Social Science Research Council

"Testing the Role of Community Forestry in Conserving Mexico's Pine-Oak Forests"

Roughly 500,000 hectares of land are deforested yearly in Mexico, a country with one of the highest levels of biodiversity worldwide and a large rural poor population. Community forestry is widely viewed as an appropriate development model for Mexico's pine-oak forests, promising economic benefits for local people and an alternative to deforestation. Yet little research has directly questioned if and how community forestry initiatives contribute to reducing deforestation. In addition, little common property research addresses the effects of external social, economic, and institutional forces on the success of commons management. Mexico provides an ideal natural experiment to explore these issues because of the length of time that widespread community forestry has existed. I propose to research whether and under what conditions community forestry in Mexico is reducing deforestation, focusing on three themes: I am currently analyzing the effectiveness of community forestry in reducing deforestation compared to other macro-level social and economic factors across ten states with large timber resources using multivariate analysis. In my fieldwork, I will analyze how variations in the strength of community management and new markets for high-value agricultural goods affect decisions to deforest. I will use satellite imagery and a comparative case study of 10 communities in two municipalities in Michoacan and Oaxaca to explore this issue. Finally, I will compare the institutional, historical, and political factors that have affected the varying degrees of success in community forestry between these two states. Results will aid in better targeting development programs to underlying social, economic, historical, and institutional causes of deforestation and will help explain the relative influence of these factors within common property theory.