Options to Support Sustainable Trajectories in a Rural Landscape: Drivers, Rural Processes, and Local Perceptions in a Colombian Coffee-Growing Region

Diego Valbuena, Julien G. Chenet and Daniel Gaitán-Cremaschi
Additional contact information
Diego Valbuena: Land Use Planning Group, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 9101, 6700 HB Wageningen, The Netherlands
Julien G. Chenet: Environmental Management Group, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Ean, Bogotá 110211, Colombia
Daniel Gaitán-Cremaschi: Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 23, 1-20

Abstract: Trajectories of many rural landscapes in Latin America remain unsustainable. Options to support sustainable rural trajectories should be comprehensive and rooted in the interests of rural actors. We selected a municipality in a coffee-growing region in Colombia with an increasing urban–rural nexus to describe interactions between rural processes and their drivers while identifying and contextualising the perceptions of local actors on major constraints and opportunities for more inclusive and sustainable rural trajectories. We described these interactions by combining secondary data on main drivers, agricultural census data, and interviews with different local actors. Changes in population structure, volatility in coffee prices, in-/out-migration, deagrarianisation, and rurbanisation, among others, are reconfiguring the rural trajectories of the study area. Despite not being a major coffee region, farmers in the study area have developed different strategies, including intensification, diversification, replacement or abandonment of coffee production, and commercialisation. The perceptions of local actors and the multiplicity of agricultural households, food/land use systems, rural processes, and drivers described in this study suggest that more sustainable rural transitions need to be supported by inclusive, integrated, and transformative landscape planning approaches that align with local priorities. However, this transformation needs to be accompanied by changes at a systemic level that address the fundamental bottlenecks to real sustainability.

Keywords: family farming; urban–rural nexus; integrated landscape management; land use planning; Latin America (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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