The supply and demand of food in indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon has become an important topic due to increasing rates of malnutrition, diet simplification and low local production. Tropenbos International Colombia is currently developing a strategy to support the recovery of the agrobiodiversity of the Amazon region and the traditional practices related to agriculture, fishing and wild fauna management in order to contribute to the local food security governance.
The term páramos refers to a specific variety of ecosystems that are endemic to the northern Andes of South America and are only found in the high mountain regions of Ecuador, Colombia, Perú, Venezuela and Costa Rica. They are considered to be of strategic importance not only due to the diversity of flora and fauna that these ecosystems host, but also for the ecosystem services that they generate, which include carbon storage in the soils as well as water regulation services which benefit approximately 70% of the Colombian population.
During the past decades local traditions have been under threat because of the view that hegemonic culture has on cultural diversity as an obstacle to development and civilization. This has implied a long process of deculturization in many regions, especially among indigenous, afrodescendent and rural communities. Nevertheless, the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2003/ Law 1036, 2006), have made the rescuing of intangible cultural expressions a priority in Colombia.
Some human groups have been closer to the exercise of cultural rights, like indigenous and afrodescendent communities, but campesino communities, that do not have a specific ethnic determination, are generally strange to those initiatives. In Colombia, campesino cultures have concentrated their effort in land rights, organizational and representation processes and the definition of programmes for economic support. The incorporation of cultural rights promotes an integral understanding of their reality, an approach to their particular relationship to the territory, social and resistance organizations, historical perspectives and knowledge related to their context and productive systems.
The Nukak ethnic group entered in contact with global society only decades ago and is considered to be in high cultural risk because its territory has been considerably reduced by the presence of illegal armed groups and the advance of the agricultural frontier.