Timberland investment opportunities in Colombia are expected to increase as a result of the peace agreement recently signed between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. This new socio-political environment may facilitate the expansion of commercial forest plantations on a wider range of site conditions that are currently considered in existing biometric tools.

Commodity price cycles can arise when there is a tendency to invest more (less) when current prices are high (low). Traditionally this behavior is interpreted as based upon naïve expectations. However, weak financial institutions can also cause this behavior. When borrowing is hard and saving is risky farmers cannot invest

Highlights

Expected mainstreaming of the Ecosystem Services Approach (ESA) has not been fulfilled.

Sectors involved in ESA and their relationships drive pathways of mainstreaming in Latin America.

Incorporation of knowledge and consensus over values are key factors for mainstreaming.

Researchers need to adopt new roles for an effective mainstreaming of ESA.

Opportunities for new roles lay in the interfaces among sectors involved in ES management.

In recent decades, the literature on ecosystem services has pointed to the need to quantify and characterise Soil Natural Capital (SNC) under different types of land use and cover. This points to the need of understanding the SNC processes which define the provision of ecosystem services, as well as their changes through anthropogenic time. Tropical regions are subjected to a high rate of land use transformation which may change the properties of the soil, and consequently the potential provision of ecosystem services.

Understanding the influence of social variables on a beneficiary´s vulnerability to environmental change might improves the design of policies of mitigation and adaptation to global, regional and local environmental change. In the context of socio-ecological systems, there is a wide variety of conceptual and methodological approaches for the assessment of social vulnerability in face of environmental change. However, there is a need for making these approaches more operational.

Literature in the vulnerability of socio-ecological systems has highlighted the need for considering Social Perception of Risk (SPR) as a determinant of social vulnerability. This paper combines quantitative and qualitative approaches for analyzing SPR in the context of a socio-ecological system. We analyze the SPR of loss or degradation of water provision and erosion control in the Northern Andes (Riogrande basin, Antioquia-Colombia).

Livestock grazing, along with agriculture, are key drivers of deforestation and land degradation that subsequently affect ecosystem service provision in the tropics. Although environmental and agricultural policies may curtail these negative effects, information is needed on how specific programs and instruments could be used to incentivize ranchers into adopting rangeland practices to achieve land conservation. We examine what encourages livestock ranchers to adopt more sustainable rangeland practices with various technical and conservation attributes in Colombia’s Orinoco region.

Zero-deforestation commitments are a type of voluntary sustainability initiative that companies adopt to signal their intention to reduce or eliminate deforestation associated with commodities that they produce, trade, and/or sell. Because each company defines its own zero-deforestation commitment goals and implementation mechanisms, commitment content varies widely. This creates challenges for the assessment of commitment implementation or effectiveness.

Globally, there is an increasing level of funding targeted to pay farmers and rural communities for the provision of ecosystem services, for example through Payments for Ecosystem or Environmental Services (PES) schemes and pilots for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, and maintaining or enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD +). Therefore, there is growing interest in understanding the effects of economic incentives on participants' behavior and motivations.