the ecosystem in Ecuador's northern Andes is managed collectively by indigenous communities that gained property rights to expropriated hacienda lands during historic agrarian reform measures. Scholars and conservation practitioners now recognize páramo lands as important for regional hydrological systems that are vital to sustaining the water needs of montane communities and urban areas. As such, several initiatives focusing on páramo conservation have begun offering incentives to local communities to remove ganado bravo. In a case study situated on the slopes of the Cayambe volcano in Ecuador, I examine the local contextual factors, aside from conservation agreements, that have affected the community dynamics of maintaining cattle in the páramo. Many communities have reduced the number of cattle in the páramo but are reluctant to pursue their complete removal. This article highlights the importance of recognizing how local cultural practices intersect with conservation initiatives and outlines the implications of removing ganado bravo for the sustainable management of páramo grasslands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reflect on the potential of the Cultural Route heritage category as an instrument for cultural revitalization and community strengthening in highland regions, we analyze an interaction of actors involved in the co-construction of a hiking circuit in northern Chile that succeeded in its heritage-based design but not in its touristic implementation. Based on an in-depth analysis of the socioterritorial context and on participatory action research carried out to design the circuit, we discuss the reasons for the project's failure during the phase of community-based tourism model definition. This leads to broader conclusions on the intersections of current policies on heritage, multiculturalism, and environment, relating to the 2014 inscription of the Qhapaq ñan Andean road system on the World Heritage List. Finally, we highlight 3 lessons: (1) the need to clarify the risk of confusion between cultural revitalization and cultural tourism; (2) the Cultural Route category as a complex and heterogeneous heritage construct that is difficult to apply from global to local scales, and (3) the need to further develop Latin American regulations on heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovative approaches could enhance scientific insights into how climate change affects mountain ecosystems and livelihoods and enrich climate action. Using an inter- and transdisciplinary approach in a remote tropical dry forest region of the Andes in southern Ecuador, this article combines local knowledge about climate change and adaptation, based on perceptions and experiences, with quantitative climate measurements. Our theoretical framework is based on the concept of vulnerability and sustainable livelihoods perspectives. Methodologically, we draw on the Participatory Rural Appraisal approach. Participatory workshops and qualitative interviews were carried out in the canton of Macará between 2015 and 2017. Local and regional climate data series were analyzed for climate trends and extreme events. Our study improves understanding of the social and physical dimension of climate change. Especially in mountain areas, differing scales of climate data must be considered to capture local climate conditions and changes. Thus, local knowledge could make a major contribution to selecting representative climate datasets, estimating local impacts of climate change, and developing adaptation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem services in the mountainous Salinas and Aguada Blanca National Reserve in Peru are under pressure, and perspectives on possible solutions depend on the different stakeholders' understanding of these services and their interests in them. We describe the application of the foresight approach to integrate various stakeholders' perspectives on the future of ecosystem services in the reserve. Ultimately, the purpose of this approach is to achieve an inclusive and viable plan for conservation and management of existing resources. The participatory analysis provided local people's perceptions of bofedal (wetland) and tolar (shrubland) ecosystem services, as well as their assessment of likely scenarios for the future. We identified 2 important factors in the hypotheses the local people provided: extreme events such as water scarcity and drought, and participation of the private sector in water distribution. Participants estimated that water storage and fuel for cooking were likely to have the strongest effects on current and future ecosystem services. Based on this, we jointly developed hypotheses using a stepwise approach and used software to calculate probabilities in a systematic way and produce a series of scenarios. The likelihood of these scenarios was also assessed by groups of stakeholders, yielding 5 scenarios for consideration in designing management plans. Future scenarios are highly dependent on proper management of the bofedal. We conclude that foresight helps to involve local people better in the process of developing viable strategies for the future of the reserve and for the conservation of the natural resources that it harbors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reference evapotranspiration ( ETo) is often calculated using the Penman-Monteith (FAO 56 PM; Allen et al 1998) method, which requires data on temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation. But in high-mountain environments, such as the Andean