The EcoForGaM project aims at promoting a multifunctional, resilient, and sustainable forest bioeconomy model in the mountain regions of Madrid, Segovia, and Burgos, helping to simultaneously address the ecological transition and demographic challenges.
Agroforestry development in these three study areas faces difficulties due to the loss of the primary productive sector within the current context of rural demographic decline. Urban and tourist housing demands are displacing local communities, halting the development of the local economy, and generating rural abandonment related problems.
Based on accumulated scientific evidence, this project seeks to strengthen a local bioeconomy model grounded in silvopastoral management, which restores the connection between communities and their landscapes, maintaining them alive and resilient in the face of the ongoing socioecological crisis. To achieve this, and through the implementation of various sustainable agroforestry practices, EcoForGaM promotes the transition towards a climate-adapted landscape mosaic that reduces potentially flammable biomass, prevents erosion, increases water infiltration and retention, enhances carbon sequestration, and reduces biodiversity loss. These agroforestry practices, updated and recognized as viable nature-based solutions (NBS), include —among other activities— forest grazing with varying tree densities, the use of animal traction for forestry tasks, pollarding oaks and other tree species, the ecological restoration of traditional irrigation channels, sustainable arboriculture practices, rotational grazing, targeted livestock enclosures, biomass control through herbivory, and the management of open firebreak areas maintained by livestock.
Through these actions, the project aspires to establish a new bioeconomy model centered on the well-being and sustainability of rural communities, dignifying their livelihoods by valuing their traditional ecological knowledge.
EcoForGaM will run for 22 months (March 1, 2024 – December 31, 2025) and is part of the call for grants to support transformative projects for promoting the forest-based bioeconomy and contributing to the ecological transition, under the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU for the 2023 fiscal year.
Financing Entity: Ministry of Science and Innovation (Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, Next Generation-EU Funds)
RESEARCHERS
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
- César Agustín López Santiago
- Mateo Aguado Caso
- Víctor García Díez
- María Victoria Arredondo Cereceda
- Pamela Tatiana Zúñiga Upegui
Other participating entities
- Observatorio para una Cultura del Territorio (OCT) (coordinating entity)
- Grupo de Acción Local de la Sierra Norte de Madrid (GALSINMA)
- Asociación Grupo de Acción Local de la Sierra de la Demanda (AGALSA)
For more information, please visit the EcoForGaM project website or contact César Agustín López Santiago at cesaragustin.lopez@uam.es
This project is supported by the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) as part of the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan (PRTR), funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU
