**1. Introduction**

This chapter develops a vision of the current situation of the equatorial high Andean forests of Colombia and the socio-ecological conflicts that define their current situation. It begins with a proposal to approach its biogeographic context, the processes of occupation that have been transforming the natural landscape during the last 70 years, the processes that have defined these changes until its current situation of profound transformations that lead it to define it as an ecosystem in danger of extinction since only less than 5% of the original coverage remains.

Faced with this situation, environmental planning and management approach to date, as well as public policies, have been inefficient in guaranteeing their conservation and sustainability. As a result of the above, the last 10 years have been emerging processes of peasant resistance from mobilizations, strikes, and social organizations such as committees for the defense of water and forests, community action boards in towns and villages, and increasingly strong community aqueduct boards that demand participation in the decision on delimitation and conservation of areas of ecological

importance such as the high Andean forests. Wetlands and water recharge areas. On the situation and balances of these social processes, an exhaustive investigation has been carried out that has been based on the participation of the author either as a direct author or as a public official, as a social leader, or as a researcher from the university academy.

In response to this situation and in the search to propose a new analytical approach to address environmental conflicts in these territories, a geo-ecosystem approach is proposed as an option that has environmental governance as a dynamic axis based on the recognition of the role for this purpose, must be fulfilled by rural communities that have historically been playing the main role in knowledge processes, conservation, management and adaptive strategies in these ecosystems.
