Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements

Center for International Forestry Research Center for International Forestry Research

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CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements

CIFOR is a leading international forestry research organisation established in 1993 in response to global concerns about the social, environmental, and economic consequences of forest loss and degradation. CIFOR is dedicated to developing policies and technologies for sustainable use and management of forests, and for enhancing the well-being of Peter Cronkleton people in developing countries who rely on tropical forests for their livelihoods. CIFOR is one of the 15 centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Peter Leigh Taylor (CGIAR). With headquarters in Bogor, Indonesia, CIFOR has offices in Brazil, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, India, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and it works in over 30 Deborah Barry other countries around the world. Samantha Stone-Jovicich Marianne Schmink

CIFOR is one of the 15 centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Cronkleton, P. et al. Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements/ by Peter Cronkleton, Peter Leigh Taylor, Deborah Barry, Samantha Stone-Jovicich, Marianne Schmink. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), 2008.

ISSN 0854-9818 ISBN: 978-979-1412-43-8 iv+36p. (CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49)

CABI thesaurus: 1. community forestry 2. conservation 3. protected areas 4. social participation 5. grassroots organizations 6. community action 7. Guatemala 8. Nicaragua 9. Brazil 10. Amazonia 11. Central America 12. Latin America

Cover photos by Peter Cronkleton and Peter Leigh Taylor

Published by Center for International Forestry Research Mailing address: P.O. Box 0113 BOCBD, Bogor 16000, Indonesia Ofﬁce address: Jl. CIFOR, Situ Gede, Bogor Barat 16115, Indonesia Tel.: +62 (251) 622622; Fax: +62 (251) 622100 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org

Printed on recycled paper Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements

Peter Cronkleton1 Peter Leigh Taylor2 Deborah Barry3 Samantha Stone-Jovicich4 Marianne Schmink4

1. Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Santa Cruz, Bolivia 2. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 3. Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Washington, D.C. 4. University of Florida, Gainsville, Florida Contents

Abbreviations and Acronyms iii

Acknowledgements iv

Abstract iv

1. Forest Conservation, Governance and Support to Forest Communities 1 2. The Development of Forest-based Grassroots Movements and Models of External Technical Support 4 2.1 Communities and Forest Concessions in the Petén, Guatemala: The Case of ACOFOP 4 2.2 The Struggle for Property Rights and Forest Livelihoods in Acre, Brazil 11 2.3 Farmer-to-Farmer Collaboration to Slow Forest Degradation in Siuna, Nicaragua 16 2.4 Collaborative Community Conservation and Sustainable Forest Management in Mamirauá, Brazil 20

3. Common patterns in the emergence of forest-based Social Movements 25 3.1 Weak Governance on the Frontier and Threats to Livelihoods 25 3.2 Community-level Stakeholders Respond with Collective Action 26 3.3 Crucial Support from Two Types of External Assistance 26 3.4 Forest Social Movements Face New Challenges in Adapting to Changing Contexts 28 3.5 Grassroots Movements, Forest Stewardship Communities and Conservation 29

4. Conclusions 31

5. References 32 Abbreviations and Acronyms

ACICAFOC Asociación Coordinadora Indígena Campesina de agroforestería Comunitaria Centroamericana (Central American Indigenous and Peasant Coordinator of Communal Agroforestry) ACOFOP Asociación de Comunidades Forestales de Petén (Association of Forest Communities of the Petén) CAEX Cooperativa Agro-extrativista de Xapuri (Agro-Extractive Cooperative of Xapuri) CEDOP Centro de Documentação e Pesquisa da Amazônia (Amazonian Center for Research and Documentation) CONAP Consejo Nacional de Areas Protegidas (National Commission for Protected Areas) CONTAG Confederação dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (Confederation of Agricultural Workers) CNS Conselho Nacional dos Seringueiros (National Rubber Tappers Council) CNPq Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnológico (National Council for the Development of Science and Technology) CTA Centro de Trabalhadores da Amazônia (Center for Amazonian Workers) DFID Department for International Development (UK) FYDEP Empresa de Fomento y Desarrollo del Petén (Promotion and Development Company of the Petén) IBAMA Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (Brazilian Institute for Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) ICDP Integrated Conservation and Development Programme IDB Inter-American Development Bank IDSM Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá (Mamirauá Institute of Sustainable Development) IPAAM Instituto de Proteção Ambiental do Estado do Amazonas (Institute of Environmental Protection of the State of Amazonas) MBR Maya Biosphere Reserve MCT Ministério da Ciência & Tecnologia (Ministry of Science and Technology) MEB Movimento de Educação de Base (Movement for Grassroots Education) MDA Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário (Ministry of Agrarian Development) MUZ Multiple Use Zone MMA Ministério do Meio Ambiente (Ministry of Environment) MPL Movimento de Preservação dos Lagos Comunitários (Community Lake Preservation Movement) NGO Non-governmental Organization NTFP Non-timber Forest Product PCaC Programa Campesino a Campesino (Farmer-to-Farmer Programme) PAE Projeto Assentamento Extrativista (Extractive Settlement Project) PMFSimples Plano de manejo florestal sustentável simplificado (Simplified plan for sustainable forest management) PT Partido dos Trabalhadores (Brazilian Workers’ Party) RDSM Reserva de Desenvolvimento Sustentavel Mamirauá (Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve) RESEX Reserva Extrativista (Extractive reserve) SCM Sociedade Civil Mamirauá (Mamirauá Civil Society) USAID United States Agency for International Development UNAG Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos (National Union of Farmers and Ranchers) UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization WCS Wildlife Conservation Society iv CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply indebted to the authors, researchers and others who contributed to the context studies, participatory community studies and methodological documents underlying this paper. These include Rubén Pasos, Nelda Sánchez, Paulo Amaral, Carmen Garcia, Ileana Gómez, Ernesto Méndez, Nelson Cuellar, Susan Kandel, Eduardo Baumeister, Noemi Porro, Andrea Pires, Hudson Fonseca, Patricia Roth, Magna Cunha dos Santos, Andrés Lizano, Karina Martínez, Miguel Martínez Moran, Omar Antonio Mercado Zamora, Juan Matías, Hector Aldana, Alexia Guerra Baños and Isael Recinos. We also thank the many local community leaders and members of the grassroots forest organizations whose experiences and accomplishments this project has sought to document and strengthen. We particularly want to thank Carol Colfer, Bob Fisher and Marilyn Hoskins for their insightful comments and suggestions in reviewing the paper. Many thanks also go to our editor, Rosie Ounsted, whose revisions and suggestions were crucial for ﬁnalizing this document. Finally, we are grateful to the Ford Foundation, whose generous support has made this project possible.

Abstract

This occasional paper is based on the results of a three-year project examining the emergence of forest-based grassroots movements in Latin America. Funded by the Ford Foundation, the Support to Grassroots Community Forestry Organizations in Central America and Brazil Project sought to understand how grassroots groups develop and influence conservation and development. The project focused on four noteworthy cases in Central America and Brazil, each representing ‘successful’ broad-based collective action to defend local control and use of forest lands. Cases included the Association of Forest Communities of the Petén in Guatemala, the Siuna Farmer- to-Farmer exchange programme in Nicaragua, the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, and the Brazilian rubber tapper movement in Acre. Although the context and outcomes varied, in these cases grassroots collective action to defend local livelihoods emerged when initially weak government institutions attempted to counteract chaotic frontier conditions through the imposition of conservation and development initiatives, provoking local resistance. A combination of indigenous capacity for collective organization and significant external assistance helped produce grassroots forest movements capable of becoming proactive partners in the management and defence of protected areas. These groups still confront external incursions into their hard-won resources rights and strive to respond to changing membership needs. The cases suggest that local communities can become effective forest stewards when acquired rights are duly recognized, avenues exist for meaningful participation, costs and benefits are distributed fairly, and appropriate external support is provided. Key Words: community forestry, social movements, conservation, grassroots Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 1

1Forest Conservation, Governance and Support to Forest Communities

Forest-based social movements in Latin agriculture and ranching; and recently, to America are today helping to introduce a new protect threatened biodiversity and cultural conservation actor into the governance of treasures for their intrinsic value or for the protected areas: the forest steward community. development of tourism activities. In this These forest steward communities are context of intense competition to control attaining significant legal recognition of and protect the forest, forest-dependent customary access and formal rights to forest people and their livelihoods are pitted against resources. They form collective institutions conservation or development objectives driven to more proactively govern resource use and by economically and politically powerful management and develop new capacities to interests. Frequently, local people are blamed learn and adapt to changing conditions. Forest for forest degradation, lose access to resources steward communities are linked to a growing or are expelled outright. Sometimes, however, network of horizontal and vertical alliances they respond collectively to defend their with other groups with shared interests, interests and maintain the forests that support enhancing their access to information and their livelihoods. When such social movements experience as well as their political influence occur they can strengthen governance on through collective action. These communities forest frontiers and lessen impacts of more are participating on a more equal footing deleterious change. This paper examines in negotiations over conservation policy environmental governance in four cases where rather than simply appearing as recipients forest-based social movements have maintained of external aid. They show that at the local control over forest resources, continue to base level conservation and development need their livelihoods on forest use and, we believe, not be opposing strategies. Rather than being positively influenced conservation. part of the deforestation problem, organized forest communities are potentially key allies Environmental governance not only refers to in environmental governance protecting and governmental regulation and law enforcement managing natural resources for the future (see, for conservation but also involves the political, for example, Klooster (2000), Taylor and Zabin organizational and cultural frameworks through (2000), Bray and Merino Pérez (2002), and Bray which diverse interests in natural and cultural et al. (2005) on the importance of the Mexican resources are coordinated and controlled. To experience with community-based forestry). combat deforestation and biodiversity loss in highly threatened forests of the global South, Why do these forest steward communities national governments, multilateral political represent an important new feature of institutions and international conservation conservation and development in the organizations have set up and administered region’s protected areas? What conditions protected areas, or reserves. One of the first have led to their emergence, and how might major issues that appeared with the creation they be supported and encouraged through of protected areas and reserves, however, was external assistance? Forested regions in the that these lands were usually already in use by developing world have historically been the rural people and other economic interests. As object of competing resource-use claims by they have come to recognize the complexity groups seeking to extract precious minerals, of the social landscape of endangered forests, petroleum, timber or non-timber products; many conservation organizations have sought to access land for subsistence or commercial to work closely with indigenous and traditional 2 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

communities, often through Integrated a doubling over the last 15 years, and some Conservation and Development Programmes observers predict they are likely to double (ICDPs), which intended to compensate for again in the next 15 years. some of the lost livelihood elements with market-based incomes. Nevertheless, critics Several questions have arisen in the context of ICDPs observed that they tended to be ill- of growing community involvement in forest conceived and were carried out by conservation management: Under what conditions do local organizations unprepared to work in social people collectively defend their interests by and economic realms. Moreover, critics often forming social movements to maintain their argued that ICDPs ran counter to the need access to forests, and how do they develop to base biodiversity conservation on rigorous into forest steward communities contributing biological science (Bray and Anderson 2005). to environmental governance? What is the role of the state in producing formative conditions A recent exchange in Worldwatch among for social movements or in impeding them, anthropologist Mac Chapin, representatives and how do the relations between state of major international conservation and entities and grassroots groups affect forest development institutions, and indigenous, governance? What types of or approaches NGO and academic stakeholders (Chapin 2004) to assistance best support grassroots social suggests that establishing and maintaining movements and encourage the emergence appropriate relationships among highly diverse of forest stewardship communities? How stakeholders in conservation and development can external support engender sustainable remains a key issue. Although attempts to local capacity building in pursuit of positive promote greater community involvement social and environmental outcomes? How can have often had limited success, cases exist partnerships be developed that recognize the of grassroots initiatives in which community- unique capabilities1 and potentials that each level stakeholders have claimed pivotal roles set of international and local actors bring to in local resource management decisions and forest stewardship? have assured that their voices are considered in policy decisions affecting their livelihoods. This occasional paper examines four cases of Examining such cases can provide insight grassroots forestry organizations which have for developing strategies that reconcile emerged as signiﬁcant social movements conservation and development agendas with representing communities living in and around the needs and preferences of local people protected areas. living in close proximity to forests. • In Guatemala, the Association of Forest That conservation and community livelihood Communities of the Petén (ACOFOP) leads objectives must be reconciled as part of any a movement of diverse community-based forest conservation strategy is becoming organizations that have won rights to manage increasingly clear. Some 60 million highly forest concessions in the multiple-use zones forest-dependent indigenous people live in the of the Maya Biosphere Reserve. rainforests of Latin America, West Africa and • In Acre, Brazil, the struggle of rubber South East Asia. Another 400–500 million people tappers to secure property rights to maintain are directly dependent on forest resources their forest livelihoods has allowed rural for their livelihoods (White and Martin 2002). communities to gain recognition for their Moreover, today as much as one-quarter of the traditional landholdings. Residents have forests in developing countries are community remained active participants collaborating owned or managed (White and Martin 2002; Molnar 2003). According to Molnar (2003), in 2002 communities owned or administered 1 In this paper and its companion paper (Taylor 377 million ha or 11% of the 3.6 billion ha of et al. 2007), we refer to community ‘capability’, global forest. If developed countries in which following the distinction that Morgan draws between ‘capacity’ (existing skills and behaviour patterns government-owned forests predominate are within an organization) and ‘capability’ (what an excluded, the community share of the global organization can do) (Bonis-Charancle et al. 2007). forest increases to 25%. These ﬁgures represent Our thanks to Carol Colfer for pointing this out. Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 3

