PARAMO - Provisioning of ecosystem services And cultuRAl values in the MOntane tropics

Lead Research Organisation: Loughborough University
Department Name: Creative Arts

Abstract

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Planned Impact

Who will benefit from this research?
This project has access to extensive resources for dissemination to end users (see Pathways to Impact). Four UK and Colombian societal groups will benefit from the proposed research. (1) Conservation and cultural research bodies, NGOs, and environment policy-makers and assessment panels. (2) Rural Colombians in the páramo-cloudforest Andes. (3) Biology/Environmental and Arts and Humanities university students. (4) Members of the general public concerned about tropical forest loss and biodiversity extinction, plus those interested in birds.
How will they benefit from this research? (1) Conservation and cultural research bodies, NGOs, and environment policy-makers and assessment panels. To develop a sustainable bioeconomy underpinned by culturally sensitive natural resource management, environmental funders and managers need two core pieces of information that this project will provide: (i) an understanding of the link between biodiversity, resulting ecosystem functioning, and the flows of ecosystem services to people; and (ii) how people culturally value to their natural environment.
Our principal collaborators in Colombia are at the Instituto Alexander von Humboldt (IaVH), which is funded by the Colombian government to research the nation's biological resources, their social influence, and their management. Several major UK- and Colombia-based NGOs, including WWF-Colombia, World Land Trust, Conservación Internacional, and ProAves (in)directly invest in the protection and/or purchase of critical areas for conservation in the Colombian Andes. Our research will inform both groups. Finally, UK and Colombian governments have made international agreement under the Convention of Biological Diversity 2011-2020 'Aichi Biodiversity Targets' to reduce extinction threat, and in doing so, meet SDG15 'Life on Land'. As a hotspot of extinction risk and ecosystem service losses, the Tropical Andes must be a focus of efforts, requiring international collaboration. In this respect, we will link our study to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), so that our results can feed into future regional and global assessments of the impacts of land degradation.
(2) Rural Colombians in the páramo-cloudforest Andes. Using this information, natural resource managers will be able to help improve poor rural Colombian people's lives by protecting or restoring core environmental services from which people benefit. Benefits could flow via direct financial mechanisms to protect natural habitat, such a carbon-based payments for ecosystems services (which our previous research in the Colombian Andes has quantified), reduced flood and landslide risk, and maintenance of key cultural values and human well-being.
(3) Colombian (BSc or MSc) and UK (BSc) students will gain opportunities to develop core transferable skills in data handling and manipulation techniques, plus experience of data collection during fieldwork and workshops. Further, Colombian students will gain international links that will benefit their career progressions.
(4) UK and Colombian general public. Many in the UK and Colombian wider general public are interested in or concerned about biodiversity conservation issues and climate change, and will benefit from the project's media engagement, as well as its capacity for wider public engagement in these issues, especially by bringing previously unheard community voices into the public discourse. Further, there is significant interest around birds, in terms of locations, records, and sound recordings.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Title PARAMO - Collection of Digital Stories 
Description A collection of approximately 200 digital stories, created by local residents, with the support of project members and researchers, about their lives of living, working and visiting the paramo and the values they attach to the paramo and their experiences. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2020 
Impact It is too early to say, but the stories are being shared by the storytellers and are helping raise awareness of our work amongst other organisations and local actors. 
 
Description The main finding from the storytelling work attached to this award is the wide range of cultural and social values that people who live, work and visit the paramo attach to its natural environment. These values may be related to economics (those who make a living from the paramo), recreational, educational, aesthetic,. spiritual, etc. These values often relate to the natural environment and its biodiversity, but sometimes do not. These values are encapsulated in the stories that we collected as part of this project and go some way to explaining why people behave in ways they do and why sometimes that behaviour is supportive of the biodiversity of the paramo, and sometimes it isn't. The challenge remains how we can bring together the biophysical data and the narrative data together in a meaningful and useful way.
Exploitation Route The collection of stories will shortly be publicly available via the project website and will be available for anyone to use for a variety of reasons. As explained above the creation of a tool that allows a cross-data approach to understanding and addressing biodiversity issues is a more long-term goal, but could have use for anyone working within the field of environmental policy-making.
Sectors Agriculture

