Bambu Mercado Mundial

Global Environmental Change 10 (2000) 259}272

Community forest management in Mexico: carbon mitigation and biodiversity conservation through rural development
Daniel Klooster *, Omar Masera
Department of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2190, USA Departamento de Ecologia de los Recursos Naturales, Instituto de Ecologia, UNAM, Campus Morelia, A.P. 152 Patzcuaro61609, Michoacan, Mexico & Received 1 July 2000

Abstract Forest management is an important carbon mitigation strategy for developing countries. As demonstrated by the case of Mexico, community forest management is especially e!ective because it o!ers tangible local bene"ts while conserving forests and sequestering carbon. Community forestry receives minimal government support now, but the cleandevelopment mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol could leverage additional resources to promote the approach in Mexico and elsewhere. We argue that adequately designed and implemented, community forestry management projects can avoid deforestation and restore forest cover and forest density. They comprise promising options for providing both carbon mitigation and sustainable rural development. Thesekinds of projects should be included in the CDM. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Climate change; Mitigation options; Clean Development Mechanism; Community forestry; Mexico; Latin America

1. Introduction For developing countries like Mexico, local deforestation aggregates to global environmental change through biodiversity loss and emissions of carbon dioxide andother greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the generally poor people who inhabit forests face their own, local, environment and development problems. These often include water-borne diseases, malnutrition, inadequate healthcare, poor education, indoor air pollution, transportation di$culties, and lack of local income opportunities. They use forests to meet these needs, sometimes underpatterns of use that lead to clearing and degradation. Both deforestation and exclusionary conservation policies, therefore, imply lost opportunities to meet rural needs through wood production, non-timber forest products, tourism, water management, and compensation for environmental services. Community forest management has the potential to resolve this dilemma and capture

* Corresponding author.Tel.: 850-644-1706. E-mail addresses: danklooster@mindspring.com (D. Klooster), omasera@oikos.unam.mx (O. Masera).

synergies between local and global environment/development interests. In Mexico, community forest management contrasts starkly to a generally bleak panorama of forest degradation and deforestation. Hundreds of communities with small logging and forest management businesses maintainforest cover, restore density and commercial productivity in previously mismanaged forests, and reforest abandoned agricultural areas (World Bank, 1995; Klooster, 1999; Bray and Wexler, 1996). Their experience suggests that community-based forest management has an important role to play in reversing processes of deforestation, sequestering carbon, and promoting rural development. Realizing thispotential, however, requires social investment, capital, technical assistance, and training in business administration and forest management. The global bene"ts of carbon mitigation associated with community forest conservation could help leverage needed investments in local forest management capacity. This article is organized as follows. In Section 1 we introduce the concept of forest managementin the context of compensation strategies for environmental services, arguing that community forest management in developing countries should be included in the clean development mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol.

0959-3780/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 5 9 - 3 7 8 0 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 3 3 - 9

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D. Klooster, O. Masera / Global...