The Sustainable Orinoco Pact sponsored a one-day Initiatives Fair just outside of the region’s major city Villavicencio yesterday. The event brought together several organizations and individuals to discuss ongoing projects around sustainable development in the region.
The larger Pact initiative seeks to reconcile development and conservation interests in what many consider to the last substantial development frontier in Colombia. The unites Colombia’s ministry of the environment, national park service, and agricultural ministry with the Nature Conservancy, the InterAmerican Development Bank, Ecopetrol, the Wildlife Conservation Society and many others.
The Initiatives Fair consisted of three panel discussions around best bets for sustainable development, obstacles and barriers implementing sustainable development initiatives and future prospects going forward. Several poster presentations were made giving participants a chance to follow up with presenters in an open networking format.
Topics discussed included sustainable livestock, specialty agriculture and non-timber forest products, sustainable fisheries, useful native tree species, development focused on eco-tourism and biodiversity conservation, among many others.
The Science and Nature for People Partnership (SNAPP) program’s group on sustainable land use change in the Orinoco region shared research on land use change, soil carbon and water resources modeling. The SNAPP group is working with partners throughout the region to support sustainable development and improved land use planning through evidence-based analysis of land use change on ecosystem services. The group will host a future meeting with many of the same partners to discuss how we can turn our research and development work into useful information for decision-making.
