Prepared for the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity (CGBD)
Tucson, Arizona
December 3, 1997
"http://www.planeta.com/mexico.html">Mexico presents unusual, perhaps unique, opportunities to support small farmer stakeholders who are carrying out successful projects in sustainable development, many with striking implications for biodiversity conservation. However, as I will also be arguing, it is not always obvious which projects will have significant payoffs in terms of biodiversity conservation, suggesting that it is wise for conservation organizations to broaden the parameters of what they may fund.
Mexico has a rich tradition in rural organization, which makes it far more likely than in virtually any other Third World country that outside funders will find grassroots interlocutors with substantial organizing experience, and not infrequently, with technical staffs of their own. The reasons why Mexico has such a solid history of rural organization goes back to the Mexico Revolution and the implementation of reforms in the decades after the Revolution. As a result of these reforms, up to 80% of forest lands, including many protected areas, are in the hands of either ejidos or comunidades indigenas (indigenous communities).
Although there can be considerable variation, ejidos are governed by the laws and regulations of the Agrarian Reform Secretary (SRA) and are the result of land redistribution, while the comunidades indigenas status recognizes an ancestral land claim by indigenous peoples to a given plot of land. Defined as forms of common property with private appropriation, both ejidos and indigenous communities feature privately worked agricultural plots and, if large enough, collectively administered common areas. In the cases that will concern us most, these common lands can include very extensive forestlands.
Both ejidos and indigenous communities are, at the same time, instruments of political control, a means for the organization of production, and a body of peasant representation. Both land tenure forms were endowed with juridically prescribed forms of internal political organization and external representation, which sometimes operated conjointly with others forms of traditional community organization. For example, each ejido had an ejido commissioner and other officials who were elected by the community. Although most commonly corrupt and manipulated, these land tenure-based forms of community political organization nonetheless gave peasants experience in leadership and in negotiating issues with external authorities.
Further, and particularly since the 1970s, successive Mexican presidents have created a welter of new extra-ejido and indigenous community forms of organization as they grappled for ways to modernize the ejido as a productive structure. Thus, were formed, from 1970 to the present, a bewildering array of ejido unions (uniones de ejidos), Rural Collective Interest Associations (ARICs), Agro-Industrial Units for Women (UAIMs), social solidarity societies (SSS), civil associations (ACís-the non-profit equivalent status, which some peasant organizations also use), and civil societies (SC-a common legal form which permits a wide variety of commercial activities. As has been noted, "Even if it was not the original purpose, creating these organizations augmented the negotiating capacity of the ejido, giving birth to a new generation of peasant leaders".
Further, Mexico during the 1980s was characterized by the emergence of regional and national peasant organizations based on these local organizational structures, but which became significantly autonomous from the traditional corporatist structures of the Mexican governments. Thus, a significant stratum of peasant leaders also gained national-level leadership experience in organizations with tens of thousands of members throughout the country.
Some of the principle organizations of this type that were production-oriented, as opposed to organizations that were primarily the vehicles for protest movements, include the National Union of Regional Autonomous Peasant Organizations (UNORCA), the National Confederation of Coffee Organizations (CNOC), the Mexican Association of Social Sector Credit Unions (AMUCCS), the Mexican Network of Forestry Organizations (Red MOCAF) and the National Union of Social Foresters (UNOFOC), among others. As the names indicate, the most effective ones were organized around particular sectors of the rural economy.
In the course of the 1990s, many of these organizations have steadily incorporated environmental dimensions into their productive concerns. For example, the CNOC has ever-growing numbers of certified organic producers and virtually all of its members produce "shade tree coffee", now known to provide superb habitat for migratory birds, and both the Red MOCAF and UNOFOC are incorporating more concerns about sustainable logging, with several members having now been certified as "well-managed" by the Rainforest Alliance. More on both of these issues in a moment.
Perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from this description so far is that "community-based conservation" in Mexico quite frequently can move well beyond the community into intra-community organizations at the local, regional, and national levels, with the all the corresponding possibilities for replication and economies of scale in delivering training and technical assistance. Some of the gains in rural sustainable development in Mexico also suggest that this movement from "community" to supra-local community organizations is essential in order to show real forward progress in conservation and development.
