Despite regional deforestation threats, the state of Quintana Roo has maintained over 80% of its territory in forests. Community forest management (CFM) has played a pivotal role in forest cover and biodiversity conservation in the region. In this article, we present the institutional, socioeconomic and environmental conditions under which community-based forest management has been consolidated in the tropical state of Quintana Roo, which occupies the eastern half of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. With a focus on management for timber and other market-based development strategies, we then examine the institutional and socioeconomic factors, as well as biophysical shocks, that have constrained community forestry development in the past 25 years, challenging its persistence. Following, we discuss how forest communities and institutions have responded and adapted to changing forest policies and markets as well as major environmental shocks from hurricanes and fires. CFM in Quintana Roo has shown resiliency since its institutionalization 30 years ago. Future challenges and opportunities include biodiversity conservation, carbon management through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation 4296(REDD+) initiatives, market strengthening, business management training as well as the implementation of alternative silvicultural systems, particularly to manage sustainable populations of commercial timber species.

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This study examines the role multilevel governance plays in the adoption of sustainable landscape management initiatives in emerging arrangements aimed at reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). It sheds light on the challenges these multiple layers of actors and interests encounter around such alternatives in a subnational jurisdiction. Through transcript analysis of 93 interviews with institutional actors in the region of Madre de Dios, Peru, particularly with regard to five sites of land-use change, we identified the multiple actors who are included and excluded in the decision-making process and uncovered their complex interactions in forest and landscape governance and REDD+ arrangements. Madre de Dios is a useful case for studying complex land-use dynamics, as it is home to multiple natural resources, a large mix of actors and interests, and a regional government that has recently experienced the reverberations of decentralization. Findings indicate that multiple actors shaped REDD+ to some extent, but REDD+ and its advocates were unable to shape land-use dynamics or landscape governance, at least in the short term. In the absence of strong and effective regional regulation for sustainable land use alternatives and the high value of gold on the international market, illegal gold mining proved to be a more profitable land-use choice. Although REDD+ created a new space for multilevel actor interaction and communication and new alliances to emerge, the study questions the prevailing REDD+ discourse suggesting that better coordination and cooperation will lead to integrated landscape solutions. For REDD+ to be able to play a role in integrated landscape governance, greater attention needs to be paid to grassroots actors, power and authority over territory and underlying interests and incentives for land-use change.

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REDD+ was conceived as a system of incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation. While this could include many different types of interventions to reduce deforestation and degradation, a consensus has emerged that they should safeguard and “do no harm” to the forest-based livelihoods of local people. Many REDD+ projects have been designed to incentivize forest conservation and support local livelihoods by promoting sustainable use of the forest, hence increasing the revenues earned by local households from forest products. We examine two such projects in the Peruvian Amazon, using panel survey data from over 400 households gathered in 2011 and 2014. In the 3 years between surveys, we observed a severe decline in forest revenue. However, by using a BACI study design and matching, we show that this decrease was not caused by the REDD+ interventions. Thus, REDD+ “did no harm” to local people, at least in terms of forest revenues in the early phases of these two projects in the Peruvian Amazon.

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