Food and Drink

Communities and Social Services/Policy

Education

Environment

Government

Democracy and Justice

Culture

Heritage

Museums and Collections

 
Description Whilst it is too early to start identifying specific impacts from the project, which will become evident once the library of stories from the project is complete and made searchable online, there is growing evidence of an increased interest in the application of storytelling for public engagement and the harnessing of lay knowledge in relation to wider issues of environmental sustainability, related to Paramo and other environment-related projects in this portfolio. Collectively these projects are starting to create a substantial body of work and critical mass, which is gaining international traction. This is evidenced, for example, by Professor Wilson's invitations to speak at a panel on storytelling at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik in October 2023, to speak at the Kolkota International Book Fair and the Global Science Fair Kerala in January 2024, to join Swedish colleagues on the MISTRA programme for environmental and sustainability education in March 2024, and to apply for a UNESCO Chair in Storytelling for Sustainability in March 2024. If successful this latter initiative will lead to a programme of further impactful initiatives with multiple diverse international partners. The work from this project is referenced in all this work.
First Year Of Impact 2023
Sector Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Environment,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural

Societal

 
Description Branching Out: New Routes to Valuing Urban Treescapes
Amount £583,259 (GBP)
Funding ID NE/V021176/1 
Organisation Natural Environment Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 07/2021 
End 07/2024
 
Description How do the Paramos store water? The role of plants and people
Amount £149,487 (GBP)
Funding ID NE/R017611/1 
Organisation Natural Environment Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 07/2018 
End 07/2022
 
Description MISTRA
Amount 436,844 kr (SEK)
Organisation Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country Sweden
Start 01/2023 
End 12/2023
 
Description Made Smarter Network+
Amount £4,885,886 (GBP)
Funding ID ES/W007231/1 
Organisation Economic and Social Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 11/2021 
End 12/2024
 
Description 'Harnessing the potential of Storytelling in Sustainable Communication' 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact This was an online workshop, run with Dr Marcus Bussey from the University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia), as part of the MISTRA project, run by Swedish Centre for Research and Education on Learning for Sustainable Development at Uppsala University. The workshop was attended by participants from all over Sweden from a variety of backgrounds, including, researchers, businesses, policymakers and general public. This led to lively discussion and a new collaborative funding bid with SWEDESD.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description 'Storytelling and the Digital Revolution: How Technology Has Changed Our Narrative Selves And How It Has Not' - Public Lecture at Voronezh State University, Russia 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact This was a public lecture given online (due to COVID restrictions) through Voronezh State University and facilitated through the British Embassy in Moscow and the UK-Russia Cultural Bridge programme. In Voronezh there was a large audience of faculty and postgraduate students and elsewhere in Russia people joined from other universities and there was also a general public audience. The British Embassy provided simultaneous translation. There was a lively discussion afterwards and the talk was followed up the following week with a Diogital Storytelling workshop run by Dr Antonia Liguori (Loughborough) and Dr Philippa Rappoport (Smithsonian Institution). Voronezh University have proposed a future collaboration on a summer school and staff and student mobility.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description 'Storytelling with a Social Purpose, or how we are trying to change the world, one story at a time', Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact An invited lecture/talk to the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, delivered online, due to COVID restrictions. It led to a lively discussion and set of questions with positive feedback from the Society's Committee.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Connecting Through Storytelling In The Páramos 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The presentation took place as part of Encuentro Mundial Educar online conference and was made by Alma Solarte-Tobon and Angela Sharpe, Research Assistants at the Storytelling Academy at Loughborough University. It was conducted in Spanish to a broad online audience and was also available afterwards via YouTube. Around 50 people attended the presentation, plus additional numbers watched it online afterwards. It prompted a number of questions from the audience and a lively discussion.