with progressive governmental agencies to between conservation and development develop alternative policies supportive of is possible in many situations, and that forest peoples in the region. collaboration with grassroots organizations is • In the Siuna region of Nicaragua, the Farmer- not only a potentially successful strategy but is to-Farmer Programme (PCaC) has developed necessary to achieve equitable and sustainable into a movement which enlists farmers near outcomes. the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve in efforts to slow the advance of the agricultural This document is organized into three sections frontier, to develop sustainable agroforestry subsequent to this introduction. The next and cattle-raising, and to contribute to section will focus broadly on the trajectory the ecological sustainability of Bosawas via of the selected grassroots movement cases peasant biological corridors. comparing and contrasting their experiences • In the Brazilian state of Amazonas, and outcomes. It will draw largely, but not communities faced with the inclusion of their exclusively, on the context studies generated traditional territories within the Mamirauá as part of this project (Cuellar and Kandel Sustainable Development Reserve (RDSM) 2005; Gomez and Mendez 2005; Stone- have been able to organize and negotiate Jovicich et al. 2007a, b). The fourth section a more equitable plan that allows them to will identify some of the lessons learned remain and continue traditional extraction from these experiences as well as common activities under sustainable management tendencies that could guide future technical guidelines negotiated collaboratively. assistance efforts in support of grassroots forestry movements. The final section In these four areas, regional context studies provides conclusions from this work. analyzed the nature and development of the four grassroots forestry movements. In the Central American communities, the project 2. The Grassroots Assistance Project was sponsored jointly by the Center for International Forestry facilitated participatory reflective studies Research (CIFOR), the Central American Indigenous by local people examining the communities’ and Peasant Coordinator of Communal Agroforestry experience with forestry and technical (ACICAFOC) and the Amazon Institute for People assistance (Taylor et al. 2007). Finally, project and the Environment (IMAZON). The Central findings were evaluated at an international American team was led by Rubén Pasos and Nelda Sanchez, sociologists and community development exchange meeting in the Petén, Guatemala, specialists associated with ACICAFOC, and included involving community representatives from researchers from the Salvadoran research NGO, participating sites, technicians and external PRISMA. The Brazil team was led by Paulo Amaral, researchers. senior environmental researcher at IMAZON, with Samantha Stone-Jovicich taking the lead on the Brazilian context studies. Staff from Colorado State Too often, conservation vs. development, and University and the University of Florida provided external expert vs. community control, have technical and advisory support. The project was been framed as ‘either/or’ propositions. This carried out in collaboration with these grassroots project2 aims to help reframe the debate organizations to better understand their experience defending their environmental, economic and to find common ground for more effective political interests, to distinguish factors that collaboration among major stakeholders in contributed to their success, including technical forest conservation and development by assistance and development programmes, and to identifying instances where broad-based examine the influence of these groups on forest conservation. A key objective was to identify organizations have contributed to positive assistance approaches that could be adapted to outcomes by becoming networks of forest support these groups and similar movements in steward communities. We believe that a balance other places. 4 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

2 The Development of Forest-Based Grassroots Movements and Models of External Technical Support

The Grassroots Assistance project’s regional pressing challenges call for new approaches to context studies analyzed the historical roots external assistance that can provide needed of the four grassroots organizations and the skills and resources while enhancing local emergence of forest stewardship communities capacities for effective management. that build on the organizations’ networks of horizontal and vertical alliances. The studies examined the impact of these groups on 2.1 Communities and Forest forest governance and their contribution to Concessions in the Petén, conservation and development. They also Guatemala: The Case of explored the role of external assistance and ACOFOP how different models have facilitated the In Guatemala the Association of Forest growth and increased the capability of these Communities of the Petén (ACOFOP) has organizations. shown how by demanding and gaining control over forest resources organized communities Each case study illustrates innovative can stabilize and maintain forests in volatile experiences with the protection of natural and frontier regions. This grassroots forest cultural resources via pursuit of conservation organization, whose members administer a and community livelihood strategies. All of these large proportion of the best managed forests grassroots forestry organizations emerged in of the Petén, emerged because of the direct response to uncertain tenure, weak governance threat to communities’ wellbeing posed by the resulting in high levels of environmental and/or initial design of the Maya Biosphere Reserve social conflict, and little official mediation due (MBR). While representing a strong social to weak or unsympathetic state institutions. movement, the communities’ interest in These were conditions which some Central forest management also dovetailed with larger American partners have characterized as political openings created by the 1996 Peace ‘ingovernability’. Each grassroots movement Accords and international reluctance to give has received significant state and international industry the predominate role. In this context, technical assistance, but a critical common they managed to establish an effective thread was early assistance that emphasized indigenous organizational voice capable of strengthening local institutions, establishing promoting their interests in legal and political the basis for networking, and facilitating arenas. reflection on common problems. The communities’ collective responses pressured The Petén is located in northern Guatemala, governments to recognize their rights to and bordering with Mexico to the northeast and control over their landscape and gave them with Belize on the southeast (See Figure 1. The important influences on the direction of Petén and Siuna, Central America). The lowland conservation and development initiatives in tropical forests of the Petén are recognized high conservation value forests. Now, with worldwide for their wealth of biological basic access to resources largely achieved, the diversity, and ancient Mayan archaeological forest-based community movements and their sites. The MBR, established in 1990 as part organizations struggle to adapt to the changing of the United Nations’ Man and the Biosphere needs of their membership while maintaining Programme, aims to conserve the region’s and extending external political support for archaeological and biological treasures, their role in resource management. These safeguard its diverse ecosystems, and promote Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 5

Figure 1. The Petén and Siuna, Central America opportunities for sustainable use of natural ofﬁcial and spontaneous settlements, so today and cultural resources (Gómez and Méndez the Petén’s 367 000 inhabitants are mostly 2005; CONAP 1996; UNESCO 1996). Although migrants from other departments. Extractivist ACOFOP is a successful manifestation of this communities were established as early as type of integrated approach to conservation the 1920s as harvest camps for chicle gum and development, it continues to struggle to (Manilkara spp.), and the ornamental greenery maintain its position and control over tropical xate (Chamaerdorea elegans, C. oblongata forests held in concession. and C. ernesti-augustii), and have diverse economic strategies centring on non-timber For many years Guatemala’s most forest activities. Beginning in the 1960s, state- geographically and politically isolated region, sponsored colonization policies used the Petén the Petén has been shaped by competition as a safety valve for social conﬂicts generated among different stakeholders to control its by demands for land in Guatemala’s interior wealth of natural resources. The Petén’s provinces. Campesino (peasant) communities communities are quite diverse in historical were established during this time by indigenous origin, ethnic composition and productive and ladino (mestizo, or mixed) settlers to activity. Throughout the twentieth century pursue swidden agriculture and even large- the region was settled by consecutive waves of scale ranching. Other stakeholders arrived 6 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

to extract petroleum, precious minerals and ha, included a Nucleus Zone under strict timber. These new arrivals greatly accelerated conservation rules, a Multiple Use Zone (MUZ) forest conversion. representing about 50% of the MBR in which various sustainable non-timber activities could During the latter period of the be carried out, and a Buffer Zone in which land counterinsurgency war in Guatemala (1994–6) and resource use was to be stabilized to relieve and the period of transition into the postwar pressure on the MBR. Within this framework, period, refugees forced from the highlands CONAP’s mandate was to halt illegal logging, into exile in Mexico were given the option to the advance of the agricultural and cattle return to the Petén, where they encountered frontier, the sacking of archaeological sites a mixture of extractivist communities and and illegal traffic in drugs, fauna and migrant other recent migrant families settled on public workers (Nittler and Tschinkel 2005). forest lands. Oral histories tell of encounters filled with tension as some ‘newly arrived’ Unfortunately, as has often occurred elsewhere communities and ex-guerrilla leaders proposed with protected areas and forest reserves parcelling the land for agricultural purposes, (McShane 2003), the MBR’s original policies for while forest-dwelling communities defended use of the MUZ and buffer zones did not take the forest and their forest-based livelihoods. into adequate account the complexity of the Over the years, as migration to, passage region’s pre-existing diverse population and through and plans for the Petén increased, it natural resource-use patterns. On the contrary, became clear that the Petén had evolved from bans and other restrictions on usage were being the vast ‘empty’ hinterland of Guatemala originally imposed on populations both within to become the grounds for competing interests the reserve and in its surrounding buffer zones. and political instability. This context of The MBR’s initial restrictive policies triggered demographic, cultural and economic diversity serious conflicts with the local population. was exacerbated by growing pressures for land These conflicts were complicated by a new and problems such as contraband and illegal wave of internal migration in the 1990s caused narcotics activities. by the economic crisis and the return of displaced refugees (Elías et al. 1997 in Gómez The Petén has also been shaped by a weak state and Méndez 2005). New waves of agarradas presence and policies that are often ambiguous (land seizing) were established de facto by or contradictory. Between 1959 and 1987, the squatters. As competing interest groups FYDEP (Promotion and Development Company attempted to guarantee their access to land, of the Petén) was the only government agency resources and passageways through the forest, with a significant presence in the region. the establishment of a conservation ‘regime’, FYDEP aimed to incorporate the Petén into the which was premised on social exclusion from economic life of Guatemala through policies the forest, met with unexpected resistance. promoting resource extraction and colonization Violence, including burning vehicles and guard (Schwartzman et al. 2000; Gómez and Méndez posts and kidnappings, was unleashed against 2005). In 1989, the National Commission for CONAP staff (Cuellar in Gómez and Méndez Protected Areas (Consejo Nacional de Areas 2005). Protegidas – CONAP) replaced FYDEP and was charged with administering what would By the late 1990s it had become clear that become the MBR. The appearance of CONAP CONAP was experiencing great difficulty in signalled the movement of an environmental managing the contradictions in state policy agenda to the forefront of state policy in the and social conflict arising from the MBR. Petén. Significantly, the terms of the Peace Accords that had put an end to three decades of The MBR’s design and implementation have civil war in Guatemala included provisions been profoundly shaped by the Petén’s high for distribution of land to ex-combatants levels of conflict and frequent absence of and returned refugees. In numerous cases, formal state control, the aforementioned these land grants overlapped with areas of ‘ingovernability’. The MBR’s original territorial forest formally under the protection of the scheme, which encompassed 2 112 940 MBR. The government’s complex political Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 7

commitments worked at cross-purposes industry or to communities. Forest industrial with its own environmental agenda and interests lobbied hard to gain the concessions, complicated the MBR’s administration. In supported by allies in the government. In this context a combination of factors opened 1995 community-based groups established an the way for greater community participation organization to pursue forest-management in the MBR and for the emergence of the rights that would become ACOFOP, with the grassroots forest organization, ACOFOP. The objective of improving ‘the standard and MBR was a key piece of a larger international quality of life of the Petén’s forest communities, strategy of protected areas and reserves in through sustainable management of the forest’s Central America. Influential international resources’ (ACOFOP 2005). International stakeholders including donor governments and conservation groups, for their part, opposed international conservation organizations such industrial concessions, and while they saw as Conservation International, The Nature migrant farmers as ‘predators’ on the forest Conservancy, and other institutions wished they argued that peteneros (long-term residents to mitigate conflict surrounding the MBR’s with traditions of chicle and xate extraction) administration and address the government’s had a ‘forest culture’ compatible with inability to exercise control by promoting sustainable forest management (Gómez and broader community involvement in the Méndez 2005). The controversy was ultimately management of the reserve. resolved, at least temporarily, by the granting of 25-year forest-management concessions The granting of forest concessions around to six local communities within the MUZ, six the MBR was seen as a promising option for communities bordering the MUZ and two local mitigating social conflict and facilitating more forest industries (Nittler and Tschinkel 2005; effective management of the reserve. An see Figure 2. Community Concessions in the intense debate ensued over whether to grant Petén). ACOFOP was key in the communities’ forest-management concessions to the timber winning the concessions. Gómez and Méndez

