Mapping the Policy Terrain: Political Economy, Policy, Environment, and Forestry Production in Northern Mexico

Abstract

This paper examines the political economy and policy environment of forestry production in northern Mexico. The objective is to review the multiple policy issues that impact forestry production and act together as articulatory mechanisms to move capital from periphery to core. The policies examined that affect forestry emanate from international, national, and state levels.The main point made is that a single event or activity cannot account for existing conditions of forestry in the Sierra Madre Occidental. The purpose is to analyze, perhaps well-known facts by mapping the policy terrain in the context of articulation theory to help scholars and policy makers gain a better understanding of linked social and historical conditions that maintain a political economy. The unique aspect of this presentation is that it brings a political economic, historical, and holistic framework to bear on the problem of policy analyses. Thus, policy formation is viewed from a perspective that considers power interrelations among policies and policy makersKey words: policy, forestry, Mexico, political economy

The Policy Terrain in Protected Area Landscapes: Challenges for Agroforestry in Integrated Landscape Conservation

“…Despite the fact that Uganda, Cameroon and Mali have all moved to adopt progressive forest and environment policies that facilitate decentralization, prioritize participatory management and poverty alleviation, and promote tree planting and on-farm conservation (MINEF 1996; The Uganda Forestry Policy 2001; Projet RESIDD no date), we find that the protected area policy terrain presents clear challenges to employing agroforestry as an integrated conservation landscape strategy. Delineation of hard boundaries, policy contradictions, rough market transactions, and legal ambiguity contribute to a political environment in which conservation is still founded upon segregation and boundary creation, and national environmental policies and laws do not necessarily reflect or influence what occurs on the ground (Weaver 1996;Ribot 1999;McDermott 2000).…”

“…Weaver (1996) applied such an approach in his examination of the policy terrain affecting forestry production in northern Mexico. Weaver concludes that large international political and market processes (the North American Free Trade Agreement), and centre/periphery patterns of power and resource extraction, are as important as forestry policies per se in shaping the forestry policy terrain in northern Mexico.…”

Clandestine Artisans or Integrated Producers?: Standardization of Rural Livelihood in the Norte Chico, Chile

“…Within the ostensibly objective development context, it is almost always capitalist relations of production for commercial markets that are presented as "natural" while other relations of production embedded in social life are left out altogether. As Weaver (1996) makes clear in his call for broader assessments of the "total policy environment"-a framework that includes a historical perspective on development policies and market reform within changing political climates (which is especially relevant in the technocratic "neo-liberal experiments" in Chile and Mexico)-public policy elucidates mechanisms that articulate peripheral regions with core areas as they bring under state control local economic practice that has previously operated outside of the state's reach. Ferguson's description of the "anti-politics machine of development" also resonates here: planned interventions, often based on a remarkable misunderstanding of how economies function at the local level, may produce "unintended outcomes" that nevertheless serve to extend the power (from a Foucaultian perspective) of the "unauthored resultant constellation" of political control (Ferguson 1990:20-21).…”

Financing of wasteland afforestation in India

“…The financing of forestry sector schemes in Mexico is also handled through the Bank of Mexico, a trustee for agricultural funds, and by FICART (Trust Fund for Credit in Rainfed and Irrigated Area) and FODEF (Trust Fund for Forestry Development). Disbursement of funds from World Bank forestry development loans are routed through these trust funds and banks to private and commercial banks for on-lending to the ultimate beneficiaries (ejidos, public land; comunidades, communities) and small producers (Weaver, 1996).…”

“…Such failures and constraints in delivering credit by financial institutions at the grassroots level are also reported in Latin American countries. For example, Weaver (1996) found that in Mexico, rural poor and indigenous people could not make proper use of credit for productive purposes due to their lack of requisite knowledge about banking, and the banks being urban based and urban biased.…”