Community Governance of forest conservation in San Miguel Topilejo, Tlalpan, CDMX

Abstract

The communal governance is a process of agreement building and taking decision over common use resources, which takes intoaccount norms that regulate access, use and management of territory, and rights and responsibilities of resource owners. The leveland type of governance generated in every community depends on the degree of participation of its members to generate agreementssupporting decision and collective actions on their territory. The objective of this study is to know the level of communitygovernance on forest conservation in San Miguel Topilejo. A survey was applied to a sample of 58 de community members. Thelevel of governance was determined by criteria and indicators about social capital, collective action and local organization of thiscommunity. The main findings show that this community have low level of governance for forest management and conservation.The social capital generated is low because it does not allow cohesion of its members. Collective action show lack of cooperationand coordination to decision making process for enforcement of norms and sanctions. Level of community organization is elementalthe structure of positions and roles in the participation of forest management. The conclusion is this community show low level ofgovernance because the lack of clear objectives, lack of well-established norms and sanctions and lack of involvement of comunerosin decision making processes and management of common use resources.