the institutional drivers of sustainable landscapes: a case study of

Land Use Policy 21 (2004) 333–346

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*Correspondi

6137.

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0264-8377/$ - see

doi:10.1016/j.lan

The institutional drivers of sustainable landscapes: a case study of the‘Mayan Zone’ in Quintana Roo, Mexico

David Barton Braya,*, Edward A. Ellisb, Natalia Armijo-Cantoc, Christopher T. Beckd

a Department of Environmental Studies, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USAb Center for Subtropical Agroforestry, School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, P.O. Box 110410, Gainesville,

FL 32611-0410, USAc Division de Humanidades y Estudios Internacionales, Universidad de Quintana Roo, Boulevard Bahia Esq. Ignacio Comonfort, Apdo Postal 10,

Chetumal, Quintana Roo CP 77000, Mexicod Wildlands League, 401 Richmond St., Suite 380, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3A8, Canada

Received 13 June 2003; received in revised form 14 November 2003; accepted 25 November 2003

Abstract

Research on the dynamics of tropical forest land use and cover change (LUCC) has focused on the three scenarios: (1)

deforestation/degradation; (2) settled, degraded areas in recovery, and (3) sparsely settled, expansive, intact forest. Through

examination of a central Quintana Roo, Mexico case study we propose a fourth scenario of a ‘sustainable landscape’: an inhabited,

productively used, forested landscape that nonetheless shows little change or net gains in forest cover over the last 25 years. We use

Landsat images to demonstrate a low incidence of net deforestation, 0.01% for the 1984–2000 period, the lowest recorded

deforestation rate for southeastern Mexico. Institutional innovations such as an agrarian reform process that established large

common property forests for non-timber forest product extraction, and later innovations such as sustainable forest management

institutions have driven the outcome of low net deforestation, added to multiple organizational processes that promote sustainable

land use.

r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Sustainable landscapes; Mexico; Yucatan peninsula; Land use/cover change; Deforestation; Institutions

Introduction

Research on tropical forest land use and cover change(LUCC) has focused on three scenarios: (1) deforesta-tion and degradation, as the most worrying tendenciesof land cover change (Rudel and Roper, 1996;Kaimowitz and Angelsen, 1998; Geist and Lambin,2001; Sader and Spruce, 1995; Turner II et al., 2001), (2)settled degraded areas which show trends towards arelative restoration of forest cover and biodiversitythrough agroforestry or secondary succession, withsome exhibiting a possible ‘forest transition scenario’(Nepstad et al., 1991; Hobbs and Saunders, 1993; Rudelet al., 2000; Kammesheidt, 2002; Perz and Skole, 2003)

ng author. Tel.: +1-305-348-6236; fax: +1-305-348-

ss: [email protected] (D.B. Bray).

front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

dusepol.2003.11.001

and (3) large, intact forest masses which may be thinlyinhabited by traditional peoples leading low-impact lifestyles and/or may be formal protected areas, a stableland use scenario (Redford and Mansour, 1996; Bruneret al., 2001). This article examines a case study in aproposed fourth scenario of long-settled agriculturaland forest extraction landscapes that have nonethelesspreserved significant forest cover, another stable landuse scenario. These areas, which we term ‘sustainablelandscapes’, we operatively define as landscapes wheredeforestation rates are low, or with no net forest loss oreven expansion of forest cover, and where multipleinstitutional processes are occurring that tend towardsthe preservation of ecosystem structure, composition,and processes (Haines-Young, 2000; Sheppard andHarshaw, 2001). We use forest cover as an imperfectproxy for other ecosystems structures and processes, butrelated research is now underway on the impact of

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logging and other human activities on aspects other thanforest cover. However, landscapes heavily used byhumans can still retain many crucial ecosystem pro-cesses and biodiversity. As argued by Chazdon (1998),‘‘A tropical landscape containing a matrix of old-growthforest fragments, second-growth forest, logged forest,and agricultural fields could conceivably protect most ofthe species present in the regional biota’’.

It is not clear how well-represented sustainablelandscapes may be on the ground or in the literature,but they could range from other forested landscapes inMexico to European community forest landscapes suchas the Val di Fiemme in Italy (Jeanrenaud, 2001; Brayand Merino Perez, 2003; Bray et al., 2003). The term‘drivers’ is commonly used to refer to the variables thatlead to degrading land cover change. Geist and Lambin(2002) describe the ‘underlying driving forces’ ofdeforestation as fundamental social processes, such aspopulation dynamics and institutional policies, whichoperate at local, national or global levels and thatunderpin the ‘proximate causes’ of deforestation whichare the immediate local actions, such as agriculturalexpansion or logging. Here we argue that institutionalfactors may also, and in contrast, ‘drive’ the main-tenance of forest cover and result in the outcome of asustainable landscape.

Central Quintana Roo, Mexico, known locally as‘The Mayan Zone’ and largely coincident with theMunicipio of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, is characterized bya century and a half of settlement by Mayan farmerspracticing extensive slash and burn shifting cultivationcalled milpa farming (intercropped maize, beans andsquash), extraction of commercial non-timber forestproducts (NTFPs) since the 1920s, government-ledcattle projects in the 1970s, and both unsustainableprivate and more sustainable community-based loggingsince the 1980s. Nonetheless, this significantly usedlandscape of human livelihoods still exhibits only veryminor net losses of forest cover over the last 25 years,while many other tropical areas of Mexico and LatinAmerica have experienced much higher rates of loss. Wewill use remote sensing of Landsat images to demon-strate the low incidence of deforestation, and then willuse statistical analyses of data collected from primaryand secondary sources, semi-structured interviews,participant-observation research, and participatorymapping exercises to examine the institutional drivingforces that led to the outcome of forest covermaintenance despite relatively intensive use. The unitof analysis is not individual agents but rather the ejido asa collective landholding unit. These community landmanagement units dominate the landscape of the studyarea and have major influence over individual land usedecisions within their boundaries, along with largerinstitutional forces such as government polices. Thus,we are not developing an agent-based, predictive LUCC

model. Variables such as distance to roads, distancefrom populated settlements, population, ejido size, ageof ejido, number of ejidatarios (community members),ejido permanent forest (timber management) areas, andvolume of timber extracted are evaluated throughbinary logistic regression and multiple regressionanalysis for impact on land cover change. We thenconduct an historical, institutional, and organizationalanalysis to show how these variables are largelyoutcomes of demographic, institutional and marketfactors, such as government policy and markets, therole of grassroots organizations, and ejido-level deci-sion-making. This places the focus on the role ofinstitutions and organizations rather than individualagents. We will then examine the implications for thesefindings for contrasting narratives of deforestation andsustainable landscapes.

