RECNET and the UNESCO Chair on Sustainability at the UPC promoved and oriented an alliance in Colombia with the IDIGER from the Bogota City Council, the Botanical Garden of Bogota and the UNESCOSOST Joint Office at the Tecnológico de Antioquia in Medellín, to implement this process of urban transformation in an area affected by environmental risks due to landslides.
The project Cordillera Sur includes different socio-environmental restoration in the territory, in order to recover the area. By 2011, the site was the scene of a mass landslide phenomenon involving the resettle of hundreds of families living in it. In view of the complexity representing the case for the urban context of the city, the Interadministrative Cooperation Agreement No. 494 of 2014 were developed, which conceives the implementation of socio-environmental actions for sustainable risk mitigation.
The overall objective of the project seeks to join efforts for the development of socio-environmental actions to facilitate recovery, renaturation and appropriation of territory affected by landslide risk in the sectors of Cordillera Sur, Tierra Linda, La Cumbre y Zajón of La Estrella, in the town Ciudad Bolivar, in Bogota.
It is noteworthy that in order to strengthen local capacities and training for employment, the "Diploma in Agroecology and risk management with citizen participation" were developed under the agreement, a training program with 160 hours of theoretical classroom and applied work that seek to train about 40 people in the sector on issues related to the overall sustainability of the territory.
The physical works on site are represented mainly by bioengineering techniques for the proper management of surface and subsurface waters, ecological restoration of ecosystems in the area, landscaping and renaturation, focused mainly in promoting the social appropriation of the recovered territory, through outreach, awareness and motivation for communities in the area, so that may help to mitigate the threat condition and to reduce risk and vulnerability to mass landslides.