Mexico is a among the world's leaders in community-based management
of natural resources like forests and grazing lands. Unlike
many countries where natural resources are owned and managed either
privately or publicly (by the state), a significant percentage
of Mexico's natural resources are managed communally by agrarian
reform land grant communities called "ejidos." Communal
management of temperate and tropical forests across Mexico presents
numerous challenges and opportunities for relatively low income
agrarian communities. It also represents an important contribution
to biodiversity conservation where communities can maintain livelihoods
without converting forests to pasture or agricultural plantations.
My research on community forest management in Quintana Roo, Mexico
considers three areas of inquiry: (1) impacts of globalization on agrarian
communities, (2) environmental and political histories of agrarian
reform, and (3) common pool resource management. The first area
seeks to understand if and how structural reforms at the national
level linked to globalization (e.g. changes to agrarian law) impact
community forestry enterprises. The second area looks at
the emergence of agrarian reform land grant communities (ejidos)
in Quintana Roo since the 1940s and examines how state interventions
have shaped community politics and resource management over time. The
third area investigates how land grant communities collectively
manage their forests through the development of mutually agreeable
rules for use. Some communities have greater success than
others with collective resource management. The question
is: Why? In particular, I look at how rule systems
for common pool resource management are shaped by long-standing
cultural and political practices.
Publications in this area:
Wilshusen, P.R. 2003. Negotiating
Devolution: Community Conflict, Structural Power, and Local Forest
Management in Quintana Roo, Mexico. Ph.D. dissertation. University
of Michigan School of Natural Resources and the Environment, Ann
Arbor.
Wilshusen, P.R. 2005. "Community
Adaptation or Collective Breakdown?: The Formation of 'Work
Groups' in Two Ejidos in Quintana Roo, Mexico." Pp. 151-179 in Bray, Merino-Pérez, and Barry (eds.). The Community-Managed Forests of Mexico: Managing for Sustainability . Austin: University
of Texas Press.
Wilshusen, P.R., L. Raleigh, and V. Russell. 2002. "By, For, and Of the People:
The Development of Two Community Protected Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico." Journal
of Sustainable Forestry 15(1): 113-126.
Articles in Progress:
"Hidden Exchanges Behind Common Property : Informal vs. Formal Social Capital in the Community Forests of Quintana Roo, Mexico."
"Shades of Social Capital: Elite Persistance and Community-based Forestry Enterprises in Quintana Roo, Mexico."
"Revolutionary Diversion: State Formation and Environmental Change
in the Maya Forest of Quintana Roo, Mexico."