The "community" alone is not enough. It is usually too small, poor, and isolated to be a locus of change in and of itself.
Another way of putting it is that Mexican small farmers have made themselves stakeholders and protagonists in every sense. They have gone well beyond being the "objects" of any external directed program, and have become the "subjects" of their own self-directed, sustainable programs. To be sure, traditional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are important in Mexico, but the organizations of direct stakeholders themselves are what are most notable about the Mexican experience. To elaborate on the point of what can be gained by working with these organizations in rural Mexico, I would like to briefly highlight advances in rural sustainable development in the areas of community forestry and organic agriculture, particularly organic coffee, most of these examples happen to be closely linked to established protected areas. A roster of these and other experiences is included as an appendix to this presentation. However, as I will argue at the end, I think it is a mistake to focus so exclusively on existing protected areas in these issues.
Mexican peasant organizations have made major strides towards putting lowland tropical forests under sustainable, community-based management. They have done this in an enormous arc that includes millions of acres embracing the areas around the Sian Kaan Biosphere Reserve in central Quintana Roo, a vast corridor running towards and including the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Campeche, and recently re- taking a claim in the Marques de Comillas region in Chiapas, an important buffer zone for the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. This is being done through organizations such as the Organization of Forestry Production Ejidos of the Mayan Zone, Quintana Roo, the Society of Forestry Production Ejidos of Quintana Roo, and the Consejo X-Pujil.
These organizations have arisen out of a methodology and a group of promoters who first coalesced around the so-called Plan Piloto Forestal which focused primarily on southern Quintana Roo. The Plan Pilot emerged from an unusual confluence of positive factors which included activist elements in the Federal Forestry subsecretary, a relatively enlightened state government, a relatively well-educated and mobilized peasant base, an existing and relatively progressive forest management plan utilized by a parastatal logging operation, and solid technical assistance through foreign assistance programs (in this case, GTZ of Germany). In the space of two-three years in the mid- 1980s, the communities went from having their timber (primarily mahogany (swietania macrophyla) and Spanish cedar (cedrela odorata)) taken out by a logging company, and paid a minimal stumpage fee, to seeing their incomes from logging rise many times over, to establishing their own logging companies and sawmills.
The key conservation measure taken by the communities was the establishing of permanent forest areas (areas forestales permanentes). These areas, by community agreement, are never to be converted to any other land use, exclusively dedicated to selective logging. This was a historic social invention and achievement in tropical southern Mexico, where the dynamic of logging, slash and burn agriculture, and cattle raising was razing hundreds of thousands of hectares beginning in the 1960s. As a result of the Plan Piloto movement, over 70 communities have declared from 1-2 million acres to be permanent forest areas. Some of these communities are now establishing their own "biosphere reserves" in their permanent forest areas, areas which will reserved only for light non-timber forest product extraction or left entirely untouched.
To be sure, the precise impact of the kind of selective logging done by the communities on biodiversity in the permanent forest areas is still being measured but, in the meantime, forest cover is being preserved for future generations while the scientists fight about the real sustainability of this or that practice. But specifically, there are concerns about the sustainability of the current levels of mahogany harvest. For over a decade, the communities have been using a 75-year cutting cycle for mahogany logging. However, some recent research has argued that it takes more like 120 years for mahogany to reach maturity. While in sharp disagreement with the 120 figure, at least one of the organizations has agreed that 75 years is too short, and is taking steps to lengthen the cutting cycle. They are also taking steps to look for new markets for the lesser-known species, and at least six communities have been certified as "well-managed: by U.S. and Mexican certification organizations. There have also been concerns about the impact of community hunting patterns on wildlife populations in the rainforest. Conservation measures aimed at logging and hunting will definitely reduce incomes in the community, highlighting the fact that the market will not pay for all of the costs of conservation, even in community-managed forests.
