Cambio ambiental global y metabolismo social local: marcos de interpretación, herramientas de valoración y políticas derivadas

Abstract

Among other things, the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services published by the IPBES platform in 2019 concluded thatthe speed with which global nature has changed over the last 50 years is unprecedented in the history of humanity. In this context of accelerating change and the current climate emergency, there is a need to press forward in the establishment of theoretical and methodological bases that enable an understanding of the mechanisms by which it operates and its impacts on different time and geographic scales, while considering the specificity of different territories and habitats. To advance knowledge on this worldwide environmental emergency and the instruments to assess and mitigate it, the monograph put out a call for theoretical-methodological studies and for analyses of practical cases that would take into account the multiscale nature and territorial diversity of environmental processes and the policies designed to address them, taking as a starting point interpretive frameworks of global change and social metabolism.In line with this objective, this article analyzes, connects, and contextualizes in the international literature how each of the contributions included in the monograph contributes to the current start of play based on three topics for reflection: (i) Interpretive frameworks and multiscale assessment tools of global change; (ii) The prospect of ecological and climate degradation in Latin America and the Caribbean, and (iii) The analysis of public policies and other options in a territorial focus. Their joint consideration reveals the utility of creating theoretical-methodological frameworks of common understanding adapted to the diversity of different territories and scales. Similarly, the utility of public policies founded on the ecological economy and strengthened by the new forms of territorial governance characterized by the inclusion of participation and the fomenting of multilevel, multiscale, and sectoral coordination and cooperation is also identified.