El patrimonio natural como categoría emergente en Bogotá, Colombia: Una experiencia de integración naturaleza, cultura y ordenamiento territorial

This article synthesizes the efforts and results of teams that worked in Bogotá’s public administration, analyzing the metropolitan natural heritage of this high-altitude tropical city through applied socio-ecological research, fieldwork, and the formulation and implementation of strategic proposals during the 2020–2024 period. We present processes and outcomes generated by the Instituto Distrital de Patrimonio Cultural (IDPC), a public institution that introduced the concept of integrated heritage as a guiding approach for Bogotá’s Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial (POT). Additionally, we highlight the contributions of professionals who developed outreach strategies for academic and activist audiences, using participatory science and the valuation of biodiversity and urban ecosystem services, as well as approaches from environmental history, landscape ecology, bioacoustics, and art history. Through examples of projects that have integrated cultural, material, intangible, archaeological, and natural heritage categories, this article offers an initial synthesis of results, institutional learning, conclusions, and dissemination proposals for the integrated heritage approach. We describe the emergence of the natural heritage category as a space for transdisciplinary dialogue between culture and nature within the territorial planning policies of a city with eight million inhabitants and a metropolitan area housing an additional two million people. Characterizations based on spatial and representative information of Bogotá’s urban and rural territories are proposed. This work consolidates the results achieved at the district level, highlighting institutional processes that successfully integrated public entities from the environmental and cultural sectors, as well as different levels of government (district and national).