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

Abstract

• Our study area in Mexico’s Mixteca Alta region has experienced a forest transition. • This forest transition is the result of depopulation and a decline in the use of farmland, grazing lands, and local natural resources. • The forest transition and its causes created a window of opportunity to change the governance of common-pool resources in our study area. • These governance changes include rules limiting grazing and logging, which contribute to the forest transition in a positive feedback loop. • Reforestations supported by government institutions and non-governmental organizations also contributed to the forest transition. The notion of windows of opportunity, developed in the literature on adaptive governance, refers to the existence of circumstances or events that trigger and promote governance changes to manage ecosystems and common-pool resources more sustainably. Research has largely focused on windows of opportunity such as natural disasters and environmental crises. This paper contends that windows of opportunity should be viewed with a wider lens and include other phenomena that do not necessarily involve a growing pressure or negative impact on ecosystems and common-pool resources. Based on information gathered from interviews and the analysis of official statistics and land use/cover maps, we first show that our study area in Mexico’s Mixteca Alta region, in the state of Oaxaca, has experienced a recovery of woody vegetation—a forest transition—through secondary succession because of depopulation, deagrarianization, agricultural intensification, the decline or change in livestock, and the decline in the use of farmland, grazing lands, and local natural resources. Building on these results, we examine how these demographic, socioeconomic, and land-use changes, along with the emergence of new national institutions and local non-governmental organizations focused on the environment, provided a window of opportunity for communities to change the governance of their forests and grazing lands through the establishment of rules to limit grazing and logging, while also carrying out reforestations. These processes contributed to the further expansion of wooded areas in a positive feedback loop.