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Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-08T19:48:02Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|400pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The CORENCHI were initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
[[File:Assessment of Rights.png|500px|Assessments of Rights]]
==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then men<ref>Larkin, O. 2014. Policy Options. Addressing Barriers to Indigenous Women’s Entrepreneurship will Require More Access to Financing, Child Care and Awareness of Programs. Available from:http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/july-2017/make-entrepreneurship-accessible-to-indigenous-women/ </ref>. The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=yes}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-08T19:42:28Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The CORENCHI were initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
[[File:Assessment of Rights.png|thumb|Assessments of Rights]]

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then men<ref>Larkin, O. 2014. Policy Options. Addressing Barriers to Indigenous Women’s Entrepreneurship will Require More Access to Financing, Child Care and Awareness of Programs. Available from:http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/july-2017/make-entrepreneurship-accessible-to-indigenous-women/ </ref>. The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=yes}}

File:Assessment of Rights.png

2017-12-08T19:41:18Z

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Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-08T19:30:24Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The CORENCHI were initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !!Scale of influence!! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and
use of forests
(fuel wood, hunting etc.)
Recognition of
traditional usufruct rights ||Voting in democratically
elected Assemblies
Political voice but
generally politically and
economically disadvantaged || Local Regional Assembly
establishes rules for
land use and access
but constrained by
Mexican Agrarian Law,
and forest law || Local action Networking
Coalitions
|-
| National forest agencies|| Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
|NGOs || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}
==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then men<ref>Larkin, O. 2014. Policy Options. Addressing Barriers to Indigenous Women’s Entrepreneurship will Require More Access to Financing, Child Care and Awareness of Programs. Available from:http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/july-2017/make-entrepreneurship-accessible-to-indigenous-women/ </ref>. The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=yes}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-08T03:34:22Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Recommendations */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The CORENCHI were initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then men<ref>Larkin, O. 2014. Policy Options. Addressing Barriers to Indigenous Women’s Entrepreneurship will Require More Access to Financing, Child Care and Awareness of Programs. Available from:http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/july-2017/make-entrepreneurship-accessible-to-indigenous-women/ </ref>. The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=yes}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-08T03:33:38Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Recommendations */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The CORENCHI were initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend<ref>Larkin, O. 2014. Policy Options. Addressing Barriers to Indigenous Women’s Entrepreneurship will Require More Access to Financing, Child Care and Awareness of Programs. Available from:http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/july-2017/make-entrepreneurship-accessible-to-indigenous-women/ </ref>. The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=yes}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-08T03:23:29Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The CORENCHI were initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=yes}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-08T02:58:39Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The CORENCHI were initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=yes}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:31:06Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The CORENCHI were initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:30:40Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree<ref name="Bray"/. The CORENCHI were initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:29:13Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Affected Stakeholders */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:27:36Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Interested Outside Stakeholders */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Non-government organizations (NGOs) such asGeoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:22:05Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Administrative arrangements */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:20:45Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Administrative arrangements */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray<ref name="Bray"/> further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:18:14Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Local Decision Making */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities have certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES have been granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:17:12Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Local Decision Making */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation)<ref name="Denham"/>. The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:15:18Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Who Controls Land Use Decisions */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focuses on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there is no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security.
# All funds are managed with transparency through the assembly; some are reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:12:27Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Who Controls Land Use Decisions */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies, which are internally organized community governing bodies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:10:36Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Freehold or State Owned Land */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Despite the new government policies, management of the ICCA's and PES lands did not become freehold: to this day, forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure<ref name="Denham"/>. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:07:15Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* History */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>".

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:05:25Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* History */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:03:47Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* History */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)— a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:02:07Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Payment for Ecosystem Services */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T14:00:56Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Payment for Ecosystem Services */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a PES program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed <ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T13:59:40Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Description */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec community of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The case study will identify and describe the elements of a successful implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program within a large community of indigenous people.

The cloud forest region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed <ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T13:55:09Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed <ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty<ref name=" Nieratkaa"/>.

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales<ref>Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.</ref>. The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T06:15:09Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed <ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref <ref name="Nieratkaa">Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users <ref name="Nieratkaa"/>. However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues<ref name="Denham"/>. Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee<ref name="Denham"/>. Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature”<ref>McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599</ref>.

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program<ref name="Denham"/>. Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T06:04:31Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed <ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents<ref>Bartra, A., and Otero, G. 2008. Movimientos indígenas campesinos en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia. In Recuperando La Tierra: El Resurgimiento de Movimientos Rurales En África, Asia y América Latina, ed. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 401–428. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.</ref>."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation<ref> De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus Pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City.</ref>. Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years<ref>Martin, G., C. Camacho, S. Ansa Fonseca, F. Chapela, and M. A. González Ortíz. 2011. ICCAs in Oaxaca, Mexico. Management of Environmental Quality 22 (2):250–66.</ref>. Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros<ref> Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880</ref>.

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T05:45:56Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed <ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community<ref> Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.</ref>. The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute<ref name="Bray"/>. Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages<ref name="Bray"/>. Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction<ref name="Bray"/>. To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies<ref name="Bray"/>.

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's<ref name="Bray"/>. Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities<ref name="Bray"/>. Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies<ref name="Denham"/>.