We argue that the current outcome of a sustainablelandscape is due to a series of institutional innovationswhich have strongly influenced the expression of thephysical factors on the ground (Young, 1999). Aninstitutional approach includes the consideration ofinstitutions as rules or decision-making procedures,informal or formal, over natural resource use or oforganizations, as material entities with legal recognition,and of markets, which are created and constrained byformal and informal institutions (North, 1990; Ostromet al., 1999; Young, 1999). This research may also beregarded as a contribution to ‘sustainability science’which is ‘‘integrative, regional and place-based’’ (Kateset al., 2001) and ‘integrated land history’ (Klepeis andTurner, 2001).

Tropical deforestation in Mexico: national and regional

scales

To understand the significance of our findings, it isimportant to review rates of deforestation in tropicalMexico. In the mid-1980s deforestation rates in Mex-ico’s tropical forests were estimated at around 2% a year(World Bank, 1995). The 2000 National ForestryInventory, the most definitive study of land use changein Mexico to date, found that for the entire country forthe 1976–2000 period the annual rate of deforestationfor temperate forests was 0.25% and for rainforests wasa significantly higher 0.76% (Palacio-Prieto et al., 2002;Vel!azquez et al., 2002). Regional studies, however, haveshown local rates that range from 4.3% to 12.4%annually for varying periods. Cairns et al. (2000) founda deforestation rate of 1.9% between 1977–1992 in theeight states of tropical southeastern Mexico. Dirzo andGarc!ıa (1992) show that the Tuxtlas area of Veracruzsuffered a 4.3% deforestation rate in the 1976–1986period. Sohn et al. (1999) report for a region of the stateof Yucatan, that forest cover had decreased from 41%

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to 28% in the 1985–1995 period, not reporting adeforestation rate. De Jong et al. (2000) found thatfrom the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, two regions of theLacandon forest had lost forest at a rate of 2% a year,while in a third, with 80% under protected status, thedecline was only 0.3% a year. O’Brien (1998) reportsthat the Marques de Comillas region in the Lacandonhad a 2.8% deforestation rate from 1979 to 1989. In partof the southern Yucatan Peninsula, rates of deforesta-tion between 1969 and 1997 may range from 0.32% to0.39% (Turner II et al., 2001), a region with theCalakmul Biosphere Reserve at its heart. The highdegree of local variability is indicated by other morelocalized studies in southern Campeche which haveshown up to a 1% rate in the northern part of theCalakmul Biosphere Reserve (1994–2001) and as high as5% at the ejido level in southern Campeche (PorterBolland, 1996). Looking at the larger Mayan Forest(Primack et al., 1998) deforestation rates in the Peten ofGuatemala between 1986 and 1990 were estimated at0.4% in a region that also had the nuclear zone of alarge protected area, the Maya Biosphere Reserve, at itscenter (Sader et al., 1994) although they were muchhigher in localized areas later in the 1990s (Sader et al.,1997). The causes of deforestation in the Mexican caseare usually linked to agricultural and livestock expan-sion (Barbier and Burgess, 1996), although they arebolstered by driving forces of institutional policies. It isapparent that deforestation has proceeded at differentrates in different regions in different periods. Inparticular, the figures reported above suggest that theregions with the highest deforestation rates (above 2%)are colonization and agriculture areas, while the areaswith low deforestation rates (in the 0.3–0.4% range) hadprotected areas at their core (Lacandon in Chiapas,Calakmul in Campeche, and the Maya BiosphereReserve in the Peten). This is a point to which we willreturn in the conclusions.

The forests of central Quintana Roo

The forests of central Quintana Roo are classified astropical deciduous forests, with an annual rainfall of1000–1300 mm per year. There is a marked 5–6 monthdry season, and in March and April, many species droptheir leaves for a short time. Forests stand on extremelyrocky soil, with elevations that vary only from 0 to200 m. There are many even-aged stands due to thecatastrophic natural disturbances of hurricanes andfires, and the human disturbance of shifting agriculture.Although mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla), the spe-cies around which management plans have beenstructured, has an average natural distribution of onlyone full-sized, mature individual per hectare, it alsooccurs in clumped distributions of thick stands resulting

from the large clearings left by natural disturbances.‘‘For millennia the forests of Quintana Roo have beenaffected by a wide spectrum of drastic disturbances,both natural and anthropogenic,’’ (Snook, 1998) and arethus considered to be ‘‘ecologically resilient to anunusual degree’’ (Hawthorne and Hughes, 1997).

Remote sensing and regression analyses

In order to evaluate LUCC in central Quintana Roo,we compared classified Landsat satellite imagery of1976, 1984 and 2000 and performed spatial binarylogistic regression and multiple regression to examinedifferent variables that may impact land cover changes.Fig. 1 shows the study area and the region designatedfor the spatial analysis. The analysis area designated forthe remote sensing analysis consists of a 119 km� 62 kmregion (approx. 7300 km2), mostly the western half ofthe municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. This regionof interest was selected since it contains the majority ofthe agricultural ejido lands belonging to Mayan com-munities and excludes the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reservein the eastern portion of the municipality.