In sustainable agriculture as well, particularly in sustainable coffee, Mexican peasant organizations have been in the vanguard. Organizations such as the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Region (UCIRI), Indigenous Peoples of the Sierra Madre of Motozintla (ISMAM) and Union de Ejidos La Selva (see appendix) have helped make Mexico the world's leading exporter of organic coffee over the last several years, with an estimated 10,000 small farmers now having international certification.
The Union de Ejidos La Selva, in particular, has as its base of operations areas in the buffer zone of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, which has inspired conservation organizations to work on making the organic transitions with coffee farms that are the Biosphere Reserve itself. By its very nature, coffee is a crop with significant environmental implications since it is normally grown on steep hillsides that would otherwise become severely eroded through subsistence agriculture. However, recent research has shown that almost all small farmer coffee agriculture, not just organic, has an unexpected environmental dividend. Research by Russell Greenberg, Robert Rice, and others connected with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, have demonstrated that small coffee farmer farms provide excellent habitat for migratory birds, and also harbor rates of biodiversity in other species that rival natural forests.
Another finding on organic coffee production by Mexican Researcher Jose Luis Plaza is also highly significant, however. Plaza found that because of the generalized crisis of coffee production, even organic coffee production is not normally profitable, although it does place small producers in the high- quality niche markets, where they have a much better opportunity to seize whatever profits might be available. This produced two subsequent observations 1) The market will not pay for the even greater environmental conservation measures called for by some certification programs and 2) the producers valued organic coffee as much for the training they received, their own increment in human capital, and as part of a package of benefits that they received from the organization. Thus, the highest value was not in organic coffee per se, but in being organized.
These experiences and others outlined in the appendix lead me to three concluding observations.
1) "Community-based conservation", as long as it is only based in individual communities, will never be broadly successful. "Community- Based " conservation when it is only based on work with individual communities, may have some short-term successes, but it will not be sustainable. In order for conservation to be sustainable, there must be sustainable regional or sub-regional stakeholder organizations that knit together as many communities as possible. Community-based conservation mediated through these organizations will lower costs, allow successful experiences to be quickly replicated, and will provide a strong, local lobby for sustainable development efforts. When local peoples are shown a way to conserve natural resources and find new sources of income, and are given the space and the support to build a strong organizational vehicle, they become enthusiastic environmentalists.
This implies that conservation organizations must go deeper into the organizational aspects of integrated conservation and development projects, not reduce them, as some critics have suggested. Michael Cerneaís comments about rural development projects in general apply forcefully to conservation and development projects as well, "Many rural programs collapse precisely for want of grassroots organizations able to sustain group action. Yet the same programs have seldom attempted to establish community organizations and institutions that enhance structural capacity".
2) The exclusive focus on protected areas by conservation groups is misguided; neither of the two major advances in grassroots sustainable development and biodiversity conservation outlined here were developed with any reference to protected areas. It is entirely understandable that conservation organizations have focused their limited resources on protected areas. It represents the tradition out of which they rise in the United States and Europe, and they generally seem to be the areas where the greatest biodiversity is concentrated. Nonetheless, the experiences sketched in above suggest that conservation organizations should be more open to working with promising sustainable development projects in a broad range of ecosystems and/or degraded areas. They may have provided lessons that are applicable to grassroots organizations or may provide unexpected conservation benefits. The concept of "permanent forest areas" did not arise with any reference to protected areas, but now communities are establishing their own biosphere reserves.
Community-managed forests are probably the more workable model for southern Mexico than biosphere reserves and protected areas, and it suggests the need to intensify biological monitoring in these areas, at least as much as in formally protected areas. Organic or small farmer coffee was seen as a highly unlikely focus of investment by many conservation organizations just five years ago yet, as mentioned, new research revealed their key role in maintaining habitat for migratory birds, arthropods, and other species.
In a similar vein, a peasant organization in Guerrero, Zanzekan Tineme (see appendix) is working on ecological restoration of dry tropical forests that also serve to guarantee sources of water for poverty-stricken communities. Dry tropical forests are probably the single most threatened ecosystem in Mexico, and this effort could provide a focus for a broader restoration effort yet, working in a highly degraded area, they have not attracted the interest of environmental organizations.
