Sustainable Development and Community Forestry in Mexico

Community Based Natural Resource ManagementCBNRM or CBRM

Community Forestry Basic issues:

– Failure of market driven mechanisms to promote “sustainable and equitable natural resource management in the developing world”

– Search for alternatives– Deals with BOTH deforestation and poverty/social

justice

Rationale for CBNRM

Rural people are strategic, rational actors who are – closer to the resource, – have traditional knowledge about the resource– Have values that would tend to preserve it– greater incentive to manage it properly because

their livelihoods depend on it Better managers than the state or distant

corporations

“Two Mexico’s”– Rural livelihoods: Rural Development is an alternative

strategy to stem migration to cities, Maquiladoras, or US– Preserve land rights: political empowerment– Cultural traditions

Promote better balance of trade?– Internal production of lumber instead of import– Small factories produce value added products from

woodworking instead of export lumber

*Dr. Dan Klooster

Why is Community Forestry in Mexico important?*

Imports: $2,034,272,000 Exports: $185,851,008

Wood Products Exports and Imports--2001

Why is Community Forestry in Mexico important-ecological bennies

Stems deforestation– ¼ size pre-colonization– High rate of deforestation: -1.5%/year– Options expanded for ecotourism

Promotes the ecological benefits of forest– Maintains biodiversity– Carbon sinkhelps mitigate global warming– stabilize hydrological cycles, maintain the flow and purity of local

water sources– reduce erosion, slow the siltation of reservoirs and waterways,– protect the watersheds of irrigation districts and urban centers.

support agriculture sites for recreation

Deforestation in Mexico

Land area

Forest Cover 2000

Forest Cover Change 1990-

2000

´000 ha

´000 ha´000

ha/year%/

yearForest

Mexico190,8

6955,205 -631 -1.08

28.9

North and Central America

2,102,742

549,306 -570 -.1026.

1

World13,139,618

3,869,453

-9,319 -.2429.

4

Mexico Forestry Unique

“the most advanced community forestry sector in Latin America”

– Unlike most LA countries (where forests are state owned) Mexico’s forests are in traditional community ownership: case study example for other Latin American and developing countries.

At the same time, community based forest policies are incipient and endangered by state and international economic policies

– forest development has not yet assuaged poverty or environmental conservation

Community Foresters

Historical background1500-1900

Spanish conquest: dispossession of land 19th C: liberalism emerges: more

dispossession Porfiriato: intensified dispossession/extreme

inequality of development Mexican Revolution: primary cause was land

distribution

Post Revolution: President Cardenas: Three trends 1934-1940

Land redistribution to peasants: EJIDOS– 18 million hectares (45 million acres)—800,000 recipients– Ejido share of cultivated land: 15% in 1930 47% by 1940– Forest lands: 1.5 % in 1930 18% in 1940

However, land reform did not touch holdings of foreign and national logging companies

– “rentismo”

Conservation “professionalized” in gov bureaucracy– “Scientific” management of the forests

END RESULT: Nobody followed it, but evasion was worse than managed development

Mixed messages: 1949-1980

Land re-distribution expanded. By 1980, 500 ejidos/communities own 65% of the forest but they are forbidden to utilize the forest

ISI Forestry /“Productionism” 1949-1958: Concessions to big integrated forestry firms

Conservation pressures Even in community forests, parastatal and private

logging firms log with impunity, peasants are policed

Inequalities breed rural unrest– Roots of Zapatista movement and other guerrilla groups

The Rise of Community Forestry

As early as 1960: supporters envision production with conservation “sustainable development”

Late 1970’s: Concessions set to expire: communities organize regionally to exert pressure on President de la Madrid “we will no longer permit our natural resources to be wasted, since they are the patrimony of our children”

1986 forestry law: rescinded concessions, recognized rights of community ownership

Percent of Timber from Community Managed Forests  Commercial

TimberMilled Timber

1976 2-3 Na

1980 17 Na

1992 40 15

Source: Klooster. 2003

   

Michoacan community: logging, sawmill, furniture factory

Oaxaca: 95 communities Quintana Roo

– Benefits not limited to exceptionally well managed communities

Social and Environmental impacts of forest management

Community Forestry under Neoliberal Reforms:

Neoliberalization under IMF restructuring 1992 Forestry Act: modifications to Article

27privatization:– Land may be sold, but is not required to be sold– devolution of control to the communities – but neglect of support

State support for Pulpwood Plantations: PRODEPLAN

– Investment subsidies and incentives – Investment Inequalities: peasants perceive unprepared ness

and unwillingness to risk land/HOME– stagnation

Response to Problems of Neoliberalism

Unique combination of various political and social factors

– Unprecedented and vigorous debate about forestry in Mexico during 1990’s

– Movement of social reformers into gov. forestry – Growing vulnerability of PRI– Zapatistas?

1997 Forestry Plan: PRODEFOR– “building communities' managerial capacity for forestry

through training in administration and forest management, participatory rural appraisals, and workshops in which successful forestry communities share their knowledge with less experienced forestry communities”

Mexican Forests, 2003

Forest Ownership in Mexico

Ejido and Comm. Agrarias (8000-9000)

70-80%

Small Properties, 15-20 hectares

15-20%

Protected Areas/Parks

5-10%

Fox Administration

Comisión Nacional Forestal– 2x funding for commercial plantations

Neoliberalism favors TNCs, not forest owning villages

New international issue: protection of Monarch butterfly breeding grounds

Tania Murray Li: critique of CBNRM in the Philippines/Indonesia

Community, participation, empowerment and sustainability widely used discourses

Reality: Applications of these terms vary widely and with wide degrees of success

Furthermore, internal inequalities in benefits still remain– Class– Gender

Tania Murray Li: Philippines/Indonesia

CBNRM externally defines options: “while some people would benefit from CBNRM

provisions, others would find themselves re-assigned to a marginal economic niche that corresponds poorly to the futures they imagine for themselves”

Tania Murray Li: Philippines/Indonesia

Need to explore the role of the state and power structures in using CBNRM for greater control.

“CBNRM, rather than rolling back the state and reducing official interference in local affairs, is a vehicle for realigning the relationship between the state and upland citizens. Contrary to the goal of its proponents, there is increasing evidence that CBNRM has the effect of intensifying state control over upland resources, lives and livelihoods. For this reason, some upland citizens may resist programs promoted in the name of CBNRM. For others, better integration into the legal and administrative systems of the state is a desirable outcome.”

Tania Murray Li: Philippines/Indonesia

Important to consider CBNRM as a channel into improving peasants power within state political/economic structures.

“The CBNRM simplification that assumes an inherent separation between community and state, and posits community as a natural entity outside and/or opposed to state processes, fits poorly with the historical and contemporary processes of state and community formation in Southeast Asia's upland regions.”

Final note on forests

Over 90% of the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty depend on forests for some part of their livelihoods.