David Barton Bray

Tropical Deforestation, Community Forests, and Protected Areas in the Maya Forest

Community forests and protected areas have each been proposed as strategies to stop deforestation. These management strategies should be regarded as hypotheses to be evaluated for their effectiveness in particular places. We evaluated the community-forestry hypothesis and the protected-area hypothesis in community forests with commercial timber production and strict protected areas in the Maya Forest of Guatemala and Mexico. From land-use and land cover change (LUCC) maps derived from satellite images, we compared deforestation in 19 community forests and 11 protected areas in both countries in varying periods from 1988 to 2005. Deforestation rates were higher in protected areas than in community forests, but the differences were not significant. An analysis of human presence showed similar deforestation rates in inhabited protected areas and recently inhabited community forests, but the differences were not significant. There was also no significant difference in deforestation between uninhabited protected areas, uninhabited community forests, and long-inhabited community forests. A logistic regression analysis indicated that the factors correlated with deforestation varied by country. Distance to human settlements, seasonal wetlands, and degree and length of human residence were significant in Guatemala, and distance to previous deforestation and tropical semideciduous forest were significant in Mexico. Varying contexts and especially colonization histories are highlighted as likely factors that influence different outcomes. Poorly governed protected areas perform no better as a conservation strategy than poorly governed community forests with recent colonists in active colonization fronts. Long-inhabited extractive communities perform as well as uninhabited strict protected areas under low colonization pressure. A review of costs and benefits suggests that community forests may generate more local income with lower costs. Small sample sizes may have limited the statistical power of our comparisons, but descriptive statistics on deforestation rates, logistic regression analyses, LUCC maps, data available on local economic impacts, and long-term ethnographic and action-research constitute a web of evidence supporting our conclusions. Long-inhabited community forest management for timber can be as effective as uninhabited parks at delivering long-term forest protection under certain circumstances and more effective at delivering local benefits.

Deforestation, Forest Transitions, and Institutions for Sustainability in Southeastern Mexico, 1900-2000

Research on tropical forest cover change processes identifies myriad driving forces and demonstrates how change dynamics are non-linear and complex. Despite appreciation in the academic literature for the historical patterns and processes of deforestation, however, a simplistic, linear ʻdeforestation narrativeʼ persists in the popular imagination. Concern arises when this narrative influences environmental policy and effective response to the tropical deforesta tion problem. Our main goals here are twofold: (1) to contribute to a nuanced history of forest change in southeastern Mexico; and (2) to explore the role of institutional development in reducing deforestation rates. Drawing on forest transition theory, we analyse the twentieth century forest histories of the eastern Yucatan Peninsula, the southern Yucatan Peninsula, and the Lacandon Rainforest. A deforestation narrative rightly dominates characterisations of the 1960–85 period in southeastern Mexico, but it falls short of accurately representing the complex processes of deforestation, forest recovery, and the development of sustainability-oriented grassroots institutions in the 1985–2003 period.

From Displacement-based Conservation to Place-based Conservation

The viability of biodiversity conservation based uniquely upon a model of protected areas is being questioned in the developing world, and new evidence is emerging on the social and ecological costs of displacing people in order to ‚impose wilderness™ (Neumann 2002; Igoe 2004; Rodrigues 2006). This re-evaluation of the strict protected areas model is driven in part by new data showing that some human-dominated regimes of land use and tenure are effective complementary conservation strategies that can achieve both sustainable livelihoods and biodiversity conservation, although there are tradeoffs in all forms of conservation land use (VelAEzquez

Conservation of the jaguar Panthera onca in a community-dominated landscape in montane forests in Oaxaca, Mexico

We examined the presence of the jaguar Panthera onca, and human-jaguar interactions, in a community-dominated montane tropical forest landscape with formally recognized indigenous/community con- served areas in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca state, Mexico. We used camera traps to detect jaguars, and social data were collected through informal interviews and 46 semi- structured and 106 structured interviews with community leaders and members. During June 2007-June 2008 camera traps registered two jaguars in the four study communities after 1,164 trap nights, with a photo-capture rate of 7.8 jaguar captures per 1,000 trap nights. Interviews docu- mented 86 jaguar sightings since 1990. Despite some history of livestock predation, 68% of the interviewed farmers indicated jaguar presence was positive, 20% that jaguar presence was both positive and negative, and 12% thought jaguars were a negative presence. All of the respondents with negative attitudes had either owned cattle previously or lost cattle to predation. Despite ongoing risks to jaguars the emergence of community-conserved areas, local conserva- tion initiatives, and a community-imposed hunting ban are supported by 93% of community members. An emerging culture of conservation in the study communities suggests there is an opportunity for jaguar conservation on commu- nity lands that should be explored elsewhere in jaguar range

Forest Cover Dynamics and Forest Transitions in Mexico and Central America: Towards a “Great Restoration”?