páramo, meteorological monitoring is limited and high-quality data are scarce. Therefore, the FAO 56 PM equation can be applied only through the use of an alternative method suggested by the same authors that substitutes estimates for missing data. This study evaluated whether the FAO 56 PM method for estimating missing data can be effectively used for páramo landscapes in the high Andes of southern Ecuador. Our investigation was based on data from 2 automatic weather stations at elevations of 3780 m and 3979 m. We found that using estimated wind speed data has no major effect on calculated ETo but that if solar radiation data are estimated, ETo calculations may be erroneous by as much as 24%; if relative humidity data are estimated, the error may be as high as 14%; and if all data except temperature are estimated, errors higher than 30% may result. Our study demonstrates the importance of using high-quality meteorological data for calculating ETo in the wet páramo landscapes of southern Ecuador. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chilean water model has been described as a textbook example of a free-market water system. This article contributes to the critiques of this model by showing the effect of its implementation in the Atacameño community of Chiu-Chiu, located in the Atacama Desert in the south-central Andes. In this community, the privatization of water rights ignored local water management practices that had produced a high-altitude wetland (known as a vega). This led to the inhabitants' dispossession of crucial water rights and to wetland degradation. This process belies statements that the Chilean model relies on an unregulated market and instead highlights the state's role in marginalizing local irrigation practices by reducing the water consumption of the indigenous population while keeping the copper mining industry (the main source of Chilean income) and related growing urban populations supplied with water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and development practitioners in remote mountain areas rely on elevation data to study vegetation dynamics, natural hazards, land use, and other patterns. However, despite advances in technology, accurate digital elevation models (DEMs) with spatial resolution <30 m do not exist for most of the world's montane regions. We used a low-cost GPS-based protocol to construct a high-resolution (10 m) DEM for a rugged, remote mountain site in the northern Peruvian Andes. Elevation data were collected with handheld GPS units and combined with digitized and interpolated points within a Geographic Information System to generate a 10 m DEM. Additional DEMs were generated using 50%, 20%, and 15% of the surface points collected and from a 1∶100,000 topographic map and ASTER GDEMv2 data. Estimated absolute vertical accuracy of the GPS surface-point DEMs was significantly lower than that of the ASTER GDEMv2 and topographic map DEMs. Relative vertical accuracy, a better measure of DEM quality, was considerably lower for all 6 DEMs than absolute vertical accuracy. Depending on project budget, time, and labor availability, this method can be used to produce DEMs with high spatial resolution and substantially improved relief maps for research, visualization, and communication purposes. Implementation of this method is practical in locations without access to electricity or post-processing correction facilities, open-canopy land covers, and projects with small budgets that involve local participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The devastating eruptions of Mount Tungurahua in the Ecuadorian highlands in 1999 and 2006 left many communities struggling to rebuild their homes and others permanently displaced to settlements built by state and nongovernmental organizations. For several years afterward, households diversified their economic strategies to compensate for losses, communities organized to promote local development, and the state and nongovernmental organizations sponsored many economic recovery programs in the affected communities. Our study examined the ways in which gender and gender roles were associated with different levels and paths of access to scarce resources in these communities. Specifically, this article contrasts the experiences of men and women in accessing household necessities and project assistance through formal institutions and informal networks. We found that women and men used different types of informal social support networks, with men receiving significantly more material, emotional, and informational support than women. We also found that men and women experienced different challenges and advantages when pursuing support through local and extralocal institutions and that these institutions often coordinated in ways that reified their biases. We present a methodology that is replicable in a wide variety of disaster, resettlement, and development settings, and we advocate an inductive, evidence-based approach to policy, built upon an understanding of local gender, class, and ethnic dynamics affecting access to formal and informal resources. This evidence should be used to build more robust local institutions that can resist wider social and cultural pressures for male dominance and gendered exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although mountain regions are thought to be at lower risk of plant invasions, the diversity and cover of non-native plants is increasing in many alpine ecosystems, including the Andes. We reviewed vegetation surveys in Aconcagua