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are developing their own production programs and complementing
the protection programs with ecotourism, artisan production, water
bottling and the sale of environmental services. Most importantly, these
programs are examples of the way in which people are learning to
appreciate the value of their inherited cultural traditions and enriching
them with techniques and lessons from the current era.
Conclusion
Throughout Latin America mountain people are rediscovering and updating
their traditional cosmologies along with their knowledge systems to
develop unique proposals for harnessing their material, human and natural
resources to improve their quality of life and ensure the protection of their
ecosystems. Even in Mexico City, at more than 2,000 meters above sea level,
dozens of community groups have organized to take advantage of their
resources to strengthen their societies and political structures and raise their
living standards. A 2,500 hectare degraded forest has been set aside as an
ecotourism site and nature preserve where monthly tens of thousands of
visitors are treated to a unique set of hiking and biking trails and nature
talks which inform and entertain while employing more than 200 members
of the community. A pre-Colombian amphibian, the
Axolotl
,
14
has become
a charismatic attraction in the 'fl oating gardens' of Xochimilco, when one
community decided to abandon the crass commercialism in favor of a tour
that explains how the complex ecosystem can be managed to provide a
variegated cornucopia of fruits, vegetables and small animals that protect
the environment and provide for the economic well-being of the people.
The anecdotal and quite selective recounting of a small selection of
local development initiatives presented in this chapter cannot do justice to
the breadth of activities undertaken by millions of Mexicans and people
elsewhere in the world implementing local development strategies on the
margin of and in place of unsatisfactory market-based solutions. They
are reclaiming cultural mechanisms for organizing productive structures
responsive to local needs and strengthening traditional governance organs
while creating a new generation of local cadre concerned with their societies'
quality of life and the health of their ecosystems; in the process, they
are transforming market relations with the outside world, replacing the
commercial partners with fair trade institutions and other 'niche' marketers
that protect them against unequal exchange.
As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, we have systematized
this set of experiences into a strategy for sustainable regional resource
management based on fi ve principles that is being replicated by communities
throughout the Third World. Individual communities are moving beyond
their local confi nes to build alliances within and among regions and
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