Fostering social-ecological resilience to preserve biocultural diversity in rural Spain (BioDIV)

Rural areas as places where culture and nature have a deep linkage, coevolving together, and creating biocultural diversity refugia. This is truly true in the Mediterranean agricultural landscapes where traditional management of the land have endured over millennia. However, rural areas are currently threatened by their abandonment, driving by migration to more urban areas, intensification process, or aging population.

There is an urgent need to promote economically and environmentally viable alternative in rural regions, while exploring the future stability of the cultural landscape in order to guarantee its functionality and the attractiveness of these regions for rural tourism.

Three main objectives are defined within BioDIV:

1. To develop a literature review of biocultural diversity practices in the Mediterranean

Where and why can be found biocultural diversity practices?

Are there specific indicators for assessing biocultural diversity?

Which are those indicators?

2. To map biocultural diversity hotspots

Where are place biocultural diversity?

Are there variables determining the provision of biocultural diversity?

How and why?

3. To develop in-depth evaluation of biocultural diversity and its social-ecological roots

What are the socio-ecological roots of biocultural diversity?

What type of local ecological knowledge determines biocultural diversity?