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common in most projects designed by offi cial development agencies in
central offi ces. This approach has become part of a broadly successful
effort throughout Mexico that is now widely recognized as the most
wide-spread and consolidated model of community forestry in the
world, leading to a diminished dependence on extraction of trees as
a large number of different activities in the forest environment assure
new sources of income and resources while improving local abilities
for self-government and ecosystem management (Merino and Robson
2006).
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3) The Mixtecan peoples are an impoverished group living in a desolate
region in east-central Mexico, which suffered from centuries of over-
exploitation. A group of young people from the National University
(UNAM) proposed collaboration to the 100,000 people living in the
region to implement an ecosystem rehabilitation program based
primarily on water and land management techniques. During the
ensuing quarter-century an ambitious series of projects, grouped
around an umbrella concept: Water Forever,
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have improved
conditions in the 3.5 million acre region, on the basis of a program
firmly anchored in community mobilization and training, based
on attacking the problem of water scarcity, caused by three factors:
population increase, inadequate natural resources management and
unequal access to water, and most especially the over drawing of water
supplies by a small number of people legitimated through corrupt
power structures.
Deforestation and surface erosion were the main problems to be
tackled. A wide variety of land management projects, including dikes,
terraces and dams were implemented so that people from all of the
communities could participate. The cumulative effect of the hundreds
of these small efforts was to substantially increase the arable land
under cultivation and to increase the volumes of water available
for agricultural production, the animals and the communities. The
approach has demonstrated its viability as a mechanism for promoting
local capabilities far beyond those of constructing public works and
increasing the region's productive potential. The long-term vision and
the emphasis on local capacity building for project implementation has
transformed the organization into a sort of substitute local government
agency, with its own management structure, fl eet of vehicles and heavy
construction equipment, planning and engineering departments and
even a geographic information systems laboratory.
Similar community management projects are springing up throughout
Mexico. Community forest management projects now encompass
more than one-half of the nation's wood resources, where local groups
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