Estudios sociales y socioecológicos sobre restauración ecológica: Una revisión de la literatura a escala global e iberoamericana

Ecological restoration (RE) has become established as an academic field and public policy. However, it could have biases that hinder a comprehensive approach to its natural and social causes and consequences. Therefore, we proposed to analyze how the social and socioecological aspects of RE are addressed in the scientific literature at global and Iberoamerican scales. It was expected that the paradigmatic change in the ecological sciences, which has begun to incorporate the human dimension of ecosystems, would be reflected in the RE literature, and we predicted an increase in social and socioecological studies of RE in the last decade. A systematic literature review was conducted between 1900-2016 on a global scale (Web of Science, n=550) and for Iberoamerica (Scientific Electronic Library Online, n=290). Temporal, geographic, methodological and disciplinary patterns were quantified in publications with ecological, social or socioecological conceptual frameworks. For Iberoamerica, the assessment was deepened with a qualitative analysis of sociopolitical concepts (i.e., government, public policy, citizen participation). We found that scientific productivity about ER has increased overall, but the growth rate was greater for ecological studies than social and socioecological studies. These works are published mainly (>50%) in natural and applied science journals at both scales. In turn, social and socioecological publications were found more in the global literature than regional (37.5% and 15.3%, respectively), and there was a dominance of publications from countries in the Global North. An interdisciplinary view is only partially reflected in the scientific literature on ER, and the linkage between science and management is scarce in regional studies. In addition to thinking about increasing social and socioecological research production of RE, “knowledge dialogue” between regions and disciplines should be re-enforced to achieve successful RE experiences in practice.