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Local Ecological Knowledge and the Sustainable Co-Management of Sierra Nevada’s Social-Ecological System

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The Landscape of the Sierra Nevada

Abstract

Local ecological knowledge systems have been the basis of Sierra Nevada’s social-ecological system, which has co-evolved over more than ten centuries until nowadays, based on the knowledge, practices, and innovations deriving from the relationship between people and the ecosystems on which they depend. In Sierra Nevada, this co-evolution is greatly influenced by the traditional water management system, generating a “cultural landscape.” However, during the twentieth-century Sierra Nevada’s social-ecological system was affected by diverse drivers of change such as climate change, rural exodus, land-use change, and conservation government policies, which are threatening its stability and the transmission of the related local ecological knowledge. Local ecological knowledge on water management, traditional agricultural systems, and knowledge related to grazing and cattle raising should be included in the co-management of the territory and representatives of this knowledge should be involved and collaborate with administration and researchers develo** adaptive plants to reduce negative impacts of global change.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the collaboration of people from Sierra Nevada who shared with us their valuable, but so often underrated, knowledge. We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the María de Maeztu Programme for Units of Excellence in R&D (MdM-2015-0552), the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities through the Juan de la Cierva Incorporación Programme (IJCI-2017-33405), the project grant CSO2014-59704-P, and funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under grant agreement No 771056-LICCI-ERC-2017-COG. This work contributes to the “María de Maeztu” Programme for Units of Excellence (CEX2019-000940-M).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    David García-del-Amo, Irene Iniesta-Arandia & Victoria Reyes-García

  2. Grupo de Investigación Social y Acción Participativa GISAP, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain

    Cristina Gálvez-García & Javier Moreno-Ortiz

  3. Colectivo FRACTAL, Calle San Remigio 2, Madrid, Spain

    Irene Iniesta-Arandia

  4. Cooperativa PASOS Participación y Sostenibilidad, Granada, Spain

    Javier Moreno-Ortiz

  5. Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain

    Victoria Reyes-García

  6. Departament d’Antropologia Social i Cultural, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Victoria Reyes-García

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  1. David García-del-Amo
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  2. Cristina Gálvez-García
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  3. Irene Iniesta-Arandia
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  5. Victoria Reyes-García
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Correspondence to David García-del-Amo .

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  1. Department of Ecology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Regino Zamora

  2. Department of Geography, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Marc Oliva

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García-del-Amo, D., Gálvez-García, C., Iniesta-Arandia, I., Moreno-Ortiz, J., Reyes-García, V. (2022). Local Ecological Knowledge and the Sustainable Co-Management of Sierra Nevada’s Social-Ecological System. In: Zamora, R., Oliva, M. (eds) The Landscape of the Sierra Nevada. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94219-9_21

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