Zones of the Maya Biosphere Reserve

Dos Lagunas Legends Biotope Río Azul National Park Mirador National Park National Park Nucleus Zone Biotope Multiple Use Zone Buffer Zone Laguna del Tigre Multiple Use Zone Natural Monument Río Laguna del Tigre Escondido Cultural Monument Petén Protected Area San Miguel El Pilar de Tikal National Palotada Park Biotope Yaxha Buffer Zone Nakúm Naranjo Melchor Sierra del Lacondon de Mencos National Park Cerro Cahui

Mexico

Figure 2. Community Concessions in the Petén (based on PRISMA 2005) 8 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

(2005), point out, however, that international It has recruited the participation of important support for granting community concessions institutions in technical areas of ecology and signalled more an opposition to industrial natural resource management (Gómez and concessions than a strong belief in local Méndez 2005). communities’ capacities. However, the relationships between During the definition of the MBR international communities and the NGOs, according to donor and conservation institutions played many community members and observers, a crucial role in pushing conservation and were ultimately characterized by paternalism development dialogue and in promoting and dependency. ACOFOP and its associated the inclusion of community-level actors. communities and organizations complained Principal donors in recent years have included that the NGOs’ methodology did not allow the United States Agency for International communities to develop their own capabilities for Development (USAID), the World Bank, the integrated forest management, administration German Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KFW), and business. ‘…the relationship between the British Department for International communities and the NGOs that accompanied Development (DFID), and the Ford Foundation. them was imbalanced from the start, since the USAID alone invested an estimated $40 NGOs managed and administered the funds million in the Petén between 1990 and 2004 without promoting community institutional in support of CONAP and protected area strengthening and self-management’ (Gómez management, including direct support to the and Méndez 2005). In numerous cases, NGOs communities with forest concessions. USAID providing assistance to community concessions also promoted the close involvement of operated much as technical service ‘buffets’ international conservation organizations such selling services, an organizational orientation as Conservation International, The Nature with little vested interest in turning over Conservancy, and CARE (Gómez and Méndez increasing responsibilities to communities. 2005). Pasos (2006) remarks that the NGOs were designed from the top down and tended to The community concession contracts originally evolve into project implementers, reducing required communities to sign exclusive the community to the role of ‘beneficiary’. technical assistance contracts with local Their staff tended to focus on satisfying donor non-governmental organizations (NGOs), requirements and, as they were hired by the themselves linked with the larger international NGO rather than selected by the community, conservation organizations. These international they ended up working for the NGO in the NGOs and their national counterparts played community rather than working for the a positive role in many ways. They helped community. communities satisfy legal and bureaucratic requirements to gain forest concession From the perspective of ACOFOP and its rights. They carried out socio-economic and associated communities and associations, technical planning, and provided valuable with few exceptions, the external investment technical assistance and training in forest in assistance was rarely oriented ‘toward the management, tourism and marketing. ‘…These strengthening and training of the communities donations generated significant technical or ACOFOP in financial and administrative knowledge and capacities related to forest management’ (Gómez and Méndez 2005). management, which were appropriated by Traditional models of technical assistance community members as well as by government assumed that communities were made up institutions and NGOs’ (Gómez and Méndez of inexpert people, with little capacity to 2005). Moreover, community members learned participate actively in management (Pasos and appropriated ecological perspectives and 2006). In many cases, as the NGOs were born were pushed to organize more effectively. This from or engendered by the larger international ‘official’ model of technical assistance has had conservation organizations, the staff were not important strengths. It is highly effective at familiar with development, much less with mobilizing large-scale financial resources and community forestry, but rather with approaches in contributing technical knowledge and skills. more akin to conservation (Cortave personal Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 9

communication). The model allowed NGOs to In the Petén over the last 10 years, experience end up taking the place of communities in with an alternative model of technical making decisions, competing with community ‘accompaniment’ has contributed valuable administrative councils, and limiting access to resources for development of the community key information. In numerous cases, the NGOs concessions and of ACOFOP. Several key ‘assumed a protagonist role in the process and international institutions and foundations, instead of being accompanists or facilitators, including the Ford Foundation, Project they turned into service providing firms’, which Agricultural Frontier, the CIR (Iniciativa also controlled commercialization, effectively Cristiana Romero), the Inter-Ecclesiastic becoming new intermediaries (Gómez and Organization for Cooperative and Development, Méndez 2005). the German Service for Social Cooperation, and Helvetas of Switzerland, have explicitly ACOFOP’s leaders learned that CONAP had directed support to community concessions divided up the region and, together with USAID, in ways which promote the development had ‘assigned’ different NGOs responsibility for of the communities’ organizational and each region without community consultation, political capacities. These institutions have an arrangement common in the history of differed from traditional technical assistance forest services or extension in other countries. by channelling their investment directly to After numerous accounts of disrespect and the incipient community institutions. The excessive ‘gate keeping’ by NGO personnel, Ford Foundation, for example, targeted its the Petén community concessions countered investment of $US 470 000 between 1999 and this arrangement. With pressure from ACOFOP, 2004 directly to the institutional development including international internet-based and capacity strengthening of ACOFOP. campaigns and, crucially, support from USAID, this obligatory NGO model was ended in These institutions’ financial contributions 2001. USAID began directly strengthening the have been more modest than those of official community concessions in 2002, emphasizing assistance, but their focus has led them to reduction of subsidies, strengthening of assume a role of ‘accompanist’ of a social business management and reduction of process rather than a provider of assistance assistance agencies (Gómez and Méndez towards a set of largely externally defined 2005). Communities gained greater freedom project objectives. The authors use the to seek technical assistance adequate for their term ‘accompanist’ to highlight the level of needs, within a framework of compliance with partnership between communities the technical requirements of the concessions’ and external institutions promoted by contracts. Several NGOs continue today to alternative assistance models, in provide technical assistance to the concessions, contrast to assistance that creates though on terms more acceptable to the dependency relationships. communities. ACOFOP’s member communities have now crafted a protocol which lays out the In this accompaniment process, external parameters of a respectful, negotiated set of support institutions and communities ‘travel principles and procedures for ‘gaining access’ together generating ideas and identifying to the communities as service providers challenges to the consolidation of community (Cortave personal communication). A number forest management’ (Gómez and Méndez of NGOs have been converted into private 2005). This ‘pro-community’ model of service providers, which can be acceptable technical assistance aims to promote both to communities, given adequate transparency the organizational and political capabilities in roles and responsibilities. Today, several of of communities and their grassroots ACOFOP’s associated members obtain forestry organizations. It does this by promoting: a) technical guidance, including support for direct funding to the community institutions, b) forest certification procedures and timber a focus on helping improve the abilities of the commercialization, from a community-owned community organization itself in information forest services firm, FORESCOM (Gómez and gathering, self-diagnosis of member needs, Méndez 2005). expansion of their institutional presence and communications capacity, c) methodological 10 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

training in shared learning, d) development of and conservation of biodiversity’ (Nittler and social networks at national and international Tschinkel 2005; also see Radachowsky 2004; levels, and e) provision of inputs and resources Roney et al. undated). The community forest such as access to external information, concessions generate an annual value of $US linking with relevant processes and events 5 million in wood products and $2–3 million in worldwide, as well as complementary financial non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Members support to other ‘allied’ organizations that of community firms receive an average of can provide crucial technical inputs. In fact, $US 1 120 for wood-product extraction and horizontal networking has been key for processing, and on the whole in 2003 generated ACOFOP’s members. For example, early in over 50 000 person days of work with a value the concession experience they sought advice of nearly $US 360 000 (Nittler and Tschinkel on community-based forestry and forest 2005). ACOFOP observes, moreover, that its certification from community members and members’ forest concessions in 2003 generated forestry technicians from the highly successful over $US 424 000 in taxes (ACOFOP 2004). Plan Piloto Forestal ejidos of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The pro-community model ‘. . .implies Today, ACOFOP and its members are seeking to a more flexible model of cooperation, more move beyond commercial timber extraction, horizontal, and closer to populations and their to develop a more integrated management processes. Not being tied to project logic, this approach including the harvest of NTFPs such type of cooperation maintains a supportive as xate (jade palm) and chicle (natural gum), orientation to a long term process’ (Gómez environmental services, community-based and Méndez 2005). Significantly, despite the ecotourism and cultural site protection. They fact that its primary role is not to provide hope that this more integrated approach will technical support to community concession help consolidate the community concessions organizations, ACOFOP has developed in its own for the future, responding to conservationist right into a key indigenous accompanist to the concerns about timber exploitation and opening community concession process in Guatemala, a up new opportunities for both concession common role for secondary-level organizations members and non-members (Taylor 2007). comprised of community organizations. The community concessions of the Petén face By 2005, ACOFOP had 22 member communities significant obstacles today, especially those and organizations representing some 14 000 operations with the weakest organizations and individuals in 30 communities. ACOFOP’s the least commercially valuable forests (Nittler members manage what, at 500 000 ha, is and Tschinkel 2005). They also face scepticism termed the largest expanse of forest under and outright opposition from industry and community management in the world, nearly some NGOs (Gómez and Méndez 2005; see 70% of which has been certified by the Forest Tropico Verde 2005). CONAP has come to Stewardship Council as sustainably managed strongly support community involvement (ACOFOP 2005; Nittler and Tschinkel 2005). in forest management, yet it is not the only government institution with influence in the On balance, the community concessions Petén and in the MBR. Guatemala’s tourism have produced highly positive impacts on and cultural ministries, for example, have conservation and economic wellbeing in the overlapping jurisdictions which shape resource communities. Recent satellite and on-site management in the region. observational data show that natural and cultural resource areas under community The right of communities to participate in concessions have suffered far less degradation forest management continues to be an ongoing from fires, illegal settlements, theft and struggle in a context in which natural resource vandalism than those in the MBR’s nucleus, conservation and development are shaped by parks and protected areas, and buffer zones. powerful external actors. Numerous times ‘Despite constant challenges, the evidence over the past 10 years, for example, the indicates that forest management in the Guatemalan government has attempted to Petén is functioning, from the perspective of expand petroleum exploration and exploitation resource management, community income in areas under community forest concessions. Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 11

According to community leaders, it is common by Guatemala’s Supreme Court in mid 2005 for the army to be deployed to accompany (ACOFOP 2005). The future of the Mirador Basin petroleum technical missions. ACOFOP and and its relationship to community management local concession members have systematically of the MUZ continues to be unclear. A new opposed these endeavours and mobilized proposal emerged in late 2005 for UNESCO to to bring national and even regional-level declare the region a global Cultural Heritage attention to this violation of their agreements site (Cortave personal communication). In 2007, and rights. In most cases, they have been discussions were under way in the Petén of successful in thwarting further action on new projects to develop the tourism potential behalf of the authorities and the petroleum of Mirador. An Inter-American Development companies (Cortave personal communication). Bank (IDB)-supported Sustainable Development Project for the Petén was awaiting Guatemalan In 2003, however, a new proposal to protect congressional approval. However, ACOFOP and the Mirador Basin in the northern Petén its associated communities had succeeded emerged which posed threats to the gains that in gaining more formal participation in communities had achieved in natural resource negotiations related to these and other management. The US-based Foundation for proposals affecting the community concessions Anthropological Research and Environmental (Cortave personal communication; Córdova Studies and the Global Heritage Fund proposed personal communication). a new NTFP initiative to protect approximately 2000 km2 of an area including the Mirador- Rio Azul National Park, the Naachatún-Dos 2.2 The Struggle for Property Lagunas Biotope and six community-forest Rights and Forest Livelihoods concessions. The plan’s proponents argued in Acre, Brazil that illegal hunting, logging and archaeological Acre is a small, remote state located at the theft threaten the area’s biodiversity and its far western edge of the Brazilian Amazon, on ancient Mayan cultural treasures. The proposal the border with Peru and Bolivia (see Figure would have halted the forest management 3. Acre and Mamirauá, Brazil). It is a state and livelihood strategies in concessionaire probably best known as the birthplace of the communities. It proposed integrating rubber tapper movement, the movement’s community members into private ‘sustainable most famous leader, Chico Mendes, and for the eco-tourism initiatives’ with monetary struggle to gain recognition of property rights compensation for halting timber harvesting. through the creation of extractive reserves (Reserva Extrativista – RESEX) and extractive The plan had substantial international and settlement projects (PAEs). Both the first PAE national political and financial support and in Brazil, São Luis do Remanso, established in was supported by the Office of the Guatemalan 1987, and the first RESEX, Alto Juruá, established President at that time. Nevertheless, the in 1990, are located in Acre (MDA et al. 2001; Cuenca Mirador project appeared to bypass IBAMA 2005). Two of the reserves best known CONAP’s jurisdiction and to contradict MBR- nationally and internationally are located in the related policies and laws by proposing to state: the Chico Mendes RESEX, encompassing eliminate significant portions of existing 970 570 ha, and the 24 898-ha Chico Mendes community and industrial concessions. The PAE (otherwise known as Cachoeira). Since project was challenged in court by ACOFOP on the 1990s, 48% of the state of Acre has been behalf of the community concessions and their placed within conservation units, which allies (including some industrial groups). They include RESEX and PAEs (Governo do Estado argued that the Mirador Basin Project was a do Acre - SEIAM 2005). As a result of these ‘top-down’ initiative which emerged without conservation efforts and the state’s relative consultation with affected communities isolation, Acre still retains approximately 90% (Gómez and Méndez 2005). The project’s plan of its original forest cover. The rubber tapper to develop tourism also contained significant movement in Acre played a pivotal role in the contradictions which might actually increase shift in forest policy in the Brazilian Amazon, pressures on the integrity of the MBR (ACOFOP and it is remarkable that a network that began 2005). The project’s legality was overturned as a movement of impoverished forest people 12 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

Figure 3: Acre and Mamirauá, Brazil

defending their livelihoods could successfully migrants, known as seringueiros or rubber form alliances with key international actors tappers, continue to maintain livelihoods that and inﬂuence policy at the regional scale. are highly dependent on forest resources.

