The Mexican model of community forest management: The role of agrarian policy, forest policy and entrepreneurial organization

In Mexico, the “democratization of natural assets” through an agrarian reform process laid the territorial foundation for the establishment of a large community forest sector. The common property regime and agrarian policies established by the Mexican Revolution also created a common form of governance for all of rural Mexico. Concepts from common property theory and social and natural capital are used to analyze this sector and its emergence. It is argued in this paper that agrarian reform laws have been more crucial in creating a large CFE than specific forest legislation. Agrarian reform distributed forest lands to communities and provided a template for community governance that could later serve as an institutional platform for the development of CFEs. Forest laws and programs have been important in different places and periods in developing this potential, by providing subsidies, training, and markets for incipient CFEs. Forest legislation also served, at different periods, to empower communities to take more responsibility for managing their own forests. More recently, major new funds have been directed at subsidizing some aspects of community forest management. The agrarian governance platform has shown flexibility in being able to develop and adapt more entrepreneurial organizational forms. However, there are a wide range of forms that have evolved, ranging from making the enterprise directly dependent on the community governance structures to creating a clear division between community and entrepreneurial governance through Community Councils and Managers, and to dissolution of the single CFE model into subcoalition enterprises. This variety shows that it is possible to combine community governance forms and entrepreneurial organizational forms to compete successfully in the marketplace. The Mexican case provides a model for the world-wide devolution of forest lands to local communities, and shows that community initiatives and policy support can result in common property regimes that can organize to compete in the marketplace and deliver social, economic and ecological benefits.