Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Box 1.14
Community Forestry in Mexico
Mexican community forestry has perhaps reached a
scale and level of maturity unmatched anywhere else in
the world. It has demonstrated that where there has
been greater community power over forest management
there has been greater transparency and less corruption,
better forest use and protection, and
improved livelihoods for local people. Regions of
greatest deforestation are where traditional social
structures have been seriously weakened (Bray,
Merino-Perez, and Barry 2005).
An estimated three-fourths of Mexican forests are
communally owned either by ejidos (agrarian reform
communities) or indigenous communities. Mexican
forest management is rich in indigenous forms of common
property management overlaid by massive agricultural
reforms from the violent Mexican revolution
in the second decade of the 20th century. However,
across the country there is great contrast in resource
quality; indigenous groups and their approaches to
organization, equity, and resource use; as well as in
state and local leadership. Efforts to support local management
have met with mixed results. The World Bank
has worked to improve forest management for environmental
protection and quality of life for local people,
starting with pilot activities in 1990 and then
redesigning a project expanding to other regions, many
of which have needed specially crafted approaches.
The Project for Conservation and Sustainable Management
of Forest Resources (PROCYMAF) aimed to
support community forest development, with a primary
focus on Oaxaca but with some program work in
Guerrero and Michoacan. PROCYMAF was a
community-driven development project. PROCYMAF
II retained the environmental and economic aims but
focused on (i) strengthening local capacity and management;
(ii) strengthening capacity of the local private
sector to provide forestry services; (iii) promoting timber,
nontimber, and nontraditional products; and (iv)
strengthening federal and state institutions working in
forestry conservation and development.
A more diverse and multisectoral staff supported
existing or new community management groups to
expand social capital and helped form federations to be
able to carry more weight in addressing local issues,
including increased transparency and fair returns. Community
members as well as professional foresters were
trained so that technical issues could become understood
locally, putting communities in a better position
to negotiate and understand what to require of specialists
and, in some cases, become specialists themselves.
The project initiated community-to-community extension
and, because there are areas in which there are
either inter- or intra-community conflicts, promoters
were trained in conflict management. The projects did
studies on expanding the options and markets for economic
use of forest products, including such items as
mushrooms, bottled water, and resin as well as timber.
Communities selected activities they found promising.
Devolution of public and private forestlands to local
communities with common pool resource regimes and
clear tenure status can create economic equality, social
peace, and democratization of power, addressing corruption
and at the same time improving the forest
ecosystem (Bray, Merino-Perez, and Barry 2005).
Source: Authors’ compilation using World Bank 2003.
(see note 1.4, Property and Access Rights). However, the
ways in which local people realize the benefits of devolution
differ widely, and the negative tradeoffs are most commonly
borne by the poor. Community control and management
over natural resources is often limited by continual government
intervention and the government’s insistence on complex
management plans.
It is extremely important to facilitate a change in paradigm
among forest officials and extension service providers.
This can help in transforming the forest department culture
and can be brought about by providing capacity building in
participatory and community forest management and for
provision of formal services. Such paradigm changes should
be accompanied by appropriate incentives to forest staff and
adequate budget.
In many cases, CBFM can be a lever for wider pro-poor
change and reform; in others, basic conditions must be
present for it to flourish. The following elements should be
considered in community forestry programs:
■
Bureaucracy and paper work necessary for communities
to have the right to manage their forests should be limited.
Communities often do not have the money or the
skills required to produce professional management
plans, resulting in overdependence on donors and logging
companies.
36 CHAPTER 1: FORESTS FOR POVERTY REDUCTION