The images used to classify land cover were: twoLandsat MSS scenes from different dates in 1976, twoLandsat 5 TM scenes from November 11, 1984, and twoLandsat 7 ETM scenes from March 21, 2000. GPSreference points were collected in the field to test theaccuracy of the georeferenced 2000 images, which wereaccurate to within 1 pixel (o29 m). The 1984 and 1976images were then geometrically rectified to match the2000 images. The 2000 images were cloud free and the1976 and 1984 were nearly cloud free. All imagesunderwent radiometric correction for atmosphericerrors and for the multi-date image comparison. Oncethe images were processed, they were subset and joinedin order to cover the extent of the analysis area for theyears 1976, 1984 and 2000.

To extract vegetation and land cover information, weused principal component analysis (PCA) images withthe best three PCA bands, and performed multi-spectralclassification using the ISODATA procedure set to 30spectral clusters. Over 200 GPS land use and vegetationground-truth points, collected in the field during August2000 and June 2001 were then used to guide and classifythe 30 spectral clusters of the 2000 image into 9 distinctland cover types: (1) water, (2) mature upland semi-deciduous forest (over 40 years), (3) low deciduousforest, (4) advanced secondary semi-deciduous forest(20–40 years), (5) secondary succession or fallow (8–20years), (6) early succession or fallow (3–8 years 7)aquatic vegetation/savanna, (8) lowland flooded forest,and (9) agriculture/residential. An accuracy of assess-ment of the 2000 classified image using the ground-truthpoints was over 90%. The same classification procedure

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Fig. 1. Location of Zona Maya analysis area in central Quintana Roo, Mexico.

D.B. Bray et al. / Land Use Policy 21 (2004) 333–346336

was used with the 1976 and 1984 images, however onlyfive land cover types were clearly distinguished: (1)water, (2) upland forest (3) secondary forest or fallow(o20 years) (4) lowland flooded forest and (5)agriculture/residential.

For the land cover change detection analysis, theclassified images were reclassified and narrowed down tobinary images of forested areas (upland forest over 20years) with a value of 0 and non-forested areas (fallowor young secondary forest and agricultural/residentialclasses) with a value of 1. Land cover classes of water,aquatic vegetation and lowland flooded forest weremasked out for the change detection analysis. Besidesoccupying a minimal surface area of the total analysisarea (o4%), lowland flooded forests were excludedsince they are rarely cleared for agriculture (Reyes D!ıazGallegos et al., 2002). Furthermore, since the temporaland spatial analysis was primarily concerned withchanges in forest cover, advanced secondary forest(approximately over 20 years) was included as forested.Many studies report the rapid recovery of speciesbiodiversity and biomass in secondary tropical forestsof the region (G !omez-Pompa et al., 1976; Brown andLugo, 1990; Whigham et al., 1991; Turner II et al., 2001;Ceccon et al., 2002). For similar forests in the southernYucatan peninsular region, Turner II et al. (2001) reportabove ground biomass increasing to up to 80% ofmature forest levels and having a similar species

community after only 25 years of succession. With thebinomial classification of forested and non-forestedareas, change detection was determined by intersectingthe years of 1976 with 1984 and 1984 with 2000, yielding2 raster layers indicating four land cover change classes:deforested (0-1), remained deforested (1-0), remainedforested (0-0), and reforested. Fig. 2 shows the inter-sected images showing land cover changes from 1976 to1984 and from 1984 to 2000.

We use binary logistic regression analysis to analyzethe spatial occurrence of deforestation in our analysisarea with respect to the suite of explanatory variables.For the analysis, the change-detection images werereclassified to a binomial classification with 1 assignedfor areas that remained or became deforested and 0assigned to areas that remained or became forested.Spatial data used as explanatory variables for thelogistic regression included: (1) distance to roads, (2)distance to settlements, (3) spatial population index, (4)ejido size, (5) ejido age, (6) number of ejidatarios, (7)ejido population, (8) timber volume extracted per ejido

(1993–1997) and (9) ejido permanent forest area (PFA).These layers were created from GIS data (e.g., roads andsettlement locations) and the 1997 socioeconomic censusdata obtained from the National Institute for Statistics,Geography, and Informatics (INEGI, 1997). The ejido

and land tenure boundaries were acquired from theNational Agrarian Registry (RAN/PROCEDE), and

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Fig. 2. LULC changes in the Zona Maya for the periods 1976 to 1984 and 1984 to 2000.

Table 1

Changes in LU/LC classes from 1976 to 1984 and from 1984 to 2000 in

central Quintana Roo

LU/LC changes 1976–1984 area (ha) 1984–2000 area (ha)

Forest to intervened 89 614 78 575

% of total area 12% 11%

Annual rate 1.5% 0.9%

Remained intervened 49 593 70 582


Remained forested 432 013 432 065


Intervened to forest 66 823 70 116



Annual forest cover loss 2 849 705


D.B. Bray et al. / Land Use Policy 21 (2004) 333–346 337

ejido data, such as timber volume extracted and PFA,were obtained from the Secretary of the Environmentand Natural Resources (SEMARNAP, 2000). GISlayers representing distance from roads and settlementswere developed using standard distance buffer opera-tions. Additional layers were developed by joiningspatial features representing settlements and ejidos withrelevant attribute data.

Since binary logistic regression describes the relation-ship between one or more explanatory or independentvariables and the probability (specifically, log odds) of adichotomous outcome (dependent variable); in ouranalysis, the binary outcome of the dependent variableis forest=0 or deforested=1. The variables we selected

represent several of the proximate causes of deforesta-tion due to underlying economic, demographic andinstitutional forces (Geist and Lambin, 2001). Distanceto roads and settlements, for example, are associatedwith infrastructure development and expansion. In theZona Maya of Quintana Roo, most roads were put inafter the 1970s as a result of policy and institutionalmeasures to develop the newly created Mexican state.The creation of ejidos and their characteristics are alsolargely due to the interaction between institutionalforces of land reform and the market at the nationaland ejido level which are further explained below.Variables such as ejido population and populationindices largely represent demographic factors that areoften associated with deforestation. Finally, commerciallogging is also considered a proximate cause ofdeforestation (Geist and Lambin, 2001), and variablessuch as timber volumes extracted and PFAs (an areaover which a logging management plan operates, seebelow) also represent institutional and policy factorsoccurring at both national and ejido scales. We selectedthe above-mentioned explanatory variables for ourlogistic regression since they represented a variety ofunderlying forces (institutional, economic and demo-graphic) associated with deforestation, in addition tobeing limited due to the lack of complete data for theregion.