3) Market-based conservation efforts can make significant strides towards paying for the costs of conservation, but they cannot pay for all of it. I believe that Mexico is privileged to have some of the most advanced "integrated conservation and development" projects anywhere in the world. This can be attributed to the energies of the Mexican small farmer, but also to organizational history of rural Mexico, as discussed at the beginning, and the enormous pressure placed on Mexican small farmers to compete in markets by NAFTA and other neo-liberal reforms.
These projects, whether in forestry or sustainable agriculture, are notable for the relative degree of prosperity they have been able to bring to some producers (remembering that most Mexican small farmers remain sunk in brutal poverty). However, even these market-based conservation projects can clearly not pay for all of the costs associated with conservation. For this, new and novel ways, and even some traditional ways (e.g. donations), must be found to subsidize the training and traditional conservation aspects of these projects
David Barton Bray is Chair of the Department of Environmental Studies at Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199; Phone: (305) 348-6236; Email: brayd@fiu.edu
A Selection of Mexican NGOs and Peasant Organizations engaged in significant Sustainable Development and Biodiversity Activities-Southern Mexico
Note: Telephone and fax numbers are given with the international dialing prefix for Mexico (011-52).
Coordinadora Estatal de Productores de Cafe del Estado de Oaxaca,
S.C. (CEPCO)
Ave. Heroica Escuela Naval Militar No. 708
Col. Reforma
C.P. 68050, Oaxaca, Oaxaca
Mexico
Tel: 011-52-951-34996; Fax: 011-52-951-34001
Email: cepcos@antequera.com
Contact: Miguel Tejero, Josefina Aranda
CEPCO is a statewide organization of small coffee farmers with some 20,000 members. It has provided intensive training, established a credit union, and opened new marketing channels for its largely indigenous members. It has also promoted organic coffee, reforestation, and natural resource conservation in such biologically rich, but little-known, regions as the Mazateca and the Putla area of the Mixteca. The Mazateca in particular, particularly the RabOn mountain ridge is only beginning to be explored biologically, and appears to be a significantly intact cloud forest ecosystem.
Asesoria Tecnica a Comunidades Oaxaquenas, A.C. (ASETECO)
Eucaliptos No. 320
Col. Reforma
C.P. 68050, Oaxaca, Oaxaca
Mexico
Tel. y Fax :011-52-951-31730; Fax: 011-52-951- 43040
Email: asetecooax@infosel.net.mx
ASTECO is a pioneer in Mexico in establishing peasant forestry enterprises that have allowed communities to achieve new levels of income by sustainable management of their forests for timber. This is a highly attractive option with a rich tradition in Mexico, but little is known about the impact of selective logging on these diverse highland pine and oak forests. ASETECO has also established an innovative environmental education program for elementary school children in forest communities.
Union de Pueblos Indigenas de la Sierra de Lalana, S.C. (UPISL)
Apartado Postal No. 23
C.P. 68300, Tuxtepec, Oaxaca
Tel: 011-52-287-53351
Contact: Evodio Calderon PErez, Presidente
Cirino Velasco Calderon, Secretario
UPISL is a 700-member peasant organization in a remote area of the Chinantla region of Oaxaca. In a former montane tropical forest area, now severely degraded, they are engaged in ecological restoration activities which will also yield them new income, including reforestation, terracing, organic coffee, and other sustainable agriculture activities. This is a consolidated, mature peasant organization with good technical assistance.
Union de Museos Comunitarios de Oaxaca (UMCO)
Priv. Rancho los Compadres No. 5
Talixtac de Cabrera, Oaxaca CP 68270
Mexico
Tel. (951) 5-04-00 ;7-55-98 Teresa Morales
Email: muscoax@antequera.com
Contact: Teresa Morales or Cuauhtemoc Camarena
UMCO is an organization of 15 communities in several different regions of the state of Oaxaca engaged in eco-archaeo-cultural tourism. It is probably the leading experience in Latin America in community-based tourism; it currently has a tourist office in downtown Oaxaca and is establishing a training center. It is helping communities in some of the most ecologically degraded areas of Oaxaca to revalue their natural and cultural resources, and is attracting significant new flows of tourists into communities.
Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM),
Programa de Aprovechamiento Integral de Recursos Naturales (PAIR)
Tel. (5) 6-81-17-38, Fax 5-95-07-43;6-65-40-92
Contact: Biologa Virginia Cervantez Gutierrez, Coordinadora General
This Mexico City-based NGO, founded by Mexico's current Secretary of the Environment, Natural Resources, and Fisheries (SEMARNAP), is engaged in natural resource planning, sustainable development, and biodiversity conservation in Oaxaca and Guerrero. In Oaxaca, they are promoting organic vanilla production and other non-timber forest products in secondary vegetation and as rainforest understory crops with local peasant organizations in and around a 17,000 hectare montane tropical forest remnant, the largest such area left in eastern Oaxaca.
Union de Ejidos de La Selva, S.C. (La Selva)
Apartado Postal No. 10
Carretera Cristóbal Colon
Km. 1261.5
C.P. 30000, Comitan de Dominguez, Chiapas
Mexico
Tel: o11-52-963-60144
La Selva is a 1500-member organization of small coffee farmers in one of the poorest areas of Chiapas. They have been resoundingly successful at establishing new marketing outlets for their certified organic coffee, including the launching of a chain of five coffee shops serving exclusively their own coffee in Mexico City and San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Many of the La Selvaís producers are in the buffer zone of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, and recent research on the importance of shade tree coffee as migratory bird habitat highlights the ecological importance of supporting small farmer coffee.
Union de Ejidos y Comunidades de Cafeticultores del Beneficio Majomut
(Majomut)
Ignacio Allende #34-A
Col. Los Pinos
C.P. 29280, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas
Mexico
Tel: 011-52-967-83196
Contact: Victor Perezgrovas
Majomut is a 1200 member small coffee farmer organization in the highlands of Chiapas that is promoting organic coffee, citrus cultivation, and reforestation. Its principal advisor just completed a masterís thesis on indicators of sustainability in their production activities. The ecological restoration of the degraded highlands environment will help to relieve migratory pressures into the lowland tropical regions of Chiapas.
Marques de Comillas Project
Ave. 12 de Octubre
Esq. 2 Poniente North
CP 29960 Palenque, Chiapas
Mexico
Tel: 011-52-934-51399
Contact: Deocundo Acopa
This technical team, currently largely supported by SEMARNAP, is promoting sustainable forestry activities, including agroforestry, in the MarquEs de Comillas region. They are using the methodology successfully developed by the Plan Piloto and the Consejo X-Pujil, in Quintana Roo and Campeche respectively. This method features the establishment of "permanent forest areas", areas which by community agreement will never be converted to any other use than forest. The MarquEs de Comillas is a key buffer zone area for Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve and is, itself, much less deforested than usually characterized. It represents a wonderful opportunity to promote a harmonious and profitable relationship between significant stands of contiguous tropical forest and peasant communities.
Foro para el Desarrollo Sustentable en Chiapas (Foro Chiapas)
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
Tel: 011-52-967-80456
Email: forochiapas@laneta.apc.org
Contact: John Burstein
Foro Chiapas is an effort to provide training and promote dialogue among organizations of poor, indigenous producers in Chiapas. It seeks to restore the productivity of natural resources, improve the quality of life of poor farmers, and promote peasant participation in the design of sustainable development programs. It is particularly interested in promoting ecological sustainable on the basis of financial sustainability, through carefully designed credit programs.
Centro de Agroecologia San Francisco de Asis, A.C. (CASFA)
Primera Avenida Sur No. 3
C.P. 30900, Motozintla, Chiapas
Mexico
Tel: 011-52-964-10380
Contact: JosE Caballero Cervantes
CASFA is an NGO associated with Indigenas de la Sierra Madre de Motozintla (ISMAM), one of the most successful organic coffee peasant organizations in Mexico. It is promoting organic production of vegetables in a highland area of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas.