Most academic and popular forest narratives in Mexico and Central America have focused on forest loss or deforestation as the primary tendency in forest cover, with little attention paid to the possibilities of a forest transition. Indeed, the evidence suggests that in particular periods and places linear tendencies towards forest loss have been predominant. However, looking more closely at data from more recent periods suggests that in the last two decades more complex nonlinear patterns of deforestation, forest recovery, and forest maintenance in spite of proximate deforestation pressures characterize forest cover dynamics in the region. Forest maintenance is argued to be a result of particular forest uses that can include shade tree coffee, sustainable forest management for timber, and protected areas. Forest cover dynamics vary considerably from country to country in the region, as do the immediate prospects for a forest transition.

Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty?

This study examines the relationship between the Mexican payment for environmental services (PES) programme, social capital and collective action, equity in distribution of benefits, and poverty alleviation in a case study in the Sierra Norte region of the state of Oaxaca. We address these issues with a household survey in two communities; and survey and ethnographic data on the six-community organisation - the Natural Resource Committee of the Upper Chinantla (CORENCHI). We suggest that the Mexican common property agrarian system greatly facilitates payments to entire communities of rights holders who then have the potential to build on existing social capital through having to make decisions about the use of their common property. Much of the work on social capital, distributional equity, and poverty alleviation has been theoretical or speculative but our study provides empirical support for part of this work. We find that PES in these communities has strengthened social capital and collective action, including in the emergence of regional collective action in the inter-community organisation. We also find that the PES payments are perceived as fair by the communities because of the high degree of participation in distributional policies, with a modest positive effect on a multidimensional measure of poverty.

From Forests and Fields to Coffee and Back Again: Historic Transformations of a Traditional Coffee Agroecosystem in Oaxaca, Mexico

ABSTRACT Studies of coffee agroecosystems have focused on their role in providing habitat for biodiversity across a range of management intensities. These studies have not taken into account the temporal and spatial transformations in coffee landscapes and their impacts on structural heterogeneity and biodiversity, nor systematically linked these transformations to farmer management responses to price and policy shocks. We utilize a coupled natural–human system framework to examine the historical transformations of the coffee landscape in a matrix of community-protected forests in a coffee-growing community in Oaxaca, Mexico, and study how those transformations impact tree biodiversity across a range of management options, including formerly certified organic and conventional coffee, abandonment, and conversion. The coffee landscape has historically transitioned from forests and fields (1950s–1960s) to one dominated by coffee (1970s–1980s) to a richly mosaic and biodiverse landscape (1990–2010) resulting from 43% recent abandonment and conversion of coffee back to forest and fields.

Commodity chains, institutions, and domestic policies of organic and fair trade coffee in Bolivia

ABSTRACT Fair trade and organic coffee are alternative production and trade systems designed to promote the equitable and environmentally sustainable production of coffee. The purpose of this study is to analyze the functioning of different coffee supply chains in Bolivia and find policy changes necessary to sustain specialty coffee production in that country. Based on the primary and secondary data collected from various market functionaries, we find that the Bolivian coffee growers and other intermediaries have benefited financially from participating in fair trade and organic markets. However, the producers continue to face challenges, including increasing costs of production, stagnant premium, price floors, and declining yield. Institutional reforms within the supply chain and greater support from the government are necessary to ensure a better functioning Bolivian market. The government should also prioritize certified coffee as a part of its national food sovereignty agenda since Bolivians consume increasing amounts of high-quality coffees.

A Review of: “Young, Oran R., Leslie A. King, and Heike Schroeder, eds. Institutions and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications, and Research Frontiers”

The Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) project is in many ways no less urgent than that of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC and other scientific projects have established with impressive certainty the fact and the causes of global warming and myriad other forms of global environmental degradation. The much less well-known IDGEC, along with other efforts, addresses the next pressing question: How do we redesign our institutions to address these problems? Nonetheless, the IDGEC, along with its sister projects in the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), gets no respect, at least when it comes to resources. For example, the IPCC has been in existence more than 20 years, and for its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 had more than 2,500 scientific experts reviewing the literature, with 800 contributing authors and 450 lead authors providing the basis for the report. This historic marshaling of scientific data allowed the report to say definitive things, such as that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal and that there is only a 5% chance that it is due to natural causes, among many other remarkably precise findings. By contrast, the IDGEC project was operative between 1995 and 2007, and involved 22 practitioners and scientists and three external reviewers. It is in the nature of the social sciences that its findings do not have quite the headline-grabbing nature of the IPCC findings (and even the IPCC can only sporadically grab the headlines). Also, the hard-won insights of the social sciences can come off sounding distressingly obvious: There are frequently ‘‘misfits’’ between ecosystem dynamics and governance systems, the effectiveness of international environmental institutions depends on their interplay with other institutions, and scale matters. But given the urgency of the task, why aren’t more people and resources being poured into research and action on institutional design? This book should help us make the case for doing that. So what does it tell us? The 12 years of research by the mostly National Science Foundation (NSF)funded IDGEC was one of the four original core projects of the IHDP. This Bonn-based entity was established by UNESCO in 1996 and is a program of the United Nations University. This volume is one of four produced by the IHDP. The IDGEC and many of the chapters in the book are organized around the research foci of causality, performance, and design and what it defines as the analytical Society and Natural Resources, 23:485–487 Copyright # 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0894-1920 print=1521-0723 online DOI: 10.1080/08941921003641729