Acre traces its historical roots to the rubber After the collapse of the rubber economy, Acre, boom of the late nineteenth and early like much of the Amazon region, occupied a twentieth centuries. During the rubber boom, marginal position in Brazil’s economy. During Acre’s forests were divided into large estates the 1960s, Brazil’s military government viewed owned by rubber barons (seringalistas), each the Amazon as an empty region that needed with a workforce of indebted rural labourers. to be integrated into the national economy, The workforce was composed of migrants made more productive and populated (Mahar who originally left Brazil’s impoverished 1989). Massive governmental development northeastern states searching for work tapping initiatives provided incentives for the entrance rubber, but once the rubber trade collapsed of large-scale enterprises and established huge during the ﬁrst decades of the twentieth century colonization projects to resettle displaced and the hold over this rural labour force relaxed landless families from other regions (see also and many families became semi-autonomous Schmink and Wood 1987, 1992; Revkin 1990; producers, adding subsistence agriculture to Binswanger 1991; Souza 2002). In the early their work extracting rubber and Brazil nuts 1970s, the regional development bank, BASA (Bertholletia excelsa). Descendants of these (Banco da Amazônia – Bank of the Amazon), Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 13

discontinued credit lines for rubber extraction, Catholic Church, labour organizations began forcing many of the remaining seringalistas working in the region using the base created by into bankruptcy. the religious organizations to form rural labour unions. The first such union was formed in the While the seringalistas were being forced rural town of Brasiléia in 1975, and by 1980 out of business, the state government began there were eight union groups in Acre (Sandri encouraging investors from southern Brazil 2003). These groups were united under the to invest in Acre, primarily in large-scale banner of the Confederation of Agricultural agricultural and cattle projects. As a result, Workers (Confederação dos Trabalhadores na landholdings passed to new owners and began Agricultura – CONTAG), which opened an office to be further concentrated. From 1970 to 1975, in Rio Branco, Acre, in 1975. 38% of Acre was sold to only 284 investors (Cavalcanti 1994). At the same time, the state Catholic lay volunteers and union organizers refused to recognize the traditional land rights from CONTAG focused on establishing local of the rubber tappers occupying the forests. organizations, explaining legal rights and Instead, when investors began clearing forest discussing the collective interests of isolated the government offered to relocate these forest families. As the movement grew in families to colonization projects elsewhere strength, local unions made explicit efforts to in the state. However, promised support for raise consciousness and build consensus around colonization projects often proved inadequate. the rubber tappers’ collective interests. Many families were pulled from their existing Linking rural wellbeing to the forest became social support networks in the relocation a key component of an emerging rubber process. Colonization plots were too small tapper identity (Grzybowski 1989). In 1981, for traditional extractive activities, and most a series of NGOs including CEDOP (Centro de relocated families lacked capital to invest in Documentação e Pesquisa da Amazônia – which agriculture. These problems were compounded later became the CTA: Centro de Trabalhadores by a mixture of poverty and disease that da Amazônia), CESE (Coordenadoria Ecumênica caused extreme hardship and forced families de Serviço) and CEDI (Centro Ecumênico de to abandon homesteads and move instead to Documentação e Informação) along with the peri-urban shanty towns (Bakx 1988). As news anthropologist Mary Allegretti initiated a spread of the difficulties faced by families rural education programme called the Projeto pushed into colonization projects, resistance Seringueiro (Cordeiro and Castelar 1988). to official development policy grew in the Inspired by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (see countryside. Freire 1970), by drawing examples from the region’s forest context for teaching materials Being dispersed and isolated in the forest did the project made education more accessible not provide rubber tappers with ideal conditions but also implicitly validated the rubber tapper for organizing collective action. However, a identity. series of efforts by outsiders helped establish the basic conditions for rubber tappers to One of the innovative ways in which the begin organizing to defend their rights. One rubber tapper movement developed to resist important institution was the Catholic Diocese expulsions was through the use of a non- of Acre and Purus, which was strongly influenced violent collective action called an ‘empate’. by liberation theology for the defence of In an empate, families from surrounding human rights. With the arrival of Bishop Dom communities would occupy areas slated for Moacir Grechi in 1973, the church began clearing by ranchers. With the targeted areas emphasizing the formation of ecclesiastical filled with men, women and children, it was base communities, religious organizations at impossible for work crews to cut trees or the community level that also provided space enter with bulldozers. In 1976, the Brasiléia for political discussion (Souza 2002). In 1976, rural union organized the first empate in a Bishop Moacir denounced the expulsion of property called Seringal Carmen, but the rubber tappers and instructed rural priests Xapuri rural union, formed in 1977, quickly and nuns to begin informing rubber tappers of became the most active in the organization of their land rights. Parallel to the actions of the empates (Sandri 2003). Between 1976 and 1988 14 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

there were a total of 45 empates, of which 15 wellbeing and use of forest resources. A good successfully halted forest clearing (Assies 1997). example of this trend was the formation of While unable to halt deforestation completely, the Brazil nut cooperative CAEX (Cooperativa this non-violent activism drew national and Agro-extrativista de Xapuri) in 1988. The international attention to the rubber tapper cooperative was initiated by Xapuri rural union cause. with assistance from several national and international NGOs including Cultural Survival, The efforts at forming community-level the Ford Foundation, Inter-American Foundation organizations began to coalesce into wider and WWF (Assies 1997). In 1990 CAEX received networks as communities united in response to financial and technical assistance to build the threats to their livelihoods. In 1985, the first Chico Mendes Brazil Nut Processing Plant to offer national meeting of Amazon rubber tappers was members a better price by selling nuts directly held in the national capital, Brasília. During the to international markets. However, CAEX was meeting, the National Rubber Tappers Council unable to operate the plant at full capacity (Conselho Nacional dos Seringueiros, CNS) was and because it was difficult to compete against formed; this was the first national organization lower-priced nuts from Bolivia the plant nearly capable of representing the interests of rubber stopped operating after a couple of years tappers and other forest workers in Amazonia (Assies 1997). In 1992, CAEX shifted its strategy effectively (Schmink and Wood 1992). The CNS to decentralize production by introducing was led by the charismatic president of Xapuri’s mini and micro factories in communities rural union, Chico Mendes. around Xapuri. This was an attempt to lower production costs, to directly increase incomes The CNS rapidly began to garner greater of rubber tapper families, and to provide attention through its collective actions an incentive to stay in the forest, but this and strategic alliances with international change did not resolve the principal problem environmental organizations, notably the – which was competition from lower-priced Environmental Defense Fund and the National nuts from Bolivia (Assies 1997). Although the Wildlife Federation (Schmink and Wood 1992). decentralization plan provided a new source As this happened, the rubber tappers gained of income for women and young people in the momentum in their struggle to force the rural areas, it was short lived (Campbell 1996) government to recognize the property rights in part due to problems with quality control. of traditional peoples living in the Amazon. The establishment of the main plant and the In 1987, after Chico Mendes was invited to smaller factories was CAEX’s principal strategy Washington by the Environmental Defense for increasing the economic return that rubber Fund, mounting pressure forced the IDB to halt tapper families received from NTFPs. However, funding for paving the BR-364 highway between given the limited success of efforts to generate Porto Velho and Rio Branco, the capital of Acre. increased income by processing Brazil nuts, the Resumption of the project was contingent on the need for forest-based production alternatives enforcement of the social and environmental for rubber tapper families remained. protection programmes (an IDB programme known as the Programme for the Protection The rubber tapper movement continued to of the Environment and Indigenous Peoples expand alliances and to gain political influence. – PMACI) by Brazil’s federal government. The assassination in 1988 of Chico Mendes Eventually the federal government gave in to deprived the movement of its charismatic head the CNS’s principal demand for the recognition and an innovative leader but it also increased of traditional property rights by creating RESEX long-term international and national attention and PAEs. Both RESEX and PAEs recognized the on the issues and mobilized the rubber existing land rights of rubber tapper families, tappers. The strength of the movement was allowing them to maintain their traditional crucial in supporting efforts by the rubber livelihoods. tappers’ allies to gradually take control of local and state governments after Brazil’s military Once property rights had become more secure, government stepped aside and democracy assistance programmes shifted towards projects returned to the country in 1986. As the rubber intended to help rubber tappers improve their tappers’ allies occupied seats of power they Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 15

began channelling increased assistance and Profits from rubber, which had been the projects to rural communities, while the state mainstay of rural livelihoods in Acre, declined government actively participated in defining after removal of national subsidies in 1986 and an alternative development vision in the 1990s price supports in 1992. Rubber was replaced and continues to do so. In Acre, the rubber by Brazil nuts, but prices have historically tapper movement became closely aligned fluctuated, indicating the continued risks from with the Brazilian Workers’ Party (Portuguese boom–bust extractive cycles. acronym: PT) and what became known as When the ‘Forest Government’ increased the ‘popular front’, a coalition composed support, services and the construction of mostly of small leftist parties (Fernandes infrastructure for forest communities, a 1999). In 1992, a leader from the CNS was priority programme was the promotion of elected mayor of the Xapuri municipality sustainable forest management, particularly (and the movement also gained control of the timber management at all scales including important Rio Branco municipality). In 1998, the community level. The government created the PT candidate was elected governor. This an agency charged with supporting forest government prioritized the maintenance of development programmes, the Secretaria the state’s forests and began implementing Executiva de Florestas e Extractivismo (SEFE), policies and strategies to promote sustainable and reorganized the state’s extension service, development in partnership with the state’s the Secretaria de Assistência Técnica e traditional forest people (Witoshynsky 2002; Extensão Agroforestal (SEATER) to better meet Duarte 2003; Kainer et al. 2003). Shifting the needs of forest populations by shifting dramatically from the policies of earlier from an exclusive emphasis on agriculture to governments, the ‘Forest Government’, as one that includes forestry topics in extension it became known, announced the goal of programmes. halting deforestation at 18% of the state’s surface area and placing 25% of the state’s Efforts to expand and diversify rubber tapper forests (approximately 4 million ha) under livelihoods began to focus on alternatives sustainable forest management (Caminoto such as timber management. The Xapuri 2000). Community forest management was municipal government, controlled by a former to play a key role in the government’s plan CNS leader, wanted to develop a small wood- for reaching this goal (MMA/Governo do Acre processing industry to generate economic 1999; Witoshynsky 2002). activity in the region. However, it was not easy to find communities willing to participate. The success of the rubber tapper movement The introduction of timber management into and its allies has pushed the pro-forest, pro- PAEs or RESEX communities was perceived by community agenda to the forefront of regional some as a contradiction of the rubber tapper debates. Sustainable, multiuse forestry has movement’s basic principles to protect the become a principal tenet of dominant political forest. Cachoeira, due to its strong political discourse in the region. There are disputes ties to leaders in Xapuri, agreed to participate, over emphasis on NTFPs or timber, but and 10 families initiated work on a trial basis there is broad general agreement that forest in 1999. management should be a priority for community development in Amazonia. The rubber tapper The results produced by introducing timber movement is not solely responsible for all of management have been mixed. The participating this change, but the movement played a key Cachoeira families quickly mastered the role in propelling current decision makers to management techniques, however some office. The movement was a crucial force in aspects of the production process were beyond changing or at least broadening development the communities’ control. The Cachoeira discourse and action to consider pro-forest project revealed persistent obstacles with the approaches to the Amazon. administrative bureaucracy of the Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos While the new property rights sheltered rubber Naturais Renováveis (Brazilian Institute for tapper families from loss of livelihoods, they Environment and Renewable Natural Resources were still under pressure to adapt and change. – IBAMA), and limited market access of small- 16 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

