Confronting Globalization In The Community Forests Of Michoacan Mexico

Readers of this book will encounter peasants and farmers whostruggle at home and traverse national borders to challenge theWorld Trade Organization and other powerful global institutions. Studies the activists in Brazil who uproot plots of geneticallymodified soybeans, forest dwellers in Indonesia who chop downrubber plantations to cultivate rice to feed their families,‘runaway villages’ in China that take up arms to resistcorrupt officials, and Mexican migrants who, having exited indesperation, return from abroad to transform their communities Little-known transnational agrarian movements of the earlytwentieth century share the stage with more recent, high-profileglobal alliances, such as Vía Campesina Celebrates a dynamic sector of international civil society, andtackles the thorny questions of successes and failures, ethical andpolitical dilemmas, troubled alliances with NGOs, protestrepertoires, and representation claims Analyzes contemporary collective action in all its complexity,acknowledging ambiguities and contradictions, posing challengingquestions, and providing concrete strategies for scholars andactivists

This book is a collection of readings that explore environmental issues in Latin America and the Caribbean using natural science and social science methods. These papers demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary approaches to analyze and solve environmental problems. The essays are organized into five parts: conservation challenges; national policies, local communities, and rural development; market mechanisms for protecting public goods; public participation and environmental justice; and the effects of development policies on the environment.

Mexico leads the world in community management of forests for the commercial production of timber. Yet this success story is not widely known, even in Mexico, despite the fact that communities around the globe are increasingly involved in managing their own forest resources. To assess the achievements and shortcomings of Mexico's community forest management programs and to offer approaches that can be applied in other parts of the world, this book collects fourteen articles that explore community forest management from historical, policy, economic, ecological, sociological, and political perspectives. The contributors to this book are established researchers in the field, as well as many of the important actors in Mexico's nongovernmental organization sector. Some articles are case studies of community forest management programs in the states of Michoacán, Oaxaca, Durango, Quintana Roo, and Guerrero. Others provide broader historical and contemporary overviews of various aspects of community forest management. As a whole, this volume clearly establishes that the community forest sector in Mexico is large, diverse, and has achieved unusual maturity in doing what communities in the rest of the world are only beginning to explore: how to balance community income with forest conservation. In this process, Mexican communities are also managing for sustainable landscapes and livelihoods.

The road to sustainable forest management and stewardship has been debated for decades. Some advocate for governmental control and oversight. Some say that the only way to stem the tide of deforestation is to place as many tracts as possible under strict protection. Caught in the middle of this debate, forest inhabitants of the developing world struggle to balance the extraction of precarious livelihoods from forests while responding to increasing pressures from national governments, international institutions, and their own perceptions of environmental decline to protect biodiversity, restore forests, and mitigate climate change. Mexico presents a unique case in which much of the nation’s forests were placed as commons in the hands of communities, who, with state support and their own entrepreneurial vigor, created community forest enterprises (CFEs). David Barton Bray, who has spent more than thirty years engaged with and researching Mexican community forestry, shows that this reform has transformed forest management in that country at a scale and level of maturity unmatched anywhere else in the world. For decades Mexico has been conducting a de facto large-scale experiment in the design of a national social-ecological system (SES) focused on community forests. What happens when you give subsistence communities rights over forests, as well as training, organizational support, equipment, and financial capital? Do the communities destroy the forest in the name of economic development, or do they manage them sustainably, generating current income while maintaining intergenerational value as a resource for their children? Bray shares the scientific and social evidence that can now begin to answer these questions. This is an invaluable resource for students, researchers, and the interested public on the future of global forest resilience and the possibilities for a good Anthropocene.