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Factors Limiting Formation of Community Forestry Enterprises in the Southern Mixteca Region of Oaxaca, Mexico

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Abstract

Many studies have considered community-based forestry enterprises to be the best option for development of rural Mexican communities with forests. While some of Mexico’s rural communities with forests receive significant economic and social benefits from having a community forestry enterprise, the majority have not formed such enterprises. The purpose of this article is to identify and describe factors limiting the formation of community forestry enterprise in rural communities with temperate forests in the Southern Mixteca region of Oaxaca, Mexico. The study involved fieldwork, surveys applied to Community Board members, and maps developed from satellite images in order to calculate the forested surface area. It was found that the majority of Southern Mixteca communities lack the natural and social conditions necessary for developing community forestry enterprise; in this region, commercial forestry is limited due to insufficient precipitation, scarcity of land or timber species, community members’ wariness of commercial timber extraction projects, ineffective local governance, lack of capital, and certain cultural beliefs. Only three of the 25 communities surveyed have a community forestry enterprise; however, several communities have developed other ways of profiting from their forests, including pine resin extraction, payment for environmental services (PES), sale of spring water, and ecotourism. We conclude that community forestry enterprise are not the only option for rural communities to generate income from their forests; in recent years a variety of forest-related economic opportunities have arisen which are less demanding of communities’ physical and social resources.

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Notes

  1. Ejidos and agrarian communities are two types of collective landholdings recognized by Mexican agrarian law. Henceforth, both will be referred to as “communities”.

  2. All acronyms of Mexican organizations are according to their Spanish initials.

  3. An institutional initiative that aims to promote activities that help the conservation and management of natural resources in the communities of the Mixteca region. This integrated by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas, SEMARNAT, GEF, the United Nations Environment Programme and World Wildlife Fund .

  4. Forested areas may occupy communal land, individual plots, and areas with settlements.

  5. Comunero is the legal term for adult members of a rural ejido or agrarian community who have the right to a specific plot of land as well as use of resources in communal areas.

  6. Land that has not been designated by the Community Assembly for human settlement or individual agricultural plots.

  7. Forest land parceling is an informal practice that is recognized by the Community Assembly.

  8. According to comuneros, natural forest recovery is the time it takes for new vegetation to appear in an area which has naturally or artificially been altered.

  9. According to comuneros, wood is of excellent quality when it is free of defects such as knots, cracks, or an irregular structure; its quality lessens when these defects are present.

  10. Independent professionals certified by CONAFOR that provide technical assistance to communities.

  11. Forest land parceling is an informal practice that is recognized by the Community Assembly.

  12. PES was designed to fund owners of forested land to practice conservation (soil restoration, fire prevention, etc.) (SEMARNAT 2014).

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Acknowledgements

The principal author would like to thank Mexico’s National Council on Science and Technology (CONACYT) for Scholarship No. 378716 for the Masters in Sciences in Natural Resources and Rural Development at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur. Thanks also to the technical assistants Janeth Jiménez García and Timoteo España Ortiz of the Regional Natural Resources Committee of the Southern Mixteca, and personnel of the GEF Mixteca Project and CONAFOR for fieldwork support. Finally, thanks to Community Board members for collaborating with this study and to the anonymous reviewers for their comments which greatly improved the text.

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  1. El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), Carretera Panamericana y Periférico Sur s/n, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, CP, 29290, Mexico

    José Antonio Hernández-Aguilar, Héctor Sergio Cortina-Villar, Luis Enrique García-Barrios & Miguel Ángel Castillo-Santiago

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  1. José Antonio Hernández-Aguilar
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  2. Héctor Sergio Cortina-Villar
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  3. Luis Enrique García-Barrios
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  4. Miguel Ángel Castillo-Santiago
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Correspondence to José Antonio Hernández-Aguilar.

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Hernández-Aguilar, J.A., Cortina-Villar, H.S., García-Barrios, L.E. et al. Factors Limiting Formation of Community Forestry Enterprises in the Southern Mixteca Region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Environmental Management 59, 490–504 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-017-0821-8

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