Engaging Younger Generations to Restore Colombian Andean Landscapes

The Andean highlands of Colombia are home to a majority of the country’s population, with many small farmers that produce annual crops, coffee and livestock. This combination of land-use choices, severe mountainous slopes and high rainfall have caused extensive deforestation and soil degradation that are diminishing farm production and quality of life.

After attending several ELTI training courses on restoration strategies, Adriana Giraldo, a young restoration professional and resident of a rural region of the Andean highlands, has shared what she has learned with multiple stakeholders in her community, El Dovio. While Adriana often works with landowners and other land-use decision makers, she decided to take a different approach to ensure the future sustainability of her homeland.

The biggest challenge for me as a practitioner was properly addressing restoration processes of forests or degraded areas and how to transmit them to others in the community training workshops I facilitate. Now that I’ve attended ELTI’s courses, I have the necessary tools to develop adequate plans for farm adaptation and restoration of areas to intervene with successful results, and also offer the leadership to pass on the concepts to other land-use decision makers.

Adriana Giraldo

With assistance from ELTI’s Leadership Program, Adriana spearheaded a project to contribute to the development of community environmental leaders. She worked with a community group named Heirs of the Planet consisting of children and young researchers that has carried out environmental projects since 1996. Adriana led this group on field trips to study the phenology and natural regeneration of a multi-use tree of the Colombian Andes, the white balso, which has proven useful for forest restoration. These field trips also taught the Heirs of the Planet the scientific process required to develop restoration strategies for degraded farmlands.

Adriana helped train over 80 children, youths and other stakeholders from four departments of Colombia. Many have gone on to implement forest restoration projects on their family farms.