For the logistic regression analysis, we generated 250random points within 50 ejidos (and a few privateproperties) encompassing the extent of the analysis area.For each random point, we extracted the cell valuescorresponding to the spatial layers representing thedependent and explanatory variables. The randompoints were generated so that points were a minimum

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Table 2

Binary logistic regression results for the probability of deforestation in the Zona Maya of Quintana Roo, Mexico from 1976 to 1984

Variables 1976–1984 logistic regression modela

B SE w2 df s

Intercept 39.97 47.21 0.72 1 0.39

Distance to roads �0.0002 0.0002 1.63 1 0.20

Distance to settlements �0.0003 0.0002 2.99 1 0.08

Spatial population index 0.0001 0.0005 0.05 1 0.82

Ejido size �0.00001 0.00003 0.24 1 0.62

Ejido age �0.02 0.02 0.73 1 0.39

# of Ejidatarios �0.003 0.003 1.14 1 0.28

Ejido population 0.002 0.0006 8.15 1 0.004

Ejido timber volume 2.58E�6 0.00004 0.005 1 0.94

Ejido PFA �0.00005 0.00008 0.46 1 0.49

Model (�2 Log likelihood Ratio) �� 35.19 9 o0.0001

a Goodness-of-fit statistics: Hosmer Lemeshow H2 ¼ 7:2; df ¼ 8; p ¼ 0:52; Deviance H2 ¼ 198:5; df ¼ 206; p ¼ 0:63:

D.B. Bray et al. / Land Use Policy 21 (2004) 333–346338

of 1000 m apart and each ejido polygon contained atleast 5 points. A test for spatial autocorrelation of thedata based on the location of the random points wasperformed which failed to reject the Null Hypothesisthat no spatial autocorrelation exists (Moran’s I ¼0:041 with an expected value of independence of�0.010). The binary logistic regression analysis wasexecuted in SAS using the full model procedure. Inaddition, with a sample of 50 ejidos, we used multipleregression analyses to test the relationship betweenforested and deforested areas inside ejidos with respectto the independent variables of ejido size, age, PFA,population, ejidatarios, and timber volumes extracted.

Results

Land use/land cover changes

Table 1 describes LULC changes during the periods1976 to 1984 and 1984 to 2000 and demonstrates thedynamics of forest cover loss and recovery in the Zona

Maya.Table 1 shows that the total area changed from forest

to deforested was 12% between 1976 and 1984 (1.5%annual rate), but dropped to 11% (0.9% annual rate)from 1984 to 2000. However, in the 1976 to 1984 period,9% of the total area was reforested through secondarysuccession, a rate of forest recovery of 1.1% a year.Likewise, the 11% deforestation from 1984 to 2000(annual rate of 0.9%) was almost directly counter-balanced by a 10% increase in fallow and secondaryforest (o20 years). Classifying only mature andadvanced secondary forest (>20 years), the latter theperiod in which there is agreement that there can besignificant forest recovery, as forest cover, there was anet annual rate of forest cover loss of only 0.4% from1976 to 1984, and 0.1% from 1984 to 2000. This analysisreveals the dynamic mosaic of land use in the region,

and that not all processes are linearly directed towardsdeforestation. Thus, during the 1990s, overall forest lossin the Mayan Zone slowed to an almost imperceptiblerate. Although not as low, Turner II et al. (2001) alsoreport declining rates in the 1990s in the southernYucatan Peninsular Region.

Statistical results summary

Results for the logistic regression analyses for the twoperiods are shown in Tables 2 and 3. These resultsindicate show that for the 1976 to 1984 period, the mostsignificant explanatory variables related to the occur-rence of deforestation were (1) distance to settlements(w2=2.99, p ¼ 0:08) and (2) ejido population (w2=8.15,p ¼ 0:004). According to our model, nearness tosettlements and greater population (not density) aremore likely to explain deforestation within our analysisarea. The overall Likelihood Ratio model is significant(po0:0001) according to the model w2 statistic andpredicted 76% of the occurrences of non-forested areas.This model suggests the importance of demographicforces, varying from migration into and creation ofsmaller ejidos to vegetative growth in larger ejidos,driving deforestation in the region during the 1976 to1984 period.

As shown in Table 3 for the 1984 to 2000 period, themost significant variables explaining the probability ofoccurrence of deforestation are: (1) distance to roads(w2=9.75, p ¼ 0:002), (2) ejido age (w2=3.12, p ¼ 0:08)and (3) ejido timber volume extracted (w2=3.16,p ¼ 0:07). Our overall Likelihood Ratio model issignificant (po0:0001) and stronger for this period thanthe earlier period, predicting almost 80% of theoccurrence of non-forested areas. During this latterperiod, our explanatory variables are more associatedwith institutional forces rather than demographic ones.The building of new roads and their impacts ondeforestation are more evident. Furthermore, our model

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Table 3

Binary logistic regression results for the probability of deforestation in the Zona Maya of Quintana Roo, Mexico from 1984 to 2000

Variables 1984–2000 logistic regression modela

B SE w2 df s

Intercept 98.69 56.17 3.09 1 0.08

Distance to roads �0.0006 0.0002 9.75 1 0.002

Distance to settlements 0.00006 0.0002 0.12 1 0.72

Spatial population Index �0.0002 0.0005 0.19 1 0.66

Ejido size �0.00002 0.00003 0.51 1 0.48

Ejido age �0.05 0.03 3.12 1 0.08

# of Ejidatarios �0.004 0.003 1.26 1 0.26

Ejido population 0.0008 0.0006 1.82 1 0.18

Ejido timber volume �0.00012 0.00007 3.16 1 0.07

Ejido PFA �0.00009 0.00009 0.84 1 0.34

Model (�2 Log likelihood ratio) �� 43.33 9 o0.0001

a Goodness-of-fit Statistics: Hosmer Lemeshow H2 ¼ 4:2; df ¼ 8; p ¼ 0:83; Deviance H2 ¼ 188:3; df ¼ 202; p ¼ 0:74:

Table 4

Multiple regression results for the relationship between ejido forested areas and ejido size, age, PFA, population, ejidatarios and timber volumes

extracted

Variables 1976–1984 ejido forested areas 1984–2000 ejido forested areas

Coeff. t-statistic p-val Coeff. t-statistic p-val

Intercept �13,7731.5 �1.33 0.19 �64,203.27 �0.61 0.54

Ejido size 0.67 10.73 1.3E�13 0.66 10.41 3.3E�13

Ejido age 70.25 1.34 0.19 33.01 0.62 0.53

Ejido PFA �0.14 �0.85 0.40 �0.18 �1.09 0.23

Ejido population �0.85 �0.57 0.56 �0.06 �0.04 0.97

Ejidatarios 6.39 0.83 0.41 2.45 0.32 0.75

Ejido timber volume 0.09 1.34 0.18 0.13 1.77 0.08

Model R2 ¼ 0:88; F ¼ 50:8; df ¼ 6; po0:001 R2 ¼ 0:88; F ¼ 51:4; df ¼ 6; po0:001

D.B. Bray et al. / Land Use Policy 21 (2004) 333–346 339

indicates that areas within older ejidos (typically largerand established initially for chicle extraction) andextracting greater volumes of timber are much lesslikely to be deforested. This is a key finding which pointsto the institutional factors of agrarian reform, markets,and forestry institutions and organizations that wediscuss in the following section.

Multiple regression results show similar trendsexplaining forest cover change, and we examined howour six variables impact deforested and forested areas,respectively, within the ejido. During the period from1976 to 1984 the most significant variables related todeforested areas within ejidos were ejido size andpopulation; large ejidos that tended to have largerpopulations tended to have greater absolute deforesta-tion, a not surprising conclusion. However, we will herefocus more closely on the multiple regression modelsexplaining the relationships between ejido forested areasand the six ejido variables, which indicated that the sizeof the ejido was the most significant variable for the 1976to 1984 period (p ¼ 1:3E�13) and 1984 to 2000 period(p ¼ 3:3E�13), which demonstrates that large ejidos

tend to have more forest, confirming what is empiricallyobvious from the satellite photos (see Table 4).

In addition, for the period 1984 to 2000, timbervolumes extracted also had a significant positiverelationship explaining forested areas within ejidos

(p ¼ 0:08). Both these models were strong, explainingup to 88% of the variance found in forested areas withinejidos. Our multiple regression analyses suggest thatlarger ejidos and those more engaged in logging tend tohave larger forest areas, again confirming casualobservation. While this appears to be an obviousrelationship for the Zona Maya in Quintana Roo, itcontradicts the conventional notion that logging isassociated with deforestation as indicated by Geist andLambin (2002) in their analysis of tropical deforestation,a point to which we shall return in the conclusions.Below we shall try and account for these statisticalresults in terms of the history and institutions that havedefined the Zona Maya and the probable underlyingdriving forces impacting these very low rates ofdeforestation and the notable stability of forest coverwithin the dynamic mosaic in this heavily used region.


Historical, institutional and organizational analysis of

drivers of forest cover stability and a sustainable

landscape

The distribution of roads and settlements, the size ofejidos, and the existence of physically demarcatedlogging estates are all variables that express physicalrealities, but that result from historically situated socialand institutional processes. We will look at theseprocesses in three principal phases: (1) 1850–1975, (2)1976–1984 and (3) 1984–2000.

1850–1976: it is necessary to go back in history tounderstand the roots of the large forest communities ofcentral Quintana Roo. The region was virtually unin-habited for centuries after the collapse of the AncientMayan civilization, but was resettled by Mayan refugeesfleeing religious taxes and expanding sugar plantationsin Yucatan in the mid-19th century (Dumond, 1997).These Mayans mounted an armed uprising, known as‘The Caste War’ galvanized by a passing belief in atalking cross, with an estimated 40,000 of thempopulating these forests in 1850, but declining to some10,000 by the end of the 19th century (Konrad, 1991).They constitute a distinct subgroup within the Mayansof the Yucatan Peninsula, which we will here term theSanta Cruz Mayans (Allan Burns, personal commu-nication). There was little new in-migration into theregion until spontaneous colonization movements fromthe state of Yucatan in the 1960s (Somarriba SilvaMS).

The penetration of chicle markets and institutions ofagrarian reform in the 1920s and 1930s were a crucialformative force in subsequent patterns of forestpreservation and land tenure. In 1920, the forests werestill unsurveyed national territory, the home of theSanta Cruz Mayans for seventy years but with no state-recognized land claims. This situation did not begin tochange until 1919 when markets for chicle, the sap of thechicozapote tree (Manilkara zapota) reached centralQuintana Roo (Konrad, 1991). Chicle is a NTFP usedto manufacture chewing gum that gave the standingforest substantial value.

Agrarian reform arrived in the presidency of L!azaroC!ardenas (1934–1940). In the 19th and early 20thcentury, the Santa Cruz Mayans had regarded the forestas one vast common property, with land for milpa

agriculture obtained over large areas and use rights overfallow plots recognized (Hostettler, 1996). The Mexicanagrarian reform process called for the establishment ofejidos (collective land grants) in the region, designedwith chicle in mind. The land grants were termed ‘ForestReserves’ although in fact they were chicle reserves, thuscreating ‘extractive reserves’ for an NTFP 60 yearsbefore the concept was introduced in Brazil (Galletti,1994). With 420 ha per person, calculated to be theamount of forest land needed for a continuous resinharvest, the ten ejidos established in the region from

1935 to 1942 averaged almost 35,000 ha each. Althoughaccess to large forested areas was consistent with SantaCruz Mayan practices, the institutional interactionbetween markets and government agrarian reformpolicies determined the Mexican government’s decisionto preserve large forest masses within the commonproperty ejido structure, something that can now beregarded as an institutional innovation compared toprivate and public landholdings that dominated, andstill dominate, other tropical areas. With the creation ofthe state of Quintana Roo in 1974, new ejidos began tobe granted to migrants from the Yucatan Peninsula andelsewhere in the 1960s and early 1970s. These wereestablished with only farming in mind, with an averageof 20 ha per farmer, only enough for a swiddenagricultural regime.

