Mexico covers an area of 1,964,375 km2 (1,943,945 km2 of land and 20,430 km2 of water, with 9,330 km of coastline) between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. It is designated as a megadiverse country, as it contains between 60 and 70% of the total biodiversity of the planet, it has the greatest reptile diversity, the second greatest diversity of mammals, the forth greatest diversity of amphibian and vascular plants and the tenth greatest diversity of birds. Due to its location, the country is frequently exposed to high risk natural phenomena (tsunamis along the Pacific coast, volcanoes and destructive earthquakes in the centre and south, and Hurricanes on the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean coasts). Although Mexico is the second-largest economy in Latin America, more than 40% of the population is poor and more than 10% is considered to live in extreme poverty. At least three great civilizations (the Mayas, the Olnecs and the Toltecs) preceded the Aztec empire, conquered in the middle of the 16th century by the Spanish. This situation has created a pluri-cultural nation, with 62 Mexican living languages and an indigenous population of over 10 million individuals (10% of the total population of the country).1 Rural poverty is highest in the places where biodiversity is greatest: poverty, inequality and biodiversity often overlap; deforestation, water shortage or pollution are often accompanied by water-borne diseases, malnutrition, inadequate education, and lack of health services, infrastructures or earning opportunities.2 One of the main objectives of the government is therefore to link economic growth, increasing quality of life, and poverty reduction with the sustainable use of natural resources.
In Mexico, the widespread approach to conservation is based on a system of protected areas created through presidential decree and regulated by the General Law on Ecologic Equilibrium and Environment Protection at federal, state and municipal level. However, this system has often failed, mainly due to: uncoordinated public policies; conflicts between environmental authorities and local people over the management of natural resources; and exclusion of local people's perspectives, values and beliefs in the conservation policies.3 In Mexico 80% of the remaining forest land is inhabited and managed by 8,400 communities, who own rights to the land and base their livelihoods on the use or trade of the natural resources. Hence community conservation has started to be seen as long term conservation strategy at relatively low cost, respecting traditional practices and cultures.4
Community conserved areas (which include Sacred Natural Sites that are often excluded from the official protected areas system) stand out compared to the rest of the Mexican landscape, prevalently due to a lack of forest degradation and deforestation.5 For this reason, government agencies, at both federal and state level, are encouraging and supporting community initiatives for conservation. In 2008 CONAFOR (National Forest Commission) financed the enhancement of common management/property institutions such as Ejidos and community forests in marginalised indigenous areas.6 Mexico is also engaged in the establishment and management of 37 Biosphere Reserves (these are federally recognised sites administrated by the federal National Commission of Protected Natural Areas- CONANP) which are being created to ‘promote and demonstrate a balanced relationship between humans and the biosphere’.
The Méxican Revolution and the subsequent agrarian reforms have placed over half of the Mexican forests in community held lands. Increasingly communities have been able to gain substantial control over the use of their forests, leading to hundreds of community forest enterprises.7 Nowadays, Mexican community forestry projects are a clear example of the connection between community development and conservation. The combination of community initiatives and policy support (such as agrarian reform, forest laws or forestry programmes) have provided the necessary conditions for the emergence of highly flexible community forestry enterprises that link the community’s social and economic interests to conservation efforts. Community forestry schemes are able to successfully access competitive markets delivering economic equity and environmental conservation.8 Current estimates indicate more than 2,400 small social enterprises exist that manage and restore the forest for sustainable production, extraction, transformation and commercialisation of timber and non timber forest products.9 Over the years forest cover, degraded ecosystems, and abandoned agricultural plots have been managed and restored by the communities.5
When not extracting products from the forest, these communities often find their source of income from ecotourism activities. Most recently, communities have started relying on the important opportunities offered by ecotourism in marine ecosystems, particularly relating to whale shark watching in California Bay or the Caribbean Sea.10 Other communities are investing in agroeconomic projects to promote cultivation and consumption of local organic food in rural areas. Considering that 97% of the rural population lives in poverty conditions, and many suffer from food-related diseases, these projects also have a beneficial impact on livelihoods and promote the cultivation of local and not transgenic cultivars.11 Finally, community forest management plays an important role in carbon mitigation and in adaptation strategies to climate change through community forest projects halting deforestation and restoring forest cover, therefore sequestering carbon.12
The main obstacles to community conservation include a lack of finances, competition from cheap foreign imports (which often translates into a lack of adequate support from the government) and illegal logging and poaching activities in the region. Despite the high level of cohesion and participation within the communities, cross-generational transfers, labour migration, and urbanization can also represent challenges to the communal tenure system, generating a new level of micro-political interaction, petty corruption and local conflicts.13 Rights over the resources and their commercial use, along with bioprospecting can also create problems at the community level due to the difficulties in uniting the many different interests that are at stake (communities, researchers, private companies, conservation or development NGOs). 14 Finally, some studies have provided evidence that external factors such as crop yield, marginality, percentage of forest area, total population and the distance to markets can impact the success of a community’s conservation effort.15
Financial and institutional support and protection are key to the success of community conserved areas. However, as each community has to face different challenges, flexibility and adaptation to new contexts and opportunities are considered critical factors in achieving conservation and development. For example, conservation plans need to account for the high level of heterogeneity in community’s management schemes. When the activity generates a profit, the community should invest in public goods to spread the benefit to the parts of the community not directly involved with the income-generating activity. When the conservation effort does not generate any revenue, strengthening the cooperation between the members of the community is considered fundamental.16 Capacity building, technology provision, reducing marginality and investments by local institutions are generally suggested as way to foster the community sense of ownership.4 Finally, code of conduct guidelines and good management practices have been promoted as a tool to help protect resources from external damage (such as when tourist activities negatively impact the same resource that is generating the income). 10