scale producers, problems that have required IBAMA have presented obstacles to efforts considerable external assistance (Stone- to develop innovative forest management Jovicich et al. 2007b). As a result, even after systems. Furthermore, because of limited the initial phase Cachoeira’s families have success in improving the livelihood conditions had to rely on continued technical assistance in the forest, rubber tappers families, from the state and NGOs, and there has facing continued poverty and hardship, have been limited success in expanding the model increasingly turned to cattle ranching and/or beyond the original 10 families. Also, the the expansion of agricultural plots. timber management project has primarily benefited a small segment of the population with the negative consequence of increased 2.3 Farmer-to-Farmer internal divisions within the community. As Collaboration to Slow Forest a result, families in less accessible sections Degradation in Siuna, of the community have become disgruntled Nicaragua and have even formed a parallel community In the Siuna region of northeastern Nicaragua, a association (Stone-Jovicich et al. 2007b). This local Farmer-to-Farmer Programme (PCaC) has raises the question of whether these types of developed into a rural network strengthening initiatives will have long-term benefits once environmental governance around the support from the state ends. Despite these Bosawas Biosphere Reserve (see Figure 1. challenges, since 2000 the state government The Petén and Siuna, Central America). The has expanded its technical forestry assistance region holds ecosystems of rich biodiversity, to approximately 26 other communities living and the Bosawas Reserve, together with three in RESEX, PAEs and colonization projects neighbouring protected areas of Honduras (Río interested in sustainably harvesting timber Patuca National Park, Tawhaka Anthropological (Governo do Acre – SEIAM 2005). In 2005, the Reserve and Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve), state, with the support of CNS, formed the first forms the heart of the Mesoamerican Biological cooperative in the Amazon of community-level Corridor and represents the largest protected timber producers (Cooperativa dos Produtores area complex of tropical montane moist forest Florestais Comunitários – Cooperfloresta) in north of the Amazon basin (Cuellar and Kandel an effort to help communities produce sawn 2005; UNESCO 2005). The development of PCaC- lumber and market their timber in larger Siuna illustrates how the exchange of shared volumes. experience has allowed rural producers to respond to the more deleterious consequences The majority of RESEX and PAEs in Acre were of frontier expansion and ameliorate negative established in regions marked by conflicts conservation trends. between rubber tappers and ranchers and, more recently, small-scale agricultural Siuna has a history of geographic, political and producers (colonos). While the creation of economic isolation as an extractive enclave these federally-owned conservation areas has with relatively little state presence. The result helped reduce land disputes by giving rubber has been conflict and weak governance, with tappers secure usufruct rights to remain on diverse social groups competing to extract the land and to continue to extract renewable the wealth of its mineral, forest product and forest products at ecologically sustainable agriculturala and ranching potential. Many of levels, challenges remain. The RESEX and PAE the earliest inhabitants of Siuna arrived to work designations gave residents communal title in the region’s mines, on its banana plantations but left the internal division and distribution and in its timber industries or simply sought of resources to their customary practices. land for small-scale agriculture and animal The state, through IBAMA, has maintained husbandry. Siuna served as an escape valve oversight of forests, mandating the percentage for pressure for landless people elsewhere in of properties that can be legally deforested Nicaragua where land was more concentrated for agriculture or other uses, and regulating in the hands of large terrateniente landowners forest management and logging activities. and as state policies promoted official and Strict environmental regulations plus the slow spontaneous colonization (Cuellar and Kandel and sometimes contradictory bureaucracy of 2005). Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 17

In the 1980s, during Nicaragua’s Civil War, Siuna represents 14% of the territory of Nicaragua. was an important source of support for anti- Its Nucleus Zone includes almost 800 000 ha; government rebels and the site of protracted its Buffer Zone represents another 1.3 million conflicts in the countryside between Contra ha (Cuellar and Kandel 2005). and Sandinista forces. After the war, Siuna’s population increased significantly, as displaced The Bosawas reserve was established with peoples returned and as the government strong international bilateral and donor distributed land to ex-combatants. In the support, but with little consultation or early 1990s, nearly 500 000 ha of land were participation from indigenous and mestizo distributed to ex-combatants, with 66% of groups already living in the territory. The this land being given to ex-Contras (Cuellar international and national institutions helping and Kandel 2005). Even after the Nicaraguan set up Bosawas did not at first fully appreciate Peace Accords of 1987 that ended the armed the potential role that communities in the Buffer conflict between Sandinista government Zone could play in support of the reserve’s troops and Contra fighters, Siuna continued to integrity. An estimated 25 000 inhabitants of experience a high level of conflict as armed Miskito and Mayangna indigenous communities movements sought reparation for civil war live in the Bosawas Nucleus Zone. More than losses, indigenous and mestizo groups and 200 000 persons, mostly mestizo campesinos, national and international extraction industry are estimated to live within its Buffer Zone. disputed resource access and tenure, and The Buffer Zone and the community actors illegal loggers, drug traffickers and others within it were mostly overlooked, as most struggled for control of the area (Kaimowitz attention focused on primary forests with 2002; Cuellar and Kandel 2005). ‘The region little attention paid to the important role that was a no man’s land. Only the army, armed buffer zones play in maintaining the stability groups and PCaC moved about freely’ (Cuellar of ecosystems (Cuellar and Kandel 2005). and Kandel 2005). While attempting to conserve huge expanses of territory, government efforts ran counter to The 1987 establishment of the RAAN and the strategies of the region’s existing residents RAAS (Autonomous Regions of the North and previously resettled populations. The and South Atlantic, respectively) reflected managers of Bosawas initially sought major acknowledgement by the state that to restrictions on access to and use of forest improve relations with indigenous and other resources, although because of the relative local groups the more isolated Atlantic regions haste in which it had been established specific required special autonomy. Nevertheless, regulations had not originally been put in specific arrangements to devolve state power place. The Bosawas Management Plan limited to the regions were slow to emerge, as the explicit recognition of communities to those question of autonomy has been shaped by within the Nucleus Zone, which were almost conflicts within national parties and relatively all indigenous. The creation of Bosawas itself undeveloped regional parties (Cuellar and sparked a resurgence of indigenous claims for Kandel 2005). land and the formal, legal demarcation of land boundaries (Cuellar and Kandal 2005). This Furthermore, in Siuna state policies have often provoked conflicts that have largely pitted pursued ambiguous or contradictory objectives indigenous and mestizo campesinos against of development and conservation. For each other in the competition to define example, despite having promoted colonization territorial boundaries and use rights, in large in the region Nicaragua participated in the part because of the dichotomy maintained move among Central American governments between Nucleus and Buffer Zones (Cuellar towards policies promoting environmental and Kandel 2005). conservation. Nicaragua supported the development of a Mesoamerican Biological Since the reserve was created, Bosawas has Corridor, declaring Bosawas a National Natural faced significant and growing pressure from Resource Reserve in 1991; the reserve gained outside its boundaries as the agricultural recognition as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in frontier has been pushed closer by farmers 1997. At approximately 2 million ha, Bosawas and ranchers (Cuellar and Kandel 2005). 18 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

Nicaragua’s land tenure system as manifest in to further disseminate useful experiences. Siuna has been at the centre of the problem of After several years of operating at the margins resource ingovernability along the agricultural of both governmental and union promoted frontier. Because of the region’s history as programmes, the UNAG helped expand the a colonization zone and extractive enclave, PCaC programme as a means for reflecting occupation continues to be the principal on the reasons for the Contra uprising, its method for acquiring land rights. Colonists lay support in the country’s rural hinterlands, claim to land by felling trees, cultivating crops and as a vehicle for reconciliation of opposing and erecting structures. Possession rights are sides. PCaC was seen as offering a chance for legally defensible after one year. Property dialogue and reconciliation among individual rights can be acquired with a clear land-grant small-scale farmers who had been caught up document after 10 years. Otherwise, property in the Civil War struggle and had not been well rights for ‘improved land’ can be acquired served by the government’s policies favouring after 30 years. While relatively few inhabitants cooperatives. possess clear, legal title to the lands they occupy, paradoxically a thriving but volatile UNAG introduced PCaC to Siuna in 1993. land market exists in which land improvements Oxfam-UK provided the first external support and existing use rights are traded. Colonists to PCaC through UNAG by funding farmer typically claim and ‘improve’ land, sell it and exchanges and workshops in Siuna’s mining move on to new sites. The state’s rural credit areas. Members of the Rosa Grande community systems reinforce this system of ‘property rights travelled from Siuna to Boaco in central through improvements’ (Cuellar and Kandel Nicaragua and returned with knowledge of the 2005). The result is a dynamic which encourages bean cover crop frijol abono (Mucuna pruriens) land-use change, expanding the agricultural which makes possible greater weed control and frontier which threatens encroachment on enhanced soil fertility on farmers’ lands. The Bosawas boundaries. However, as these use of frijol abono reduces the need under dynamics progressed and the frontier in Siuna traditional small-farmer swidden cultivation began to close, small-scale rural producers systems to periodically clear and burn new began looking for alternatives. areas. By the following year, the cover crop experiment had spread to five communities in In 1987, as Nicaragua’s official institutions were Siuna. privileging state agricultural and ranching firms and the cooperative movement, one of the few Oxfam financed a project from 1995 to 1997 concrete projects supporting small producers to expand experimentation with the bean was the introduction of the Farmer-to-Farmer cover crop sown in combination with maize Programme known by its Spanish acronym PCaC and to organize exchange visits to share (Programa Campesino a Campesino). PCaC was results among farmers. After two years, 25 introduced by the National Union of Farmers PCaC-affiliated promoters and 76 producers and Ranchers (Unión Nacional de Agricultores y were using and promoting the cover crop Ganaderos – UNAG), the Sandinista-controlled to transform their traditional agricultural rural union (Cuellar and Kandal 2005). First practices. Oxfam support eventually made developed in Guerrero, Mexico, PCaC was part possible expansion to eight more communities, of a growing grassroots movement throughout and additional exchanges. Another important Central America of farmer-based campesino source of assistance was the Central American experimentation with farmers teaching farmers Indigenous and Peasant Coordinator of in a self-reliant approach aimed at building Communal Agroforestry (ACICAFOC), which social and human capital. (See Holt-Jiménez regularly organized regional exchanges in [2006] for a comprehensive discussion of the which PCaC participants were able to link with history of PCaC, from its origins in Guerrero, international social networks and to exchange Mexico, to its evolution into a region-wide knowledge and information with other farmers grassroots movement). PCaC’s participants in the region. As a result, with ACICAFOC shared innovations with each other in support PCaC-Siuna members promoted exchange meetings emphasizing horizontal more than 1000 ha of corredores biológicos learning and adaptation, then returned home campesinos (peasant biological corridors) Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 19