From the 1930s until 1985, farmers in centralQuintana Roo were free to roam throughout the ejido

in search of good soils, while leaving stands ofchicozapote. Typically, from 4 to 6 ha were tilled for 2years, and then left fallow for at least 10 years(Hostettler, 1996). As suggested in the remote imageanalysis, this shifting agricultural regime tends to returnas much forest to fallow and secondary succession as itremoved, suggesting as well that population pressureswere not intense during this period. Timber markets firstpenetrated in the form of poorly regulated smallcontractors undertaking selective logging of mahoganyand Spanish cedar (Cedrela odorata) in the late 1950s. Adetailed analysis of demographic patterns by ejido in theregion shows two tendencies during this period: (1) thedispersion of population from the traditional ejidos

established into the 1930s into unexploited forest areasin response to low-level population pressures and (2) inthe 1960s the beginnings of immigration by Mayancolonists from the state of Yucatan (SomarribaSilvaMS). But the older forest ejidos served as bulwarksagainst these new migrations, with few of the newmigrants settling in the older ejidos. Thus, the signalevent of this period was the establishment of largecommon property forest communities dedicated to theextraction of a NTFP, which remained economicallyimportant during the period, and that received little newin-migration.

1976–1984: The second half of the 1970s and the early1980s were marked by the beginning of logging of lesser-known tropical species (LKS) for railroad ties and byland clearing for government-led cattle projects. Rail-road tie production started in the region in the mid-1970s (Hostettler, 1996) and represented a diversifica-tion of forest production into LKS, with a list of tenapproved species. There was a strong preference for oneparticular species, chechem (Metopium browneii), easy tocut despite a poisonous resin, with reports that from26% to 60% of railroad ties were chechem (Murphy,1990; Shoch, 1999). Railroad tie harvesting was


concentrated near towns and along logging roads, andthus had a localized impact on the forest (Shoch, 1999).In recent years, railroad ties have had highly unstablemarkets, disappearing from 1998 to 2001 before newdemand emerged in 2002.

The large pink areas visible in the upper part of the1976–1984 image (Fig. 2) were opened for pasture in themid-1970s. During this period, a government develop-ment program paid local people to clear large areas offorest, up to 1200 ha in the community of Yaxley, forexample, but never delivered the cattle (Hostettler,1996). This process, repeated in a number of commu-nities, opened up large swaths of forest, which wereboth incorporated into milpa and left to secondarysuccession.

In the 1970–1980 period the large forest ejidosestablished in the 1935–1942 period showed a popula-tion growth rate of 2.85% while the growth rate in thenew smaller ejidos formed by Mayan migrants from thestate of Yucatan was 16.78% (Somarriba SilvaMS).However, the larger existing populations in the olderejidos meant that total deforestation for agriculture wasin the same range as the newer, more dynamicallygrowing communities. Temporary migration to work inconstruction in the Cancun-Tulum corridor became animportant economic activity in this period. In the binarylogistic regression for this period, we saw that distanceto settlement and ejido population were most respon-sible for deforestation, indicating that almost alldeforestation was due to slash and burn agricultureand most likely the large openings for the cattle projects.In the multiple regression analysis for forested areaswithin the ejidos, we saw the ejido size was the mostimportant variable for this period, confirming thesignificance of the large forest ejidos established in the1930s and 1940s.

1984–2000: In 1984 a state and federal governmentprogram with German technical assistance, known asthe Plan Piloto Forestal (PPF) began working indeveloping organizational structures and managementpractices for the commercial production of timber bycommunities in the region (Bray et al., 1993; Kiernanand Freese, 1997; Merino, 1997; Galletti, 1998; Vargas-Prieto, 1998; Armijo Canto, 1999; Taylor and Zabin,2000; Bray, 2001). In a series of institutional and forestmanagement innovations, government organizers andforesters helped the communities in declaring PFAs,conducted participatory forest inventories (Lawrenceand S!anchez-Rom!an, 1996), established communityforest enterprises (CFEs) and erected second-levelorganizations serving as the channels for technicalassistance, donor support, and negotiations with gov-ernment agencies. From 1985 to 1989, 502,166 ha wereplaced in PFAs in both southern and central QuintanaRoo as a result of decisions in ejido General Assemblieswith advising from the PPF, including the large blocks

in the image in Fig. 2. The PFAs constituted forestestates for selective logging under management plansand were declared by the communities as not subject toland use change. As indicated in the multiple regressionanalysis, logging volume extracted under managementplans are important explanatory variables in maintain-ing forest cover. The PFAs effectively created a fixed‘internal agricultural frontier’ in each ejido, forcing slashand burn agriculture to operate within more confinedareas. Participatory mapping exercises, field interviews,and remote images suggest that the PFA has beenlargely respected in the larger ejidos with commerciallogging, but that agriculture continued to expand intothe PFAs in smaller ejidos with little or no commercialvolumes of timber (Beck and Cruz C!aceres, 2001). Thisis further evidence that the PFAs and logging havepreserved more mature forest and suggests two counter-vailing trends in the region, a decline in mature forestand a rise in fallow and secondary vegetation in thesmaller ejidos, while the PFAs in the larger ejidos

maintained mature forest and returned cleared andfallow areas into secondary succession, while concen-trating a more intensive and dynamic mosaic ofagriculture and secondary succession in the now clearlyzoned agricultural areas. In many of the larger ejidos

there are also forest areas outside of the PFAs, andalthough potentially subject to agriculture, some ofthese areas are still forested today, with little apparentpressure on them.

