Halvdelen af Mexicos skov er kontrolleret af lokalbefolkninger, og her er der glimrende muligheder for at fremme bæredygtig skovbrug, men desværre mangler der investeringer, skriver miljøtænketank tirsdag.
Mexico’s forests – and the extent to which local communities control them – offer great potential for sustainable forestrym writes International Institute for Environment and Development.
What has long been missing is investment, but what’s now becoming clear is how to encourage new flows of finance.
Investing in locally controlled forestry is a fairly new way to do business, one that brings social and environmental benefits in addition to the economic ones.
It is founded on the principle that people who live near forests have an interest in ensuring the sustainability of the forest resources on which they depend.
This makes it very relevant in Mexico, where forests cover about 31.5 per cent of the land and where communities own half of all forested land and control it through systems known as ejidos and comunidades.
These two structures have their roots on a land redistribution policy implemented almost 100 years ago: Ejidos could be granted to groups of landless laborers, whereas comunidades recognised indigenous peoples’ claims to their land.
These systems, of which there are about 30,000, comprise Mexico’s basic decision making unit about issues such as land use, production and natural resource management.
For Mexico’s forestry to reach its potential, these systems of local control will clearly have a key role to play. To date though, forestry has been a minor contributor to Mexico’s GDP, providing roughly 20 per cent of what the livestock sector does, and just 10 per cent of agriculture.
It is easy to see why. Only 7 million hectares out of the 22 million hectares with productive forest potential are actively managed overall, and there are only 1,000 micro, small, and medium forest enterprises (MSMFEs) in Mexican ejidos and comunidades.
An example of forms of local control seeking to reach their financial potential is FINDECA, a financial enterprise in Oaxaca that was born in 2007 out of coffee growers’ need for flexible credit and low interest rates.
FINDECA now provides credit to more than ten forestry and agroforestry-related industries, such as timber, mango and papaya, in South-eastern Mexico. In the forest sector, FINDECA has provided 111.7 million pesos (about US$8.6 million) in two types of credit:
The solution may seem obvious — to increase public, private, social and philanthropic investment in such enterprises. What has been less clear until now is how to achieve this.
Barriers to investing in locally-controlled forestry in Mexico
To analyse shortcomings in investment in the Mexican forestry sector, Reforestamos México organized a workshop in June with support from the British Government, IUCN, The Resource Foundation and Deutsche Bank.
We wanted to present our Spanish translation of the Guide to Investing in Locally Controlled Forestry —to 40 national and international stakeholders from civil society, the private sector, government and MSMFEs — and define ways to better align investments with needs.
Læs mere her: http://www.iied.org/how-boost-investment-locally-controlled-forestry-mexico
Begynd ved: “We used the workshop to assess the state of investment…”