to connect their communities with Bosawas drawn the attention of donors and projects. As (PCaC-Siuna, undated a). a result, PCaC has also assumed an important role as interlocutor between external state PCaC’s experience with technical assistance institutions and international donors with has been shaped largely by its relationship interest in supporting producers in the region. with its parent institution, UNAG. Shortly after its introduction, PCaC-Siuna was widely viewed PCaC continues to work to resolve the tension as a stronger and more influential organization between its need to seek resources and in the countryside than its parent institution, technical assistance in support of its members’ UNAG. This situation led to internal conflicts, aspirations for more stable and sustainable particularly with relation to the channelling livelihoods, and the very characteristics of of external resources via UNAG to PCaC. horizontality and process orientation which The internal tensions were partially rooted have won it such widespread support and in fundamental organizational differences influence in the region. PCaC’s leaders and between UNAG and PCaC. While UNAG has a members have begun to realize that much formal, top-down, hierarchically structured external technical and financial assistance organization, PCaC – despite being an assistance arrives as formal projects that encourage the programme – took on innovative characteristics development of a rigid, top-down organization better conceptualized as those of a social like that of UNAG. Official objectives, timelines movement or collective action network. PCaC- and financial accountability requirements of Siuna’s affiliates are not part of a formal PCaC projects necessarily lend themselves to, and organizational hierarchy. The strong ties of even require, formal institutional structures PCaC-Siuna’s network of volunteer promoters and traditional organizational hierarchies of are based on PCaC’s success and credibility. technical experts and community beneficiaries. Communities’ and promoters’ ties to PCaC While such organizational changes often have more to do with the shared interests of a produce benefits such as increased efficiency social movement rather than positions within a and transparency, formal project imperatives formal framework. often run counter to the more horizontal, process-oriented principles of a farmer When the national organization attempted to movement which pursues strong, yet informal exercise direct control over the disposition of social networks of experimentation and the funds and, consequently, PCaC’s activities, exchange. PCaC-Siuna members resisted and through local elections managed to place their members The contradictions that official projects in decisionmaking positions in UNAG, thus pose for PCaC as a movement, for example, assuring local influence in decisions. PCaC- were dramatized when PCaC found itself Siuna continues to be formally affiliated with responsible for enforcing loan agreements UNAG, but after a difficult period of tension and collecting debts incurred by members and negotiation has achieved a greater degree participating in a farmer loan project, a of autonomy from its parent institution. relationship that threatened to undermine its capacity to sustain its social networks in Today, PCaC-Siuna directly organizes 120 the countryside (Cuellar and Kandel 2005). communities and has indirect influence In another example, the World Bank recently in another 300 communities through its supported an NTFP project to harvest and network of almost 500 volunteer promoters process essential oils in PCaC communities in the region. PCaC has assumed a key role in Siuna. This support led to the formation of technical accompanist to its member of a new PCaC-affiliated cooperative with 55 communities’ social processes. PCaC provides members, COOPESIUNA (Cuellar and Kandel the framework for the work of the network 2005). The surge in support also offered of promoters in the communities, organizes challenges as it undercut the movement’s technical backstopping for the experimentation basic organizational logic. For example, in and dissemination of sustainable production interviews carried out by the authors during techniques, and arranges exchange events March 2004, cooperative members expressed among farmers. The success of PCaC-Siuna has concern about top-down decision making 20 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

and lack of information about the essential via productive proposals emerging from the oils project, which was driven by outside communities. One of PCaC’s challenges is consultants. As Pasos (2001) points out, such to establish a new and more explicit role in situations are common in many traditional environmental governance related to the projects: ‘it has been the people who end Bosawas reserve. up accompanying the [outsider’s] project in execution of its activities’ rather than being Of 11 PCaC initiatives in Nicaragua, it is in Siuna supported by it. where the movement has had greatest success, in terms of leadership and membership growth, PCaC has developed into an important and in terms of technological impact on small- movement promoting sustainable agriculture scale farming and animal production (Cuellar and ranching in the region of Siuna. Though it and Kandel 2005). Pasos (2001) argues that is first and foremost a loosely knit association PCaC, however, is more than a collection of of farmers now stabilized on a forest frontier, methodological tools or agricultural techniques; PCaC has become a major source of support rather, it has become ‘the most important for forest conservation. PCaC has contributed productive movement in the Nicaraguan significantly to slowing the advance of the countryside, through which small farmers and agricultural frontier in Siuna. The vast majority ranchers confront the ongoing crisis in rural of farmers in PCaC’s area of influence have life, and it is generating new proposals for decreased their dependence on burning and development of farms and communities’ (cited have begun replenishing their soils by planting in Cuellar and Kandel 2005). In a strategic cover crops and practising other sustainable sense, the principal attraction of PCaC in Siuna techniques. Internal PCaC reports (PCaC-Siuna lies in its methodology of horizontal dialogue, undated b) state that an estimated 3000 farmers communication, and empowerment. in 80 communities use frijol abono on more than 5000 ha. Some 300 families have seen their production operations stabilized, with 2.4 Collaborative Community planned and diversified farms. By increasing Conservation and Sustainable family food security, PCaC’s participants have Forest Management in greatly reduced the impetus for new land Mamirauá, Brazil clearing. Their actions have protected 2500 The Mamirauá Sustainable Development ha of forest from felling over the previous Reserve represents an innovative case of eight years and 15 000 ha of degraded forest collaboration between conservation scientists have been set aside for restoration in those and communities living in and depending 80 communities. The group has planted on the forests in the Amazon flood plains approximately 25 000 Pimienta Pimenta doica that fall within the reserve. The Mamirauá trees and an additional 10 000 trees of other Sustainable Development Reserve (Reserva species in agroforestry systems. The expansion de Desenvolvimento Sustentavel Mamirauá of pasture for cattle continues to be a threat to – RDSM) is located in the Brazilian state of the forest, even after farmers have stabilized Amazonas, encompassing 1 124 000 ha at their agricultural plots and homes. Given their the confluence of two of the Amazon’s larger focus on the conservation impacts of their tributaries, the Solimões and Japurá Rivers agricultural work, PCaC’s members have begun (See Figure 3). Mamirauá is the largest reserve to experiment with more intensive pasture dedicated to the conservation of várzea management techniques in the forest area. flooded forest in the Amazon, a floodplain landscape of forests interspersed with canals Cuellar and Kandel (2005) state that a new and lakes marked by dramatic shifts in water social campesino actor is being promoted by levels due to seasonal flooding (Queiroz 2001). PCaC in Siuna. Contradicting the predominant In part because of its unique várzea ecosystem, discourse which labels mestizo farmers as the reserve is recognized worldwide for its pioneers on the agricultural frontier and high biodiversity; it was originally created in environmental predators, the emerging figure 1990 as an ecological station to protect the of the forest steward community shows that endangered primate Uacari-branco Cacajao it is possible to conserve natural resources calvus calvus endemic to these forests. Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 21

However, the site is also noteworthy as the The fluctuating water levels create a unique origin of an important innovation in Brazilian mixture of aquatic and boreal ecosystems, and conservation policy. In 1996, Mamirauá was families living in this shifting landscape have transformed from a conservation area to a adapted their livelihoods to match. Fishing in Sustainable Development Reserve, recognizing the myriad lakes, canals and river channels the rights of local communities living inside and allows families to meet their subsistence on the borders of the reserve to remain and needs and provides a source of cash income. to use its natural resources. This exceptional The forests produce important NTFPs such as turn of events occurred when organized rural fruits and fauna, and timber provides a major communities in Mamirauá and conservation source of cash income for some families. The proponents agreed that collaboration could be shifting beaches and levees provide soils that mutually beneficial. allow swidden agriculture, but only briefly during the dry season. The region around the Mamirauá reserve has a long history of intensive extractive activities, Historically the settlements along these rivers in large part because of its location at the lacked strong organizational institutions. It was confluence of the extensive Solimões and only in the 1970s that the Catholic Church began Japurá Rivers. In the late nineteenth century, organizing communities and implementing a the rubber boom attracted migrants from programme called the Movement for Grassroots the northeast of Brazil who came to work as Education (Movimento de Educação de Base rubber tappers. With the collapse of the rubber – MEB). The programme promoted a sense of economy at the beginning of the twentieth communal responsibility among residents in century, rubber tappers and itinerant merchants the dispersed settlements and began training abandoned the forests and rivers and founded leaders. The organizational development of the the first settlements that comprise present- communities took another step in 1979 when day Mamirauá (Alencar 2002). The collapse a Catholic missionary from the Tefé Diocese of world rubber prices created an economic known as ‘Brother Falco’ began a programme vacuum that was filled with new products to called the Community Lake Preservation sustain the debt-peonage system established Movement (Movimento de Preservação dos in the region during the rubber boom. Logging Lagos Comunitários – MPL). This programme increased in response to demand for wood for was an attempt to facilitate coordination steam ships (Alencar 2002). Starting in the among residents to better manage aquatic 1930s, commercial fishing operations moved resources that were vital to local subsistence into the region from as far away as Colombia and income. The communities’ resource base and Peru. Loggers started to arrive from the had long been under pressure from commercial nearby Brazilian cities of Manaus, Itacoatiara fishers, particularly those using boats with and Tefé. These activities predominated until improved technology, such as nylon nets the creation of the Mamirauá reserve. (Alencar 2002). Management promoted by the MPL consisted of classifying lakes into three use The current population of the RDSM descended categories: lakes for reproduction, lakes for from families that settled during the rubber subsistence and lakes for commercialization. boom, although the population had declined The programme created an expanded role for by the 1960s (Inoue 2003). In 2001 there were MEB leaders and strengthened the incipient 98 settlements and 137 isolated households political organizational structures of the in the reserve for a total of 5829 inhabitants communities. It also initiated a process by (Moura 2001 cited in Inoue 2003). Most of these which communities began making collective settlements are located along the natural decisions about resource management and levees of the Solimões and Japurá Rivers and were introduced to the idea of ‘conservation’, other canals running through the reserve. which played an important role in their Because the rivers create a shifting landscape eventual acceptance of the reserve. the communities frequently need to change The incipient community organizations were location; the average length of occupation of put to a test in the mid 1980s as a proposal any one locale is estimated at about 40 years was launched to create a conservation (IDSM 2000; Alencar 2002). area encompassing the várzea forests and 22 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

lakes at the juncture of the Solimões and of the management plan. An important focus Japurá Rivers. A leader in this conservation of the assistance given by the SCM project movement was the biologist José Márcio team was to facilitate the participation of the Ayres, who in 1983 had begun doctoral communities in the reserve’s management. The research on the endangered Uacari-branco SCM team lacked the power to remove people found in the forests around Lake Mamirauá. from the conservation area and therefore In 1985, Ayres led a group that proposed that realized that they depended on cooperation the Secretary of Environment from the State from families living in and around the reserve of Amazonas (Secretaria de Meio Ambiente to make the initiative viable. With that in mind do Estado de Amazonas – SEMA) turn the the project team embarked on an effort to area into an ‘ecological station’ covering 260 develop a more collaborative approach that 000 ha to protect the primate. In 1990 the would involve communities in the process of State Government of Amazonas created the defining management rules. Mamirauá Ecological Station, which covered 1 124 000 ha. Technically the creation of The SCM encouraged participation in the ecological station would impose severe management discussions by using the restrictions on resource use and access, and community organizations created by the it would no longer be legal for residents to Church’s MEB programme as a framework occupy the reserve. When the conservation to guide local inclusion. They promoted the proponents began to visit residents to discuss formation of community-level associations management issues and encountered hostility organized around specific productive activities and distrust from community members, they important to each community, for example realized that an alternative to the ecological fisheries management, timber management, station was necessary. At the time, the crafts or agriculture, giving residents a communities had not participated in the voice in and platform for discussions of local process and were largely unaware of changes management issues related to their livelihoods that were being discussed. One reason for (IDSM 2001). The SCM requested that each this was that the state did not attempt to community elect two representatives to enforce the provisions requiring the exclusion participate in the discussions related to the of resident families, and the conservationists management plan. In addition, the NGO did not push what they saw as an unrealistic grouped the communities into nine ‘sectors’ and unjust position. There did seem to defined by the area of traditional extractive be some common ground between the and agricultural activities, each with an conservationists and the residents as some elected coordinator (IDSM 2000; Alencar community members recognized a decrease 2002). Each sector held periodic meetings in excessive fishing and hunting behaviour involving community representatives and because the ecological station had restricted members of the NGO to discuss management access to the region by outsiders (Inoue 2003). norms and problems specific to the sector The conservation proponents were able to (IDSM-OS 2004). The multidisciplinary teams build on this and the local desire to protect a from the NGO worked at the sector and diminishing resource base. community levels mapping natural resources and customary use by communities as well as The period from 1991 through 1995 was defining the limits of strict preservation areas dedicated to negotiations with the state in the sector. After mapping, they mediated government to create a new category of reserve, negotiations between communities to one which would permit local communities in determine access rights to forest and aquatic Mamirauá to remain and to use the natural resources and assisted with the definition of resources sustainably, and the development of norms for exploiting these resources. Starting a management plan for the area that became in 1993, annual general assemblies of users of the reserve. In 1992 the researchers involved the reserve (Assembléias Gerais dos Usuários with the proposal formed the non-governmental da Reserva) were organized to discuss the organization (NGO) Sociedade Civil Mamirauá management plan and issues related to the (Mamirauá Civil Society – SCM) to administer reserve as a whole (IDSM-OS 2004). While the project and facilitate the development representatives of other interest groups, Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 23

