ABSTRACT
Mexico’s high rates of deforestation were a main concern for Julia Carabias Lillo when she became Minister for the Environment in 1994. Upon assuming her ministerial responsibilities, she made the problem of deforestation one of her top policy priorities as part of her broader strategy to pay more attention to the ‘green agenda’ (see Chapter Three). She believed that past governmental policies had favored agricultural development to the detriment of forestry resources and that there was a need to introduce mechanisms that would ensure a decrease in deforestation rates as well as incentives to encourage a more sustainable management of forests. 1 As a result, Carabias pursued policy reform with the objective of addressing the problem of deforestation through the reform of the Law of the Environment and the Forestry Law in 1996 and 1997, the reform of the reglamento for the Forestry Law in 1998, and the transferring of the National Deforestation Program (PRONARE) from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SAGARGH) to her ministry in 1998. In very general terms, such actions resulted in the introduction of a stricter regulatory system to control the transportation of lumber, the creation of a subsidy system to promote commercial forestry plantations (PRODEPLAN), the establishment of a technical assistance program for forest communities (PRODEFOR), and the restructuring of the reforestation program through the increase of technical management by technical foresters (a more detailed description is presented below). It could well be argued that time is needed to determine whether such policies have had a positive effect in reducing deforestation in Mexico since this is a complex problem whose causes are multiple and often interconnected. However, in order for these policy changes to have any longer term impact on deforestation, they have to be implemented. Given the history of weak policy implementation in Mexico, it is necessary to look at whether they are in fact being implemented. This chapter presents therefore an analysis of the implementation of the forestry policy changes introduced by Carabias in the Selva Lacandona.