Provincial Park in the dry Andes of Argentina to determine what non-native plants occur in the park and if their distribution is associated with tourism use. This high-altitude park is a popular tourism destination for hikers, with nearly all access by foot and pack animals (mules and horses) that are used for transport. Non-native plant diversity was low (21 species in the region, 16 species in the park) compared to some other mountain regions but included common mountain species from Europe, most of which can be dispersed by tourists and commercial operators on clothing and by pack animal dung. Nearly all non-native plants were restricted to lower altitudes, with no non-natives found above 3420 masl. Most non-native plants were restricted to sites disturbed by tourism use, particularly areas trampled by hikers and pack animals, except for 2 common non-native species, Taraxacum officinale and Convolvulus arvensis, which were also found in undisturbed vegetation. The relatively low cover and diversity of non-native plants at higher-altitude sites may reflect one or a combination of the following: climatic barriers, less human disturbance, and a lag in the dispersal of non-native species from lower altitudes within the park. This study highlights that even protected mountain areas with limited prior human use and nearly no road access can be invaded by non-native plants because of their popularity as mountaineer destinations. Management actions that could help minimize the further spread of non-native plants include limiting the introduction of non-native seeds on vehicles, clothing, and equipment and in dung; reducing trampling damage by restricting visitor use to designated trails; and restoring damaged sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge about the extent of irrigated land in Colombia is scarce because most irrigation is done informally and therefore not registered. Informal irrigation in Colombia has not been investigated, its national presence has not been identified, and its characteristics are still unknown. The present article aims to help fill this gap. Because of topographical and agricultural patterns, Andean informal irrigation is impossible to identify or characterize using standard methods. To provide information on the scale of informal irrigation systems in Colombia, their type, the users they serve, and the type of water sources they use, a largescale partial inventory was made combining statistical analysis, questionnaires, interviews, and field trips. The findings indicate that informal irrigation is widespread in the country's mountainous zones, in a great diversity of environments, characterized by an equally great diversity of local uses and water-use strategies. This diversity has resulted from the coexistence of very different community and state institutions, posing challenges for planning and organizing water-resource management more efficiently and sustainably for producers, the government, and other stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ''green economy'' is increasingly being promoted as a way of creating socially and environmentally viable forms of development. Using the specific case of an attempted nongovernmental organization (NGO) intervention in a minor peasant community in the Recuay region of the Peruvian Andes, this article raises the question of how to get from green economy as a theory of development to green economy as a tool of governance. The article is based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the region. Peru has experienced a decade of rapid growth, but this impressive progress hides the fact that large numbers of rural poor have been left untouched by the national economic boom. An examination of the household economy through the idea of ''ecologies of production'' underscores the social, economic, and environmental embeddedness of Andean household economies and explores pathways to the market. Articulation and governance are the main concerns when it comes to understanding the ways in which the peasant economies are maintained through environmentally embedded social relations, which in turn govern how natural resources and ecosystems are managed. The article concludes by pointing to three issues of importance with regard to a green economy: (1) In conditions of poverty, economically risky investments are rarely sought; (2) matters of governance inform production; and (3) articulation to the market is crucial in terms of production input and output. INSETS: BOX 1: Accessibility and organization;BOX 2: Improving the productive chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Andes of Ecuador are one of the world's hotspots of vascular plants. These hotspot characteristics apply particularly to the divergence zone of the study site situated in the Cordillera Real near the Estación Científica San Francisco (ECSF) in the northernmost part of Podocarpus National Park (3°58′S; 79°04′W). Here, family and species numbers vary considerably between primary mountain forest stands and anthropogenic sites at similar altitudes. The highest family as well as species numbers (95 and 491, respectively, at 2000-2100 m; 68 and 296 at 2400-2500 m, with sample areas of 400 m2 each) document the extraordinarily high plant diversity of primary mountain forest stands. Comparatively, on anthropogenic sites, the analogous numbers are much smaller, with only 64 families/186 species at the lower altitudinal level and 54 families/155 species at the higher altitudinal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]