governmental agencies and NGOs could programme. Instead, the extension team participate, only the communities had the worked with the communities to build stronger power to vote in the assembly. relations with local community loggers, tried to identify doubts, expectations and difficulties, Besides facilitating the definition of investigated levels of existing knowledge, management norms, the NGO technicians and began introducing management concepts began to provide assistance to communities to the loggers (IDSM 2002). In 1997, timber to help them identify alternatives that would management was incorporated in the lower pressure on natural resources while Economic Alternatives Programme (Programa ideally improving income. The Mamirauá de Alternativas Econômicas) of the Mamirauá timber management programme merits Institute of Sustainable Development (Instituto specific attention since this was a major de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá area of technical assistance offered to the – IDSM), which included a variety of proposed communities. Logging in the várzea forests activities to compensate residents for the had been an important economic activity for restrictions on access and use established by some families in Mamirauá for decades. When the management plan (IDSM 2001). The MFC the SCM introduced the timber management programme had the objective of increasing project they did not try to radically change community income while at the same time the traditional system in which flood waters conserving forest resources. transport logs rather than heavy machinery; instead they helped the communities organize In 1998 the Government of Brazil issued the work, introduced techniques to make Decreto 2788, which created simplified the activity more sustainable, helped the norms for community forestry management communities legalize the activity, and assisted (known as PMFSimples), making it easier them to negotiate better prices (IDSM 2002). for small producers and communities to sell timber legally. Earlier the Brazilian Forestry The roots of the Mamirauá community timber Code (from 1965) had prohibited the harvest management originated in 1992 with a and commercialization of timber without a research project called the Mamirauá Timber technical management plan; such plans were Programme (Programa Madeira do Projeto feasible only on a large scale and at substantial Mamirauá) funded by the National Council for cost. In May 1999, IDSM organized a forum with the Development of Science and Technology federal and state environmental organizations (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento – the Institute of Environmental Protection of Cientifico e Tecnológico – CNPq), which studied the State of Amazonas (Instituto de Proteção biological and socioeconomic aspects of timber Ambiental do Estado do Amazonas – IPAAM) extraction in the reserve (IDSM 2000). From and IBAMA – to discuss the legalization of 1993 to 1995, besides conducting inventories timber extraction, via the simplified norms, of forest species, the SCM monitored annual in the RDSM (IDSM 2000). As a result, the IDSM timber harvests, noting volumes, species and adopted the goal of implementing community harvest locations as well as the residents forest management in all nine sectors of the and buyers involved, prices paid and forms RSDM (IDSM 2000), focusing on areas where of payment. The monitoring gave the SCM a logging was a traditional practice, where fuller understanding of local practices, their there were high levels of illegal logging and impact on ecosystems and their role in local where communities expressed interest. They livelihoods. Using this information, the SCM used participatory methods to delineate facilitated discussions during the general community management areas and train assembly, where communities agreed that community members in the new norms. By current practices were endangering some 2003 the total number of families participating species and that there was a need to adopt in the MFC programme had increased to 236 other management practices (IDSM 2000). The families from 13 communities in 4 sectors timber management programme was finally (IDSM-OS 2004). initiated in 1996 (Stone-Jovicich et al. 2007a). In the first year there were no norms or set According to Pires (personal communication; plans to structure the timber management see also Stone-Jovicich et al. 2007a), there 24 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

are several reasons why the communities were publications, at times reaching 40% of the total dependent on external assistance to negotiate funding for the reserve (IDSM 2001). Substantial the bureaucratic process. First, the transaction funding was also provided by the UK Overseas costs are very high. The communities in Development Administration (ODA), the Mamirauá lacked capital to cover the costs of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), WWF/UK forming official associations and many residents and the European Union (SCM, CNPq/MCT, e lack the required documentation. Even though IPAAM 1996). the simplified norms reduced the paperwork, the forms required for approval of management In 1996, these efforts culminated in the plans still represented intimidating obstacles creation by the state of Amazonas of the RDSM. for locals, given the low levels of literacy found Rather than being a strict conservation model, in the communities. To make matters worse, the RDSM offered a number of innovations. the forms were not adapted to conditions in It would allow the population to continue várzea forests or the techniques used to log to reside in the reserve and to play a role these forests, and the technocrats responsible in defending its resources. The use of fauna for approving the management applications and flora was permitted with a management lacked understanding of conditions in plan based on scientific data but adaptable in Mamirauá. Finally, the approval process was response to new information or market change. very slow, taking on average five and a half The RSDM also authorized the implementation months, complicating operational planning. of programmes to improve local conditions, and established strategic agreements with Initially neither Brazil’s national government government and NGOs to develop proposals for nor the state government of Amazonas actively sustainable resource use. participated in the process that created the collaborative arrangement between In 1999 the researchers involved in the SCM communities and conservationists in Mamirauá. formed a second organization, the IDSM. However, over time governmental institutions In the same year a presidential decree provided the framework within which the recognized the IDSM as an ‘Organização Social’ RSDM evolved, and they gradually funnelled collaborating with the MCT. In 2000, the RDSM increasing financial assistance through the was incorporated into Brazil’s National System SCM to support the initiative. In the process of Conservation Units (Sistema Nacional the NGO responsible for the reserve gained a de Unidades de Conservação). By 2002 an quasi-official status through agreements with agreement with IPAAM passed responsibility the state government’s institute, IPAAM, and for management of the reserve to the the federal government’s Ministry of Science IDSM. The SCM continues as a network of and Technology (Ministério de Ciência e interested researchers assisting IPAAM with Tecnologia – MCT) to take responsibility for the co-administration of the RDSM. The two administering the reserve and programmes organizations allow the researchers to tap into intended for inhabitants. In 1994, the reserve different sources of funding from the state and began to receive significant financing from the national government as well as funding from CNPq to cover research, infrastructure and international donors. Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 25

3 Common patterns in the emergence of forest-based Social Movements

Is it possible to generalize about how forest- collective action and pressures for policy based social movements develop by analyzing change, authorities eventually ceded greater these four diverse cases? The selected cases control and access to communities and their are exceptional because they represent success grassroots movements. Significantly, although by community groups in organizing grassroots they won their battles through collective movements that have ultimately secured action these groups have struggled to maintain greater control over forest resources. It is relevance to their members by capitalizing probably more common that forest people do on their successes while adapting to new not form grassroots organizations unless their opportunities. forest-related livelihoods are threatened. What has made these selected groups’ experiences different? The reasons for their success in 3.1 Weak Governance on the organizing lie in complex historical processes Frontier and Threats to shaped by a variety of factors, including Livelihoods the presence of charismatic leadership, the In all four regions studied, state institutions capacity to achieve consensus on the nature of have historically been weak or absent. Remotely external threats and the manner to respond, located at the margin of state influence, and the existence of political conditions these regions provided a haven for indigenous making crucial alliances with external state or displaced populations. Rural peoples and private actors possible. occupied these forest landscapes without formal title or officially recognized ownership Despite their significant differences, these rights. Where their arrival was not strongly social movements passed through similar contested by others, these groups managed stages. Each originated in a region with to gain usufruct rights and develop livelihoods sporadic presence of state institutions and dependent on forest resources. However, their consequently weak governance mechanisms. hold was precarious. State policies viewed As frontier change intensified competition forest regions as escape valves for conflicts, for resources and as conflict and resource landlessness and unemployment. Eventually, degradation increased, governments typically increased migration, agricultural expansion responded with conservation or development and the quest for extractive resources brought initiatives, often in the form of protected frontier change to these regions, increasing areas or reserves established with little or no competition for resources as well as conflicts consultation with local communities. These between stakeholders. State policies viewed measures initially delegitimized, severely forested areas as unproductive and encouraged limited, or even eliminated community – explicitly or implicitly – their incorporation resource access, at least formally, but they into national development agendas. also provided powerful catalysts for unity. Community-level stakeholders began to defend Policies intended to incorporate forest frontiers against external threats to their resource base, within national development agendas often and with certain types of assistance collective failed to promote community involvement movements began to coalesce. (See Colfer in resource management. On the contrary, (2005) for a related discussion of the link they systematically encouraged investments between the success of Adaptive Collaborative that drove forest conversion to the detriment Management (ACM) and high levels of natural of rural people. Rural families struggled to resource-related conflict). After increased preserve their resources while at the same 26 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

time they faced increased pressure from and to their livelihoods provided an important conflicts with competing stakeholders. Powerful impetus for collective action. interest groups, such as ranchers or loggers, benefited from the chaos and often laid claim The collective-action strategies adopted by to lands traditionally used by smallholders. the grassroots groups examined here operated Conflict and associated resource degradation at a number of levels. In some cases they raised the profile of these regions. adopted direct actions such as physically blocking deforestation, as happened in Acre, With time, as environmental degradation and or by refusing to work with certain NGOs, as social conflict became more apparent dominant happened in the Petén. By acting together, policy directions shifted. Conservation these groups have managed to raise the agendas came to the forefront through policies public profile of their members, significantly shaping forest resource use and leading to neutralize economic and political disparity the establishment of protected areas and with competing stakeholders, and draw reserves. In three of the cases reviewed attention to their plight and the impacts on here (the Petén, Siuna and Mamirauá), these the forests they occupied. Their high profile conservation initiatives attempted, at least actions and broad base of local support have initially, to exclude local residents, including made them attractive partners to external those already occupying newly designated stakeholders. These groups have worked conservation areas. However, states continued actively to present themselves as credible to support and implement conservation participants in natural resource management initiatives that excluded forest-dependent and have sought to form alliances with families, even in the face of national and powerful external stakeholders. Initial success international criticism of the policies (or lack drew attention to their cause, helped them of policies) that destroyed tropical forests or form alliances with national and international excluded the affected rural populations. conservation groups, and eventually obligated the government to respond to their The imposition of national development demands. These were all outcomes unlikely agendas and conservation initiatives on what to be achieved by individuals or ineffectively had been marginal forest frontiers jeopardized organized groups. the livelihoods of multitudes of rural families and provided unambiguous threats to their An important factor in all four cases was that wellbeing. In the cases examined here, key actors, including state agencies, national especially those of the Petén and Acre, the and international donors and conservation introduction of change without adequate groups, recognized that existing protected attention to local community interests area management models were unlikely to generated significant social conflicts and achieve conservation goals effectively without sparked organized responses. Nevertheless, better accommodation of community interests. though state policies provided powerful In some cases, communities organized active catalysts for collective action, they were not resistance to prevailing resource management fully responsible for the emergence of these rules, triggering reflection on the part of groups. protected area managers and their institutional supporters. In others, as in Mamirauá, conservation stakeholders realized early 3.2 Community-level the need to incorporate genuine community Stakeholders Respond with involvement in resource management. Collective Action The grassroots organizations reviewed here grew out of local initiatives and indigenous 3.3 Crucial Support from Two processes. Communities in these four cases Types of External Assistance worked hard to organize and pursue their Each of the four groups studied here drew interests collectively rather than struggle as on external assistance that contributed individuals against powerful stakeholders. The in significant ways to the emergence and clear recognition of a common shared threat consolidation of broad-based community Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 27

movements. The assistance received by the capacity to define common agendas and organizations has varied in both type and collective strategies, resulting in more approach through what Gómez and Méndez effective political negotiation capacities. (2005) called ‘pro-community’ and ‘official’ (See this paper’s companion study (Taylor models of technical assistance. Rather than et al. 2007) for a more detailed discussion being mutually exclusive or competing models, of the organizational characteristics of this these two have served different needs at alternative model of technical assistance). different stages of communities’ involvement in natural resource management. This approach to external support has attempted to create conditions in which rural The traditional or ‘official’ model of technical communities can become active participants assistance has mobilized large-scale financial responding to their shared needs, generating resources, technical knowledge and skills, and processes of learning and ownership that local recruited important institutional participation groups can sustain after external support in natural resource management. In Central disappears. Pro-community assistance has America, examples included assistance from sought to avoid taking over tasks, responsibilities the United States Agency for International and roles that are already within local capacity, Development (USAID), the World Bank, but rather to ‘do only what local communities Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KFW), the cannot do’. The farmer-to-farmer exchanges UK Department for International Development organized by Oxfam-UK with the Programa (DFID), international and national non- Campesino a Campesino (PCaC)-Siuna and governmental organizations (NGOs) and the community organization undertaken by others. In Brazil, multiple federal ministries Catholic activists in Acre are both examples and agencies, such as the National Council for of this type of assistance. When community the Development of Science and Technology organizations have developed sufficient (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento institutional maturity, they have often sought Cientifico e Tecnológico – CNPq) provided greater responsibility for management and key assistance in Cachoeira and Mamirauá. an effective role in negotiating and planning This type of assistance was crucial in implementation, thereby developing a helping communities navigate the legal and significant level of control over the process. bureaucratic requirements of formal forest The pro-community model has assisted management. In different cases, they have community groups in reaching greater levels provided socio-economic and technical of organization and institutional stability, in planning and provided important training. more effectively representing and integrating their members’ interests, and in negotiating a A second, emerging ‘pro-community’ more equal footing with other stakeholders. assistance model has focused more on the formation of community-based organizations, While pro-community approaches were very consciousness raising and building institutional influential, they are not a panacea. Often local capacity. This has involved the practice of stakeholders need other assistance to learn collective reflection and analysis to promote the ‘rules of the game’ and the skills necessary group learning and adaptation and laid the to take advantage of new opportunities. The groundwork for broader social and political ‘official’ or traditional model of assistance networks by encouraging exchange and the has involved greater levels of funding and sharing of experiences among groups in similar focused most specifically on technology and circumstances. This type of assistance has skills transfer. This type of assistance was a placed isolated frontier families in contact crucial support, for example, in the early with others and provided a matrix through years of the Association of Forest Communities which individuals can share information and of the Petén (ACOFOP)’s struggle to win forest recognize common problems. Regular contacts management concessions for its member between localized groups helped community communities. It was also key in efforts by members realize that others were confronting NGOs in Brazil to introduce sustainable timber similar threats to their resource base. The management projects. As stated above, this resulting dialogue strengthened communities’ type of technical assistance arrives in the 28 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

