Exploring the complex relations between water resources and social indicators: The Biobío Basin (Chile)

Basins are one of the bio-geo-physical areas where the ecological processes that generate the ecosystem services (ES) and contribute to human well-being (HWB) are more evident. They are also the physical scenario where the nature-human interaction is more intense. The explicit relationships that link biodiversity, ES and HWB, and the direct and indirect causes responsible for their degradation, have been rarely explored. We used the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework to explore the relationships between the river ecosystem and the Biobío Basin’s social system. We selected 65 basin and regional-scale indicators to analyse the existing trends and associations among the different DPSIR components. The trend analysis results showed major biodiversity loss and how the regulating services and non-material goods of the HWB component deteriorated, while cultural services, direct and indirect pressures and institutional responses increased. The relationships among the different DPSIR components revealed biodiversity loss to be positively associated with cultural services, the material goods of the HWB component and pressures. Indirect drivers were negatively associated with regulating and cultural services, non-material goods and pressures. Institutional responses did not correlate with any DPSIR component. However, these results do not reflect the complexity of the Biobío Basin’s socio-ecosystem. We estimate that the DPSIR framework shows a corseted and reductionist vision of a greater complexity than merely a unidirectional nature-human relationship.