Challenges for Rural Livelihoods, Participatory Agroforestry, and Biodiversity Conservation in a Neotropical Biosphere Reserve in Mexico

The Flow of Peasant Lives: a board game to simulate livelihood strategies and trajectories resulting from complex rural household decisions

“…Through multidimensional mapping of one time to another (intertemporal), the game also functions as a social simulator that offers explicit, detailed profiles of livelihood strategies developed on the board by RHs, and of their trajectories as they fail or succeed to reproduce capacities resulting from these strategies. This tool was developed and parameterized based on information and knowledge resulting from 15 years of researchers' interactions and discussions with RHs of the Man and the Biosphere-United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (MAB-UNESCO) La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico (for our most recent review, see García-Barrios et al 2020). Since 1950, RHs of La Sepultura have inhabited a territory with a dynamic social-environmental history that has been highly disputed among a variety of local and external actors.…”

Realising the benefits of natures

“…4.4B). This was a notable outcome given the prominence of land zoning programs and management plans promoted by conservation institutions, especially CONANP (García-Barrios et al, 2020). These programs are based on a land-sparing strategy, which refers to "the outcome of intentional conservation interventions that combine increasing yields on farmed land with sparing native vegetation or freeing up land for habitat restoration elsewhere" (Phalan, 2018).…”

“…Hence, the required next step is to involve different stakeholders in participatory scenario planning, and if possible, in an ongoing use of scenarios to foster transformative actions (Brown et al, 2016). Scenarios can be integrated into participatory research processes that have taken place in La Sepultura BR and California for over a decade (García-Barrios et al, 2020). In particular, participatory scenario planning can be used to understand and address social dynamics and relationships within and among stakeholder groups, and to support the creation of a formal territorial action group that promotes long-term innovation and capacity building (Meza Jiménez et al, 2020).…”

“…Moreover, farmers and their families in the BR have had to reconstruct their social relations many times and in response to the varied interactions with external actors and institutions, which dispute local territories and the benefits that communities can derive from the landscape (García-Barrios et al, 2020). The Resin Project was considered a socioenvironmental innovation success that used endogenous bioresources to support local livelihoods (see e.g.…”

“…via programs and policies that seek conservation and livelihood co-benefits. Regarding expert knowledge, there is a good sense of social actors and their interactions, land use history, and the challenge in bridging biodiversity conservation and rural livelihoods in La Sepultura BR (García-Barrios et al, 2020;Meza Jiménez et al, 2020;Rivera-Núñez et al, 2020). Researchers have been involved in long-term participatory action-research (García-Barrios et al, 2020;García Barrios et al, 2012) and recent local land use studies (Braasch et al, 2018(Braasch et al, , 2017.…”