Sociedad de Solidaridad Social Zanzekan Tineme, (Zanzekan)
Anexo al Almacen CONASUPO Rural
Frente Unidad Deportiva
Chilapa, Guerrero
Mexico
Tel. y Fax: 011-52-747-51308
Contact: Albino Tlacotempa
Zanzekan is a 800 member organization of Nahuatl indigenous peoples in one of the poorest areas of Guerrero, one of the poorest states in Mexico. Zanzekan members occupy an area of remnants of tropical dry forests, probably the most threatened ecosystem in Mexico. They are currently ecologically restoring nearly 1,000 hectares of tropical dry forest which will renew sources of water for seven communities and provide new habitat. They are also moving towards a sustainable harvest of the palm that they use to weave artisan objects for export to the US and Europe.
Organizacion de Ejidos Productores Forestales de la Zona Maya, S.C.
(Zona Maya)
Calle 60 # 796
Col. Cecilio Chi
C.P. 77200, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo
Mexico
Tel: 011-52-983-40730
Contact: Marcelo Carreon or Victoria Santos
Zona Maya is an organization of 17 Mayan Indian forest communities in central Quintana Roo, who occupy nearly 200,000 hectares of lowland tropical rainforest. They have been engaged in a struggle for over a decade to overcome exploitative intermediaries and to sustainably manage their forests, despite great poverty. One of the communities may soon be certified as "well- managed" by the Rainforest Alliance and they are moving forward with vigorous programs of agroforestry and wildlife management. Their lands form part of what constitutes a vast forested "corridor" between the Siían Kaan and Calakmul Biosphere Reserves.
Alianza de Ejidos y Comunidades de la Mariposa Monarca, A.C.
Zit·cuaro, Michoacán
Tel: 011-52-715-30064
Contact: Esteban Lopez Camacho, President; Pascual Sigala Paez, Advisor
Alianza includes within it over half of the sixty-some communities that surround the five declared Monarch Butterfly protective reserve/overwintering grounds in Michoacán and the state of Mexico. While they are only a two-year old organization, they draw on a history of organizing going back over two decades. It is in great need of support so that they can move more vigorously into sustainable forest management, community-based ecotourism, and the development of firewood plantations to relieve pressure on the Monarch butterfly reserves.
Invertir para la Sustentabilidad, A.C.
Panuco 55, Desp. 903
Col. Cuauhtemoc
Mexico City, Mexico
Tel: 011-52-5-592-3388
Email: invertir@mail.internet.com.mx
Contact: Bernardo Barranco
Invertir is a new national-level entity which is dedicated to providing innovative financing mechanisms for ecologically-oriented grassroots enterprises. It is working with many of the organizations listed here.
Asociacion Mexicana de Arte y Cultura Popular, A.C. (AMACUP)
Rio Amazonas 17
Col. Cuauhtemoc
C.P. 96500, Mexico City
Mexico
Tel: 011-52-5-592-7360
Email: amacup@mail.intenet.com.mx
Contact: Marta Turok or Jess Andrade
AMACUP has been working for over five years with communities in and around protected areas trying to developing environmentally sustainable artisan objects for niche marketing.
Consejo Civil Mexicano para la Silvicultura Sostenible, A.C. (CCMSS)
Calle Acuextomac No. 15
Col. San Luis Tlaxxialtemalco
C.P. 16610, Xochimilco, Mexico City
Mexico
Tel: 011-52-5-843-2777: Fax: 011-52-5-843-2760
Email: smadrid@laneta.apc.org
CCMSS is a national coalition of forestry NGOs that is developing national standards for certified sustainably-harvested timber, in coordination with the "Smart Wood" Program of Rainforest Alliance. It also provides technical assistance on sustainable forest management to forest communities throughout Mexico.
Home |
About |
Advertise! |
Books |
Central America |
Ecotourism |
Headlines
Learn Spanish |
Mexico |
Media |
Site Map |
South America |
World Travel |
Updates