Percepción local de los servicios ecológicos y de bienestar de la selva de la zona maya en Quintana Roo, México

Abstract

This study assesses the Maya communities’ local perception of the ecological services and well-being obtained from the rainforest of Quintana Roo. To do this, we used six landscape units, which were defined by integrating both, the local knowledge of Maya people and literature review. To identify the ecological services that communities perceived from the forest, open and semi-structured interviews, participant observation, depth interviews and community workshops were used. The results show that interviewees identified provisioning services, regulating and maintenance services, and cultural services. In particular, a larger number of ecological services was perceived from the following two landscape units: “high rainforest” (“monte alto”) and the “acahual of 20 or more years-old”, whereas the “Savannah” was identified as the one which least services provided. Moreover, using the development studies theory, our study identified the three dimensions of the concept of “human well-being”: the material, the relational and the subjective dimensions. Furthermore, our study also manages to introduce the relationships of these dimensions with the ecological services perceived by the studied communities. Our results show a clear interaction Maya society-nature, and are useful to guide community and governmental decision-making in the management of local natural resources.