Abstract
The current production of quinoa for export in the southern highlands of Bolivia raises the question of the sustainability of an agriculture that has apparently been successfully introduced into economic globalisation. In its ecological, social and economic aspects, this success seems paradoxical, turning an inhospitable region and a long-marginalised crop into a dynamic production area for a cereal that is highly valued in the organic and fair trade markets of the northern hemisphere. The producers of the altiplano, the initiators of this success, are now concerned about the sustainability of their agricultural activities and the conservation of the social and natural capital of their territories. The complexity of this particular agrosystem results from ecological and social processes operating simultaneously at various scales of time and space. Panarchy theory offers a conceptual framework for integrating this diversity of entities, scales and processes. A diagnosis of socio-ecological vulnerability in the region highlights the sensitivity of local agrosystems to changes affecting the management of territorial resources and also underlines the adaptability of producer families thanks to a diversified system of mobility and pluriactivity. Leaving behind agro-technical solutions based on sectoral visions, the panarchy articulates three interlocking subsystems, focusing on their respective fields of vulnerability/adaptability: families and their economic choices, space and its territorial dynamics, and society and its regulations. This systemic analysis reveals the circumstances that promoted the dynamics observed over the last 40 years. It identifies some of the conditions necessary for the adaptive management of the socio-ecosystems of Bolivia's southern highlands. Among them, the redundancy of economic activities carried out by families and the ambivalence of social regulation facilitate the adaptability and capacity for transformation of local socio-ecosystems. However, in the necessary renewal of social norms of land use, the challenge for local populations lies in devising a more secure and equitable management of territorial resources without giving in to the command-and-control tendency promoted by the various actors that have multiplied in the area.