ABSTRACT
Mexico presents a unique case where around 60 per cent of the nation’s forests were placed in the hands of communities, in successive degrees of actual control, stretching from the 1920s to the 1990s, beginning with the Mexican Revolution (1911–1917). This resulted in Mexico’s common property forest sector being of a scale unmatched globally. It is a natural, national-level experiment in the political, economic, social, and ecological benefits of turning over forests to local communities with a top-down supply of governance institutions and the five capitals for creating market-oriented community forest enterprises (CFEs). This process opened political and economic spaces that were occupied and extended by vigorous community collective action. Many hundreds of these Mexican forest communities are extracting timber and generating incomes from their forests while conserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change for future generations. We propose that community collective action around common property forests in Mexico is a frontline adaptation to modifying the rate and direction of forest ecosystem response to climate change. The Mexican model provides inspiration for how many forest-rich developing countries can promote conservation of biodiversity and resilience to climate change in forest communities.
