Community Forestry as Embedded Process: Two Cases from Durango and Quintana Roo, Mexico
Recent neoliberal economic restructuring and related legal reform undermine the peasant-based organizations underlying Mexican community forestry. Technical services have been relegated to markets and new economic groups within communities authorized to use forest resources. Researchers have found that individuals may develop successful management regimes when they agree on resource problems and change strategies, they value benefits of cooperation relative to costs, and they constitute a relatively well-defined and stable group. But examination of two peasant-based, intermediate level forestry organizations in Durango and Quintana Roo reveals that internal and external pressures lead the organizations to reformulate objectives, rework how they “deliver the goods” to members, and redefine the boundaries of stakeholder “communities.” Peasant-based organizations remain key actors in the pursuit of sustainable forestry and merit support in adapting to new conditions. Common pool resource research might fruitfully view such organizations as historical processes embedded in structural contexts ranging from local to global.