The CFEs and second-level organizations wereorganizational innovations that provided institutionalsupport for the existence of the PFAs. The CFEs are anunusual example (although common in Mexico) of amarket-oriented community enterprise based on acommon property resource (Antinori, 2000; Bray et al.,2003) that negotiates with buyers, administers thelogging process and generates employment, whiledistributing profit shares to the community, with thelogging volumes heavily regulated by the Mexicangovernment. Second-level organizations, such as theOrganizaci !on de Ejidos Productores Forestales de la Zona

Maya (OEPFZM) in Quintana Roo administer manage-ment plans and have also channeled other resources tothe ejido level. The PPF as a formal program terminatedin 1998 and the OEPFZM, though launched by it,received little ongoing support.

Forest cover has been retained despite significantlogging activity by the communities and, in fact and aswe saw earlier, is positively associated with forestedareas. In the period 1990–1998 in communities belong-ing to the OEPFZM, at least 92,549 m3 of timber wastaken out of the forests. Current trends in the stocks ofcommercial mahogany are ambiguous and vary sub-regionally. Some recent observations suggest thatcommercial volume of mahogany remains high insome communities while declining in others (Bray,


forthcoming). Nonetheless, community stewardship inthis region has significantly preserved the resource, whilein neighboring Campeche and part of southwesternQuintana Roo where community forestry has beeninconsistently applied, commercial stems of mahoganyare reported to have been eradicated (Turner II et al.,2001). Further, the institutions around communityforestry in Quintana Roo, in interaction with federalgovernment policies and regulations, have shown thecapacity to make adjustments in a transition to moresustainable forest management. For example, in the firstfew years of the PPF, significant reductions in loggingwere implemented on the basis of the participatoryinventories. The community of Noh Bec agreed toreduce its logging volume by 29% and the community ofLaguna Kan!a by 37.5% (Bray et al., 2003). In morerecent years, there have been various efforts by thefederal and state governments, in close collaborationwith the second-level organizations, to introduce agro-forestry and sustainable agriculture as further effortstowards constructing a more sustainable and forestedlandscape, and community-based ecotourism is alsoemerging as alternative low-impact forest use, adiversified strategy which, it has been argued, canreduce biodiversity loss (Cervigni, 2001). Populationpressures continue to be a minor factor in the region,with population growth rates declining in the 1990–1995compared to 1980–1990, and with little in-migration(Somarriba SilvaMS); the population density in themunicipio of Felipe Carillo Puerto is about 4.49 people/km2 (INEGI, 2001).

Conclusions

The combined remote sensing, spatial statistical, andinstitutional analysis presented in this article is used toargue that the Santa Cruz Mayan area of centralQuintana Roo may be tentatively classified as a regiontending towards sustainability as a landscape. Weregard this is a hypothesis which we will subject tofurther research and testing, some of which is indicatedbelow. For our purposes, a sustainable landscape wouldbe one that exhibits low rates of deforestation (below1% annually) with land use tendencies that suggestedthat this low rate could be maintained, setting the stagefor a ‘forest transition’ where forest recovery exceedsnew deforestation (Perz and Skole, 2003). There is alsoevidence that such a forest transition is occurring in theMayan Zone (Dur!an et al., forthcoming). A sustainablelandscape is also a working landscape, one from whichhuman beings continue to wrest their livelihood, andone in which some tendencies towards loss of naturalcapital are counteracted by others that tend to increaseit (Haines-Young, 2000). For example, in the MayanZone, the tendency for declines in mahogany volume in

some subregions may be counteracted by an increase inmahogany in small plantations and with ecotourismland uses and new ecosystem products such as captiveparrot breeding (Cornejo, 2003; Racelis, 2003). How-ever, the mini-plantations of mahogany may be creatingnew agricultural pressures on the PFAs and can besubject to devastating attacks of the shoot borer mothHypsipyla grandella, although there are techniques forcontrolling the latter (Racelis, 2003). Another keymeasure of sustainability would be to measure incomelevels and measures of well-being from landscape uses,and in an associated research project one of the authorsis currently analyzing survey income data from sixcommunities in the region.

To place the landscape dynamics in central QuintanaRoo in a comparative context again, we will recall theregional rates of deforestation in Mexico presented inthe first section of this article. The most commonlyreported rates, from 4.3% to 1.4% are all for areaswhich are either colonization zones or long-settledagricultural areas. The rates below 0.5% are mostlyareas that have protected areas at their core. In an areaof the Lacandon reported by de Jong et al. (2000) with a0.3% deforestation rate, 80% of it was classified as aprotected area. In the southern Yucatan Peninsula casereported by Turner II et al. (2001), with deforestationrates of from 0.32% to 0.39%, a significant part of thestudy area is occupied by another protected area, theCalakmul Biosphere Reserve (CBR). The authors arefamiliar with many of these areas and we can assert thatnone of them have been able to create the kinds ofinstitutions around PFAs, community-managed log-ging, and other sustainable natural resource manage-ment efforts that are occurring in the Mayan Zone ofQuintana Roo.

In the Mayan Zone of Quintana Roo, we reportdeforestation rates of 0.4% for the 1976–1984 periodand declining in the most recent period to 0.1%, butwith no protected areas in the study region. The conceptof the entire eastern Yucatan, including both centralQuintana Roo and southern Campeche as a landscapein which forest cover is very significantly preserved isbolstered by the findings of the 2000 National ForestInventory, which showed that the area defined as‘Eastern Yucatan’ which includes the forests of Quinta-na Roo and the Calakmul region, has the second highestpercentage of forest cover in Mexico, while anotherstudy found that Quintana Roo as a whole preserved74% of its total land area in ‘primary’ forest (Jhoneset al., 2000).

We suggest that the outcome of a landscape whichmay be tending towards sustainability in the MayanZone of Quintana Roo, and possibly in the larger areaof Eastern Yucatan, is significantly the result ofinstitutional factors, particularly factors that may beregarded as institutional and organizational innovations.


