Community managed in the strong sense of the phrase: The community forest enterprises of Mexico Book Chapter

Bray, DB, Merino-Pérez, L, Barry, D. (2005). Community managed in the strong sense of the phrase: The community forest enterprises of Mexico . 3-26.

cited authors

  • Bray, DB; Merino-Pérez, L; Barry, D

authors

abstract

  • This book examines the historical and contemporary experience of community forest management in Mexico from a variety of perspectives.1 As this volume makes clear, the community forest sector in Mexico is large, diverse, and has achieved unusual maturity doing what communities in the rest of the world are only beginning to explore: the commercial production of timber. In most of the world, community forest management refers to the management of recovering forestlands or non-timber forest products on government lands. The achievement of Mexican communities in the commercial production of timber from common property forests was largely accomplished over the last 30 years, but has roots deep in Mexico's twentieth-century history. Despite these achievements, the community forest sector in Mexico is still little known outside of Mexico, and insufficiently recognized even within Mexico. It also has many challenges and deficiencies. This volume joins other recent research efforts to begin to address this lack of recognition for an important global model (Bray et al. 2003) and to document and analyze both its achievements and shortcomings. We have here collected a series of articles by established researchers in the field, some presenting new data from research commissioned especially for this book, that examines the phenomenon from historical, policy, economic, ecological, sociological, and political perspectives, frequently in ways that integrate these disciplines. The book also contains accounts by some of the important practitioners from the Mexican nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector, which has been involved in promoting community forestry for over two decades. A few terminological notes are in order. Throughout this book we will refer to community forest management (CFM) as the general phenomenon and to community forest enterprises (CFEs) in specific reference to communities that are commercially producing timber with varying levels of integration. 2 The Mexican Revolution in the second decade of the twentieth century left a strong mark on land tenure, creating or reinforcing community properties known as ejidos and indigenous or agrarian communities. While there are some differences in origins and governance, both forms establish collective governance of a common territory or property. While these community lands were long defined as held in usufruct from the state, reforms to the Mexican Constitution in 1992 strengthened community ownership of these lands. Unless it is important to distinguish them, the generic term communities will be used to refer to both of the common property community land tenure systems that exist in Mexico, ejidos and agrarian communities, as defined in Mexican agrarian law.3 Individual forest smallholder private properties exist in Mexico, and are probably more important than realized in the forest sector, but are not covered in this book. © 2005 by The University of Texas Press. All rights reserved.

publication date

  • December 1, 2005

start page

  • 3

end page

  • 26