Using social cartography to understand peasant perceptions of environmental degradation in the Páramo de Sumapaz

Diverse anthropogenic pressures are increasingly threatening paramo ecosystems. Prominent among these are the deliberate use of fire for land preparation, deforestation driven by commercial logging, and the expansion of agricultural frontiers—particularly through intensive potato cultivation. Additional stressors include extensive cattle grazing, sedimentation and eutrophication of aquatic systems, unregulated mining, and unsupervised tourism. The proliferation of road infrastructure without appropriate planning, coupled with the degradation of native biodiversity due to hunting and fishing, and the spread of invasive species, further exacerbate the ecological vulnerability of these high-altitude environments. The Sumapaz paramo —recognized as the largest in the world— is especially affected by these threats, due to its slow ecological recovery processes and inherent fragility. Within this context, the municipality of Pasca (Cundinamarca), encompassing over eleven thousand hectares of the Sumapaz paramo, is home to peasant communities traditionally engaged in agriculture and livestock. These rural settlements constitute spatially dynamic landscapes shaped by deep-rooted social relations. Despite being frequently identified as a primary threat to biodiversity conservation, the displacement of these populations is neither viable nor ethically appropriate. Instead, there is a critical need to investigate the perceptions and knowledge of local communities regarding environmental issues. Social mapping emerges as a powerful participatory methodology to visualize and document the perspectives of these communities—beyond their roles as agricultural producers tied to specific parcels of land. This article presents a participatory workshop-based methodology focused on the co-creation of social cartography by youth and peasant families from the villages of Juan Viejo, Costa Rica, and Quebradas—territories located within or adjacent to the Sumapaz paramo and bordering the National Natural Park.