Ecological factors that are currently being evaluatedmay also be at work. Physical factors include distancefrom settlements and roads, ejido size and year offounding, and volume of timber extracted. But thesephysically measurable factors are the result of institu-tional and organizational innovations including theestablishment of large forest ejidos by the Mexicangovernment in response to chicle markets, the launchingof the government PPF, the decision of communities toestablish PFAs, and the organization of CFEs andsecond-level organizations such as the OEPFZM in theregion. The existence of a secure land tenure regimefrom an early period, an institutional innovationcompared to elsewhere in the tropics, also served as abarrier to the colonization programs that devastated theforest in southern Quintana Roo. The Santa CruzMayans depend heavily on forest resources for theirlivelihood needs, and their land management practiceshave resulted in the maintenance of forested landscape.Government cattle projects leading to extensive defor-estation elsewhere failed here, in part due to inefficientgovernment programs, but communities have also takenproactive steps, such as banning cattle raising in theircommunities. We propose that this may constitute afourth scenario of land use change dynamics, in additionto those situations characterized by deforestation, thosethat were seriously deforested and are now recovering,and those that have very low population densities andlarger areas of intact forest. The kinds of landscapedescribed for the Mayan Zone are closest to the lastscenario, but we suggest that in those landscapespopulation densities tend to be even lower than the4.49 people/km2 recorded for central Quintana Roo,and that they are seldom as intensively used forcommercial logging as this region.

There are challenges in achieving a truly sustainablelandscape in the Mayan Zone. For example, it appearsthat the some 25 years of unsustainable logging whichpreceded the PPF in the region left the communities withsignificantly impoverished forests, and after over 15years of stabilized harvests at low historical levels, a fewcommunities are facing the decline or disappearance ofcommercial volumes of mahogany. It is argued thatcurrent silvicultural practices have not succeeded atreplenishing the mahogany stock, and new practicesneed to be implemented to ensure mahogany regenera-tion in the natural forests (Snook and Negreros-Castillo,2002). In the meantime, harvests of LKS are increasing,and marketing of LKS timber and NFTPs needs to bestrengthened as well. Two of the communities in theMayan Zone have recently received certification throughthe Forest Stewardship Council; most ejidos follow thesame management plan and practices as these two.Increasing temporary migration to the tourist corridorsalong the Quintana Roo coast also raises questionsabout the opportunity costs of sustainable natural

resource management. The apparent ineffectiveness ofthe PFAs in small ejidos with little logging volumedemonstrates a great need for new land use planning‘beyond the PFAs’ in the smaller ejidos.

The total effect of history and traditional and newland use practices, and new land use practices channeledthrough institutional and organizational innovations,has been forest cover stability. This suggests a trajectoryof possible sustainable use of an inhabited landscape,which may help us to clarify the elements necessary for atransition to sustainable land use in the tropics. Thisstudy suggests that forest areas that have beenintensively used by resident human populations formany decades can also show dynamic trends towardsforest cover stability, even if some changes in structureor composition may occur. The research of Bruner et al.(2001) would argue for a ‘protected area hypothesis’with reference to low rates of land use change,suggesting that regions with large protected areas showlower rates of deforestation than regions entirelyinhabited by communities. Two recorded cases inMexico, protected area landscapes that include theMontes Azules Biosphere Reserve and the CalakmulBiosphere Reserve, show deforestation rates of 0.3%and 0.39%, respectively. The landscape of centralQuintana Roo, dominated by communities vigorouslyengaged in farming and logging and with no protectedareas in the study region, shows an even lower rate thanthe protected area-dominated regions. Thus, factors thathave preserved forest cover have not depended on theinstitution of protected areas to achieve the outcome oflow rates of land use change, making it particularlyimportant to understand the institutional drivers of thislow-deforestation landscape. Conservation organiza-tions speak of ‘designing’ sustainable landscapes byrebuilding fragmented forests in biodiversity conserva-tion corridors (CABS, CI, and IESB, 2000; Sandersonet al., 2003). However, we argue here that a landscapethat has never lost much forest cover has been ‘designed’by both government policy and grassroots action overmany decades, and as is recognized in the World Bank’sMesoamerican Biological Corridor Project, the MayanZone occupies the corridor between the Sian Ka’an andCalakmul Biosphere Reserves.

This case of the Mayan Zone also suggests themaintenance of forest cover is not a result of being ina remote area. Like deforestation and degradation, themaintenance of forest cover also has ‘drivers’. It is not apassive process, but an outcome of particular humaninstitutions interacting with the forest environment. Ininterpreting percentages of land use change, this studyalso suggests that we need to examine the ‘narratives’that we use (Klooster, 2000). Recent narratives on landuse change in Mexico have been focused on ‘deforesta-tion’ as the dominant motif, even when rates arecomparatively rather low (Turner II et al., 2001). That


it has made it difficult to recognize when othertendencies are as important as deforestation (AlejandroVel!azquez, personal communication). It thus becomesimportant to introduce the ‘narrative’ of the sustainablelandscape as a hypothesis, a dynamic mosaic thatpreserves ecosystem processes in a significant matrix offorest while assuring human livelihoods as a result ofinstitutional innovations. Finally, the establishment ofthe large chicle ejidos beginning in the 1930s can be seenas an early experiment in the establishment of extractiveor indigenous reserves, and we can now see what someof the outcomes of this experiment have been seventyyears down the road. Most new indigenous andextractive reserves can also be seen as institutionalinnovations that are established over much larger landareas than the chicle ejidos of central Quintana Roo(Schwartzman et al., 2000), so it is possible to predictthat they could have an even greater impact on themaintenance of forest cover and tendencies towardssustainable landscapes.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Ford andHewlett Foundation for the generous support that madethis research possible. Thanks also to Peter Klepeis,Jane Southworth, and two anonymous reviewers formost helpful and stimulating comments, and to SkyaMurphy for her excellent editorial assistance.

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