Percepción social de los servicios ecosistémicos en la microcuenca El Padmi, Ecuador

Understanding how local actors relate to ecosystems and how they value the services obtained through various activities is a task that is essential to formulate strategies for the sustainable management of ecosystems. This study was accomplished in an Amazon basin in South of Ecuador and aimed to explore the social perceptions of ecosystem services in the El Padmi watershed. A survey was done with 53 households, to investigated which ecosytem services are the most frequently perceive by the people, which are the most relevant and also, which socio-economic factors influence these perceptions. In addition, the changes in the El Padmi basin ecosystem were studied. There were identified 12 types of ecosystem services and the human preferences toward ecosytem services focus first on provisioning services, followed by regulating services, and finally, on cultural services. The most important perceived benefits were: drinking water provision, wood raw material and food production. Education, gender, age and place of residence are variables that influenced the social perception. The majority (96%) of the responses perceived the ecosystems to be degrading, to greater or lesser degrees. Grazing and illicit logging were identified as the main cause of degradation.