form of formal projects requiring traditional Consolidation of communities’ significant organized hierarchies that often run contrary success in natural resource management to the horizontal, process-oriented principles requires them to develop greater capacities of social networks structuring grassroots to manage the complex politics of their movements. Even where projects avoid resource base. For example, these grassroots overtly paternalistic approaches that generate organizations continually seek to balance dependency, the demands of formal technical conservation and livelihood goals. While projects often push participants to respond conservation is an important component of to pre-set project objectives and conform their organizations’ agendas, participating to rigid planning frameworks. Nevertheless, members expect their organizations to in early stages of community involvement in continue to generate concrete improvements resource management, traditional models of in their livelihoods, often measured in terms assistance have helped establish basic legal, of employment and income. At the same time, organizational and technical foundations, the external legitimacy of grassroots forestry particularly at larger scales. organizations’ management of forest resources greatly depends on the communities’ ability to demonstrate that they are sustainably 3.4 Forest Social Movements Face managing and conserving the resources. Though New Challenges in Adapting state support for community-based resource to Changing Contexts management has increased, grassroots Once these grassroots movements succeeded community organizations must continually work in gaining more secure resource access, to maintain and extend policy support for their their organizations shifted focus to better role. Moreover, communities’ credibility with support their members’ changing needs. Their conservationist stakeholders often requires attention has turned to helping members countering competing stakeholder claims or take advantage of policy gains and improve criticisms, often based on overly narrow data livelihood conditions by exploring alternatives and observations. Community groups need to for expanding or diversifying forest develop their capacity to recount their own production. This shift has taken varying forms experiences more accurately and persuasively. of seeking project support to improve forest This requires strengthening of local skills in the related income, identifying new production collection, analysis and presentation of data strategies, improving marketing capacity related to their forests and their activities in and developing greater and more complex them (see Taylor et al. 2007). involvement in resource management. For example, in Acre the rubber tapper movement State institutions have become more and its allies have searched for ways to responsive when faced with collective increase income from forest resources (a pressure from grassroots movements and from Brazil nut cooperative, decentralized nut international donors and NGOs seeking to processing, and the introduction of timber reduce social conflict in threatened forests. management). In Mamirauá the coordination The state recognized the property demands of lake management and legalization of of rural families, sometimes creating novel sustainable forest management have allowed mechanisms to respond to customary resource residents to reduce uncontrolled resource use. use such as community concessions, extractive In the Petén, ACOFOP’s member community reserves (RESEX), and sustainable development concessionaires are seeking to develop more- reserves. State interventions have provided integrated resource strategies that go beyond legal frameworks, regulations, mediation commercial timber to include organized and police authority that allow members management of non-timber forest products of grassroots groups a more level playing (NTFPs), tourism and cultural protection. In field. In the Petén and Acre, for example, Siuna, PCaC has focused on green manure state agencies charged with protected area and agroforestry to slow deforestation on a management have come to be strong supporters closing frontier and seeks a more formal role of the communities’ role in sustainable forest in the management of protected areas in their management. region. Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 29

However, in each case, as the state responds to enhanced their ability to channel resources multiple national and international interests, and services to rural members. However, while existing policy commitments to community- programmes better match the needs of forest- based natural resource management are based membership, state institutions still face vulnerable. Grassroots groups in both regions political pressure to maintain the status quo struggle to maintain attention and keep their and are not always capable of responding to agenda under consideration by the state. innovative visions, resulting in traditional In Central America the selected grassroots ineffective project implementation. organizations still have a largely adversarial relationship with official agencies and In all four cases, in both Central America and must continue to bring pressure to bear to Brazil, grassroots community organizations assure that their members’ perspectives and face ongoing challenges to secure and extend interests are considered by policymakers. In state policy support for an authentic local role the Petén, for example, the Mirador Basin in resource management. While the focus of Expansion Project, which directly threatened these grassroots organizations has shifted after the community concession system, had strong initial resource access has been won, the need political support at the highest levels of the for effective political capacity has not abated. Guatemalan state. In Siuna, PCaC still struggles On the contrary, the political requirements to promote more significant consideration of created by an enhanced and diversified its members’ interests in the management of community role in resource management are Bosawas. In both cases, the inability to assume arguably greater than those needed to win a strong policy environment for community- initial access. For example, in their pursuit of a based resource management has spurred greater role in integrated forest management, stronger group cohesion as well as expansion community concessionaires of the Petén face through the formation of secondary and overlapping jurisdictions of ministries related tertiary organizations that broaden networks to protected area management, petroleum and strengthen collective bargaining power. exploration, tourism and cultural antiquities, in addition to similarly diverse and powerful In Brazil, by contrast, the relationship between organized international interests. As stated government and grassroots opposition has above, communities and their grassroots actually sometimes become blurred as the organizations clearly require strengthened national government responds to collective capacities to study, analyze and present their demands by directly delegating responsibilities own experiences in order to ensure that their and funding to local organizations and NGOs. interests are adequately represented in the For example, the CNPq delegated significant highly competitive resource politics of their responsibility and funding to the National regions. Rubber Tappers’ Council (Conselho Nacional dos Seringueiros – CNS) to co-manage the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve. In the 3.5 Grassroots Movements, Amazon, because of vast spaces and relatively Forest Stewardship low population density, the government Communities and struggles to control and provide services to Conservation the dispersed rural population. Devolving These four grassroots movements have gained responsibility to local organizations makes control or influence over large tracts of forest sense. Moreover, by subsuming groups within on tropical frontiers. Gaining access to resource the system, the state manages to diffuse their management has created greater stability, power as opposition. The relationship between which allows local people to invest in the future government and grassroots becomes even of both their forests and their communities. more complex as rural social movements take Because their livelihoods depend on these on greater political power. The gradual return forests, they have a great stake in maintaining of democracy in Brazil has meant that rural the forests and investing labour and money to movements like that of the rubber tappers in do so. Through these grassroots movements, Acre have succeeded in electing members and forest steward communities are emerging. allies to local government. This has greatly These communities hold a range of legal 30 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

rights to manage forest resources and engage Other examples include Acre, where the rubber in productive activities, including extraction tapper movement helped propel a pro-forest and processing of commercial timber, NTFP state government into office and influenced activities, agroforestry, sustainable agriculture federal policies. In Mamirauá, once boundary and livestock production, and varying rights to conflicts between communities were resolved participate directly in forest-related policies. and management practices defined, resident families became much more vigilant to What are the emerging environmental and intrusions by outsiders or violations of norms by social impacts of forest steward communities neighbours. The forest management practised on forest management? Reliable time series by these groups is not perfect, but clearly in data on the conservation and development these cases it has generated more positive impacts of grassroots movements is still results than contested landscapes or protected limited. Nevertheless, there is reason to areas without community involvement have. expect significant positive impacts, particularly In comparison to areas under indigenous when compared to the alternative outcomes management, Brazilian Amazonian forests in observed in neighbouring forest areas not adjacent areas are significantly more degraded controlled by such groups. These grassroots or completely transformed (Schwartzman et movements have contributed to increased al. 2000; Nepstad et al. 2006). In Nicaragua, stability in frontier areas by lowering conflict as members of PCaC-Siuna gained more secure and improving property rights security; they holdings and recognized that the frontier was have slowed processes driving degradation. closing they began burning less and becoming more interested in investing in cover crops and One of the most striking examples of agroforestry to maintain the lands they held. conservation impacts and development can be seen in the Petén. Nittler and Tschinkel (2005) These four cases show persuasively that conclude that the community concessions are conservation and sustainable community generating as much as $US 5 million in timber- livelihoods do not have to be contradictory. related income and $US 2–3 million from NTFPs. These grassroots movements indicate that Dramatic satellite images show that in recent communities can be effective collaborators in years much of the Maya Biosphere Reserve conservation, with highly positive impacts on (MBR)’s buffer zone and neighbouring parks biodiversity and poverty alleviation. As these such as Laguna del Tigre suffer from seasonal grassroots groups develop and seek to take on forest fires. However, the zones covered by more responsibility in forest management, their community concessions stand out for the lack needs change. They seek greater autonomy in of widespread fires (Wildlife Conservation decision making. They seek to further develop Society et al. 2003, 2004). Members of their forest activities, by improving and ACOFOP explain that communities make much extending their productive chains, or develop more effective resource ‘guards’ as they more integrated approaches to natural invest time and resources in controlling access resource management. They also face the need to and activities in their concession areas. to develop greater negotiating capacity in the Protected areas in which communities do not increasingly complex resource politics of their have a management role are more vulnerable regions. New kinds of technical assistance are to degradation because official protection needed to complement traditional approaches is less adequate. Other recent forthcoming and to more effectively build local capacity research shows partial support for the position for research, analysis and planning. Crucial that community concessions are better than conditions for this type of sustainable learning parks in inhibiting deforestation in the Petén, process include strengthened capacities of although a full explanation of differences in communities and their grassroots organizations deforestation rates surely requires exploration to analyze, plan and represent their own of factors such as colonization history and interests in management for conservation and variation in demographic pressure (Bray development (Taylor et al. 2007). personal communication). Environmental Governance and the Emergence of Forest-Based Social Movements 31

4 Conclusions

A new actor in the conservation of protected However, the future role of communities in areas is emerging in Latin America, the forest forest management is not to be taken for steward community. In the four case studies granted. These forest steward communities described here, communities have won legal and their organizations confront ongoing access and management rights to forest needs to adapt to dynamic local contexts. resources. They are engaging in a range of They face the prospect of uncertain or timber and non-timber product activities shifting future official support for their that produce signs of significant positive resource management role. How may the conservation and local livelihood impacts. emergence and consolidation of forest steward These communities are forming new collective communities be supported effectively from organizations to govern and manage their the outside? How may local capacities for resources, and are developing a growing autonomous action be strengthened without network of alliances with other national and substituting for local initiative or creating international groups with shared interests unnecessary dependency? Forest steward in conservation and development. Their communities require appropriate external secondary level organizations are showing support that can backstop them with skills significant capabilities to learn and adapt to and knowledge they do not possess, yet can changing environmental, social and political also adapt to communities’ own evolution and contexts. And they are participating more progressive assumption of new management directly and on increasingly equal footing in responsibilities. the negotiation of the future of their forests. New models of external technical assistance These forest steward communities have need to be developed that can appropriately emerged out of regions with histories of weak accompany the social and political processes environmental governance, exacerbated underlying an effective role for forest by minimal state presence and intense steward communities. These non-traditional competition for control of resources. In accompaniment models should not seek to these regions, forest social movements were replace more traditional assistance, which can catalyzed by the establishment of conservation be effective at particular stages of development areas whose design initially overlooked of community resource management capability. community interests and directly threatened Appropriately combining non-traditional and local livelihoods. In these cases, communities traditional assistance models poses a great succeeded in developing consensus on the challenge to all parties seeking to conserve threats facing their interests, benefited from threatened forests while ensuring viable local solid internal leadership, and demonstrated livelihoods. strong local commitment to taking the risk of organizing collectively to pursue new The stakes are high for developing resource and largely unfamiliar forest management management models that will be effective responsibilities. Key to their success thus in protecting the threatened forests of the far has been these forest social movements’ global South. With appropriate support, capacity to form alliances with other social forest steward communities show potential to actors, within and from outside their regions. become a cornerstone of broad-based efforts And crucially, these movements have benefited to sustainably manage natural resources for from external assistance efforts which have conservation and development. both laid the legal and technical foundations for effective community resource management and strengthened local capacities. 32 CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 49 Cronkleton, P. et al.

5 References

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