The forest transition as a window of opportunity to change the governance of common-pool resources: The case of Mexico’s Mixteca Alta

Lorenzen, Matthew; Orozco–Ramírez, Quetzalcóatl; Santiago, Rosario Ramírez; Garza, Gustavo

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105516

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Non-crop grass, shrubs, and trees have taken over abandoned lands in a process known as forest transitions (Walker, 2008 ). Various case studies have shown that parts of Mexico are representative of these forest transitions and rural decline (e.g., Lorenzen et al, 2021 ; Robson & Berkes, 2011 ).…”

Section: Land-system Change Driven By Peasant Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By contrast, in other Oaxacan cases temporal or permanent depopulation due to out-migration has offered an opportunity for a more sustainable and profitable resource management that involves ecotourism, payments for environmental services, and forestry (Robson et al, 2018 ; Robson & Klooster, 2019 ). As shown by Lorenzen et al ( 2021 ) in the Mixteca Alta , reduced communities have changed the governance of their lands “through the establishment of rules to limit grazing and logging, while also carrying out reforestations” (p. 1).…”

Section: Land-system Change Driven By Peasant Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Land-System Changes and Migration Amidst the Opium Poppy Collapse in the Southern Highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico (2016-2020)

2023

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For decades, Mexico has been one of the major illegal opium poppy cultivation countries in the world. In 2017-2018 the price of the opium gum dropped abruptly to a historical low, causing a sudden collapse of production. We analyze the dynamics of rural land systems amid this price collapse through a multi-site approach in three neighboring municipalities in the Southern Highlands of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. We use medium-scale spatial resolution satellite imagery for a quantitative assessment in a five-year period (2016-2020), complemented by secondary data and structured/semi-structured interviews with poppy growers and other key informants. Findings show that all three municipalities experienced pronounced declines in the areas of overall cultivated agricultural land immediately after the poppy price collapsed (2017-2018). However, there is a clear contrast among municipalities in how these areas recovered the following years (2019-2020). We identify three differentiating factors that explain this contrast in land-system trajectories: different levels of extreme poverty, livelihood diversification, and geographic isolation associated to (trans)national migration networks. These findings contribute to the analysis of the dynamic relationships among rural land systems, local resource management (including agrobiodiversity), and economic globalization involving illegal crop-commodity cultivation and migration, particularly in Latin America. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10745-022-00388-4.

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Section: Land-system Change Driven By Peasant Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Land-system Change Driven By Peasant Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land-System Changes and Migration Amidst the Opium Poppy Collapse in the Southern Highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico (2016-2020)

2023

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“…However, I did not find evidence to confirm that the lack of sufficient agricultural lands (especially for youths) was a notable factor of out‐migration, as suggested in the literature review. In fact, other research focusing on the GMA has shown that the abandonment of agricultural land was substantial in the second half of the 20th century (Lorenzen et al, 2020, 2021). I also briefly noted that migrant social networks played a role in the rural exodus from the study area, an idea that has been overlooked in the literature on rural depopulation, even though it is a recurring theme in the literature on international migration.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From rural exodus to repopulation in Mexico's Mixteca Alta? Analyzing differential trends

Lorenzen

2022

Population Space and Place

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This paper analyzes differential trends in rural depopulation and repopulation in nine municipalities of Mexico's Mixteca Alta region, in the southern state of Oaxaca, based on census data and interviews carried out in 2019. From 1950 to 2000, the study area experienced a substantial loss of population, linked essentially to out‐migration to Mexico City. However, from 2000 to 2020, four of the municipalities regained population, while the remaining five continued losing residents. This repopulation is explained by a declining but still positive natural population growth combined with less out‐migration and slightly more in‐migration, linked to growing return migration. However, in‐migration is too small to meaningfully explain the transition from massive depopulation to repopulation, meaning that concepts such as counterurbanization and rurbanization are not easily transposed onto the study area, as they centre their attention on the in‐migration of former urban dwellers. The paper thus highlights the importance of population retention—explained by local tertiarization, the possibility of commuting to nearby small cities, and the weakening of traditional pull factors—as key to understanding rural repopulation in the study area.

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“…FTs in Puerto Rico, El Salvador, and Brazil reflect histories of agricultural land abandonment, where country-specific contingencies have managed to push and pull people from rural areas, with significant depopulation in the countryside [30,32]. Studies of Latin American FTs at more localized scales have emphasized the impact of changing livelihood strategies on household mobility [16,33,34]. For example, Rudel et al [35] used remotely sensed and household data to investigate FT in the Peruvian Amazon.…”

Section: Forest Dynamics In Latin Americamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recent critiques call attention to scale and foundational issues of measurement and definition [13]. As for scale, there is no a priori reason to restrict FT to the nation-state given that processes of forest recovery occur not just at the macro-scale but also in highly localized settings [14][15][16]. In fact, aggregate deforestation might conceal regional FT as a function of the biome [15,17,18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest Transition and Fuzzy Environments in Neoliberal Mexico

Simmons

Astier

Walker

et al. 2023

Land

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Although deforestation remains a continuing threat to both the natural world and its resident human populations, a countervailing land cover dynamic has been observed in many nations. This process of landscape turnaround, the so-called forest transition, holds the potential of regenerating ecosystem services by sparing land from agricultural activities and abandoning it to forest succession. Here, we present a case study of a long-term process of forest transition that is ongoing in the Patzcuaro watershed of the state of Michoacán, Mexico. The research to be discussed comprises a remote sensing analysis designed to (1) capture the land cover impacts of a multidecadal process of trade liberalization (1996–2018); (2) ascertain the role that land tenure plays in land use dynamics affecting forest cover, and (3) resolve forest cover types into native forest, secondary vegetation, and “commodity” covers of fruit trees, in this case, avocado. Mexico presents a useful case for addressing these three design elements. Our analysis, undertaken for both private property and collective modes of resource management in five communities, reveals a forest transition annualized at 20 ha-yr−1, or a gain of eight percent for the period. This translates into a relative rate of forest transition of 0.39%-yr−1 which is three times faster than what is occurring in the temperate biome on a national scale (0.07%-yr−1). Most of the forest transition is occurring on private holdings and stems from field abandonment as farming systems intensify production with avocado plantations and cow–calf operations. As this study demonstrates, forest transitions are not occurring ubiquitously across nations but instead are highly localized occurrences driven by a myriad of distal and proximate factors involving disparate sets of stakeholders. Consequently, policy makers who are keen to expand forest transitions to fulfill their national climate action commitments under the Paris Agreement must first promote research into the complexity of landscapes and drivers of land change at regional and local scales.

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The forest transition as a window of opportunity to change the governance of common-pool resources: The case of Mexico’s Mixteca Alta

Cited by 12 publications

References 30 publications

Land-System Changes and Migration Amidst the Opium Poppy Collapse in the Southern Highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico (2016-2020)

Land-System Changes and Migration Amidst the Opium Poppy Collapse in the Southern Highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico (2016-2020)

From rural exodus to repopulation in Mexico's Mixteca Alta? Analyzing differential trends

Forest Transition and Fuzzy Environments in Neoliberal Mexico

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