Vulnerabilities and Threats to Natural Forest Regrowth: Land Tenure Reform, Land Markets, Pasturelands, Plantations, and Urbanization in Indigenous Communities in Mexico

Elena Lazos-Chavero,Paula Meli,Consuelo Bonfil

doi:10.3390/land10121340

Elena Lazos-Chavero, Paula Meli + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/land10121340

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Abstract

Despite the economic and social costs of national and international efforts to restore millions of hectares of deforested and degraded landscapes, results have not met expectations due to land tenure conflicts, land-use transformation, and top-down decision-making policies. Privatization of land, expansion of cattle raising, plantations, and urbanization have created an increasingly competitive land market, dispossessing local communities and threatening forest conservation and regeneration. In contrast to significant investments in reforestation, natural regrowth, which could contribute to landscape regeneration, has not been sufficiently promoted by national governments. This study analyzes socio-ecological and economic vulnerabilities of indigenous and other peasant communities in the Mexican states of Veracruz, Chiapas, and Morelos related to the inclusion of natural regeneration in their forest cycles. While these communities are located within protected areas (Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve, Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, El Tepozteco National Park, and Chichinautzin Biological Corridor), various threats and vulnerabilities impede natural regeneration. Although landscape restoration involves complex political, economic, and social relationships and decisions by a variety of stakeholders, we focus on communities’ vulnerable land rights and the impacts of privatization on changes in land use and forest conservation. We conclude that the social, economic, political, and environmental vulnerabilities of the study communities threaten natural regeneration, and we explore necessary changes for incorporating this process in landscape restoration.

Highlights

In Veracruz, from the mid-1990s to 2001, the first author worked with Nahua families to transform extensive cattle raising—which began in the 1950s—into holistic cattle raising, which allows for conservation of patches of successional vegetation and a series of interconnected biological corridors [46,48,54,66,67]
As a result of the 1992 Agrarian Reform’s modifications of property rights, in recent years, land sales have increased in the three study areas, impeding natural regeneration of secondary vegetation
Ejido members of Tatahuicapan were pressing for regulation of their land, and little land was sold

Summary

Introduction

Heads of environmental and agricultural ministries involved in these initiatives have blamed this on drought, food security crises, and unproductive agricultural practices [6,7], failing to acknowledge the impact of expansion of cattle-raising, agroindustrial plantations, urbanization, and extractive mining and oil companies. Such industries have created a market for land, dispossessing indigenous and peasant communities [8,9,10,11]. Regeneration in these landscapes is threatened by communities’ loss of land tenure rights, land tenure conflicts, land market pressures, commercial plantations, livestock expansion, illegal logging, and top-down environmental and agricultural policies [9,10,12,13,14,15,16]

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Conclusion