In this chapter, we analyze the reasons why local socio-environmental systems have met in a limited way the purpose of balancing conservation with development in the Upper Basin of the Tablón River (UBTR), located in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve (SEBIRE). The study used a transdisciplinary exercise which conceives the Local Socio-Environmental Systems (LSES) as complex and adaptive systems, in which four subsystems interact: (i) the local regime, (ii) the landscape, (iii) the agrarian system, and (iv) the territorial action group. Two common property holdings (“ejidos”) were studied with the case study method. The four subsystems were analyzed through participatory and qualitative research. The results indicated: (a) the local regime imposes norms that limit the decision-making capacity of local actors and its compensatory payments generate dependency and a reactive attitude; (b) the setback of forest frontiers has remained relatively stable due to SEBIRE environmental standards, but natural capital is increasingly vulnerable to socio-environmental disturbances; (c) domestic units (DUs) have little capacity to respond to environmental and market changes; their development is restricted by the geographical, social, and economic conditions of the basin; some producers are unable to cover their production costs and their limited resources barely reach the minimum welfare line; and (d) in the UBTR there are important socio-environmental innovation processes that have generated adaptive management alternatives, but these still face significant challenges at the basin level. In conclusion, the LSES of the UBTR has restrictions on its four components and has not reached the capacity to be socially reproduced. In these LSES, the local regime has promoted an economic model and territorial management mechanisms that have made it environmentally and economically vulnerable.

The present study aims to analyze the role of traditional knowledge in territorial autonomy and environmental governance, as well as the level of interest of different indigenous and non-indigenous actors in the southern Colombian Amazon in applying traditional knowledge to public policy. Using the theoretical approaches of political ecology as well as a qualitative method, we describe a multidisciplinary project developed and implemented to incorporate knowledge systems of indigenous peoples of the Colombian Amazon into environmental policy. The results present an analysis of arguments by indigenous organizations, researchers, and government environmental agency administrators for and against using traditional knowledge to address the global ecological crisis. Through interviews and reports systematized by researchers and local collaborators within the project, we discuss conflicts that emerge when attempts are made to apply traditional knowledge in asymmetrical spaces of power. This includes responses by local residents to the global governance regime, which imposes policies regarding traditional knowledge in indigenous territories, and the possible repercussions of environmental policies on indigenous autonomy regimes in territories considered to be ancestral by indigenous peoples. We conclude that indigenous communities and organizations are more willing to apply traditional knowledge to public policy when the process is oriented toward strengthening their territorial and environmental autonomy than when external actors attempt to use this knowledge to promote global regulatory regimes that are beyond the control of local actors.

Hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome (HBOC) represents 5–10% of all patients with breast cancer and is associated with high-risk pathogenic alleles in BRCA1/2 genes, but only for 25% of cases. We aimed to find new pathogenic alleles in a panel of 143 cancer-predisposing genes in 300 Mexican cancer patients with suspicion of HBOC and 27 high-risk patients with a severe family history of cancer, using massive parallel sequencing. We found pathogenic variants in 23 genes, including BRCA1/2. In the group of cancer patients 15% (46/300) had a pathogenic variant; 11% (33/300) harbored variants with unknown clinical significance (VUS) and 74% (221/300) were negative. The high-risk group had 22% (6/27) of patients with pathogenic variants, 4% (1/27) had VUS and 74% (20/27) were negative. The most recurrent mutations were the Mexican founder deletion of exons 9-12 and the variant p.G228fs in BRCA1, each found in 5 of 17 patients with alterations in this gene. Rare VUS with potential impact at the protein level were found in 21 genes. Our results show for the first time in the Mexican population a higher contribution of pathogenic alleles in other susceptibility cancer genes (54%) than in BRCA1/2 (46%), highlighting the high locus heterogeneity of HBOC and the necessity of expanding genetic tests for this disease to include broader gene panels.

Coffee agroforestry systems are a promising approach to the challenge of sustaining both biodiversity and livelihoods in tropical landscapes. However, coffee farmers' response to the unrelenting coffee leaf rust (CLR) outbreak may have repercussions for the potential of coffee agroforestry systems to contribute to biodiversity conservation. Adaptations in management practices could affect the extent to which farmers rely on ecological processes vs. external inputs (e.g., agrochemicals) to support production. This study investigates farmers' response to CLR outbreak through a study in a forest frontier in a Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico. We conducted household surveys and fieldwork before the CLR outbreak in 2011-2012 (n = 59), and follow-up surveys after the outbreak in 2016 (n = 48). Before CLR outbreak, farmers were cultivating Arabica coffee varieties in agroforestry systems and generally following agroecological approaches. Most farmers (82%) were certified organic and did not employ synthetic agrochemicals. Farmers (66%) had plans to expand their Arabica coffee agroforests either into forest (35%) or fallow (31%) in response to high farm gate prices. After CLR outbreak, 94% of farmers had CLR-resistant hybrid coffee varieties (HCV) in their possession and were either incorporating them by substituting affected Arabica coffee plants in existing fields, or by establishing new coffee fields with HCV at lower elevations. In attempts to control CLR, farmers (54%) also applied agrochemicals at least once and, to a lesser extent (19%), removed shade trees. Among the farmers (63%) who were planning on expanding coffee production with HCV, more farmers were planning on expanding on fallow (46%) than forest (17%) compared to the period before CLR outbreak (p-value < 0.05). Public and private actors promoted and distributed saplings of HCV and agrochemicals along with technical assistance.

The promotion of HCV along with fertilizers may result in a substitution of ecosystem functions with agrochemicals, and the need to acquire seeds and saplings outside of farmers’ own resource base and networks. This shift in management strategies generates new instabilities and risks by introducing a new market for HCV about which little is known and by making external agents the holders of productive resources and knowledge.

The PREDICTS project-Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)-has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity.

The current and potential relationship of contemporary rural youth with the agricultural and natural patrimony (PAN, according to its Spanish initials) that they will inherit is little known, but vitally important. In this study, we designed, adapted, and evaluated a variety of socio-environmental learning tools in order to identify and reflect on the opinions, actions, and motivations of 14 to 17 year olds in an area of the Sepultura Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico to use their PAN in the future. The methodological approach consisted of exploring discourses using the Q method and three original table games (Mi territorio ideal, El carga palito y Manantiales de la Sierra). 46 teens were shown how to use these four tools, their use was monitored in workshops, and results were recorded and statistically analyzed. These tools allowed a) identifying at least four discourses of the teens regarding the use of their PAN, and b) reveal to the teens the preferences for land use, levels of diversification and intensification, and their disposition toward behaviors of dominance/subordination, competition, cooperation, coordination, equity, and solidarity that emerge from their decision making regarding PAN. Participants said they understood and enjoyed these tools, and that they learned about their own motivations. Together, these materials conform a dynamic educational approach that allows teachers and students to identify external and internal motivations, conservation behavior, intensification and diversification for managing PAN, attitudes of dominance and equity among teens, and preferences towards individual or collective working. This proposal is innovative, participatory, dynamic, and contextualized, and has great potential to be incorporated in the middle school curriculum in the study area and in similar rural regions of Mexico, as well as in the rest of Latin America and the world.