Presentation Abstract: Local communities are the guardians and bearers of their own cultural heritage & collective memory. In this session we will explore how connections were forged between scientific researchers and local communities through the use of digital storytelling. Also, looking forward to ensuring these digital stories are preserved for both the communities and researchers.

The Storytelling Academy at Loughborough University is an interdisciplinary research team. Applied Storytelling has become our key research strength over the past five years. The work is invariably interdisciplinary, involving collaborations with the health, social and environmental sciences and both academic and non-academic partners, from local community organisations to large NGOs. We have worked throughout the UK, but also across Europe and countries across the world (Kenya, Uganda, India and Colombia).
The focus of our presentation will be on our current work in Colombia on the research projects PARAMO and Paraguas. Both projects focus on research in the paramo region around Boyaca. Páramo are high-elevation grassland-peatland biomes of the tropical Andes. Unique, highly diverse, and important spiritual landscapes, they are found in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru, covering a total area of 35,700km2.
By collecting and sharing stories from the many Páramo actors, the projects hope to improve dialogue and mutual understanding and so help achieve "socio-natural resilience" and to help preserve and document local stories as part of a memory bank for all to share.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Digital Storytelling and Slow Storytelling 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact This was a GREAT talk hosted by the British Council in India. I gave it to a public audience at the UK Pavillion at the International Kolkota Book Fair and also to a student/staff audience at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkota.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description Digital Storytelling workshop on climate change organised with LU Arts 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Digital Stories produced as part of the PARAMO, PARAGUAS, DRY projects were used to trigger conversations around environmental issues while students learned how to make a digital story, developing their technical, creative and curatorial skills.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL http://www.lborouniartsfestival.co.uk/digital-storytelling-climate-change/
 
Description GROW Colombia DS training in Bogota 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Journalists, policy makers and students were trained to apply digital storytelling in their field. Digital Stories produced during the PARAMO, PARAGUAS, DRY projects were used to talk about the methodology and address local and global environmental issues. The event was organised in collaboration with the Earlham Institute with the support of the British embassy in Colombia.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description GROW Colombia Retreat in Norwich - 30 April-1May2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Team member Antonia Liguori presented on behalf of the Storytelling Academy the DS approach applied as part of the two research projects in Colombia (PARAGUAS and PARAMO). Around 30 international stakeholders involved in projects in Colombia had the opportunity to share ideas, expand their network and explore future potential collaborations.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Presentation at the MeCCSA Conference 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Project team member Antonia Liguori gave a paper on behalf of Mike Wilson, Lindsey McEwen and the DRY consortium. The presentation was about 'Co-designing an online Utility Tool to bridge science and community knowledge through storytelling', but included an overview on a variety of storytelling approaches applied in 3 main projects addressing environmental issues (PARAMO, PARAGUAS, DRY).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL http://www.meccsabrighton2020.co.uk/
 
Description Talking About the Weather and Other Stories: Storytelling As Creative Thinking About Climate Change 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact This was a GREAT talk hosted by the British Council in India. I gave it to public audiences at the UK Pavillion at the International Kolkata Book Fair and at the Global Science Fair Kerala in Trivandrum. Also gave the talk to two large groups of students at the Modern High School for Girls in Kolkata and the Government College for Women in Trivandrum. There were many questions after the talks and there are plans for further workshop activity with the British Council for next year.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description The Power of Storytelling for Voicing Arctic Issues to the Public 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Invited member of a panel at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik in November 2023. The panel was titled 'Hearing the Arctic's Call: The Time to Act as One' and consisted of an international group of scholars from Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands and the UK. The Arctic Circle Assembly is a major annual intergovernmental congress with a global audience of policymakers, academics, activist organisations and NGOs. There was a wide interest in storytelling at the Assembly and the talk resulted in lots of questions and post-panel discussions and new contacts. It is likely that a follow-up panel will convene at the 2024 Assembly.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023