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed<ref name="Denham"/>. The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' <ref name="Denham"/>.

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community<ref name="Denham"/>. Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros. (Nietaka 2015)

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law<ref name="Bray"/>. The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency<ref name="Denham"/>.
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded<ref name="Denham"/>. Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects<ref name="Denham"/>. A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed<ref name="Denham"/>. This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014<ref name="Denham"/>

==Affected Stakeholders==
Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI<ref name="Denham"/>
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Success===
Bray<ref name="Bray"/> emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham<ref name="Denham"/> discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land<ref name="Denham"/>.

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers<ref name="Bray"/>. Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities<ref name="Bray"/>. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land<ref name="Bray"/>. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree<ref name="Bray"/>. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued<ref name="Bray"/>.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected<ref name="Bray"/>. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray<ref name="Bray"/> discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray<ref name="Bray"/> reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-07T05:24:03Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed <ref name="Denham"/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray"/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham"/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham<ref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham (2107) reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros. (Nietaka 2015)

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded. (Denham). Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects (Denham). A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed (Denham). This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham (2017) discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land (Denham).

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers (Bray 2012). Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-06T16:22:45Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref name="Bray">Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-Scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico.. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed <ref name="Denham”/>. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico<ref name="Bray”/>. Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system(<ref name="Denham”/>)

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denhamref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham (2107) reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros. (Nietaka 2015)

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded. (Denham). Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects (Denham). A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed (Denham). This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham (2017) discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land (Denham).

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers (Bray 2012). Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-06T16:04:55Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados <ref name="Duran"/>.

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed<ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref>. The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario<ref>Bray, D.B., Duran, E. & Molina, O., (2012). Beyond harvests in the commons: multi-scale governance and turbulence in indigenous/community conserved areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons. 6(2), pp.151–178. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.328</ref>.

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (<ref name="Denham"/>).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denhamref name="Denham"/> reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham (2107) reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros. (Nietaka 2015)

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded. (Denham). Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects (Denham). A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed (Denham). This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham (2017) discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land (Denham).

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers (Bray 2012). Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-06T15:46:32Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines <ref name="Duran">Duran, E., Robson, J., Briones-Salas, M., Barton Bray, D., & Berkes, F. (2012). Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity. Values of Protected Landscapes and Seascapes (Vol. 3).</ref>. Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (<ref name="Duran"/>).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed<ref> <ref name="Denham">Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495</ref> (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (<ref name="Denahm"/>).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (2017) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham (2107) reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros. (Nietaka 2015)

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded. (Denham). Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects (Denham). A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed (Denham). This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham (2017) discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land (Denham).

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers (Bray 2012). Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-06T15:09:12Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants.<ref name="Meave"Perry">Meave, J. A., Rincón, A., & Romero-Romero, M. A. (2006). Oak Forests of the Hyper-Humid Region of La Chinantla, Northern Oaxaca Range, Mexico. In Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Oak Forests (pp. 113–125). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28909-7_9</ref>, as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (<ref name="Denahm"/>).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (2017) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham (2107) reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros. (Nietaka 2015)

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded. (Denham). Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects (Denham). A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed (Denham). This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham (2017) discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land (Denham).

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers (Bray 2012). Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==
<References/>
Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-06T14:53:17Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]
The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|frame|200pxl|right|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (2017) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham (2107) reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros. (Nietaka 2015)

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded. (Denham). Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects (Denham). A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed (Denham). This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham (2017) discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land (Denham).

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers (Bray 2012). Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
A common theme among community organizations in rural areas is the lack of empowerment of woman. It has been demonstrated that women in community organizations tend to appropriate monies more directly into the communities then mend (Guardian). The CHORENCHI community assemblies, which hold decision making power, are still male dominated. Women have no say in these assemblies. I believe it would enrich the dialogue to include women as voting members of the assembly councils.

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

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Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-04T17:51:28Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* History */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|thumb|100pxl|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (2017) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1980's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way-----

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham (2107) reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros. (Nietaka 2015)

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded. (Denham). Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects (Denham). A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed (Denham). This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham (2017) discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land (Denham).

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers (Bray 2012). Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-04T16:23:14Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|thumb|100pxl|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (2017) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1908's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way-----

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

====Case Study in Local Decision Making====
Denham (2107) reports "Implementation of CORENCHI initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

The Mexican Constitution (Article 27and agrarian laws) grants rights to indigenous communities, or comunidades, to own their territory collectively, and directs that management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros. (Nietaka 2015)

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded. (Denham). Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects (Denham). A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed (Denham). This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham (2017) discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions: The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicitly based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

In interviews with CORECNHI communities in 2015, ninety percent of respondents reported that they felt they benefited from the PES program (Denham). Though many felt the payments were low, they believed they were doing the right thing by protecting the land (Denham).

===Criticisms===
Some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers (Bray 2012). Other criticisms include the desire to improve fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting, which could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-04T16:07:59Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Distribution of PES funds */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|thumb|100pxl|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (2017) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1908's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way-----

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-04T16:06:41Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* Distribution of PES funds */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|thumb|100pxl|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (2017) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1908's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way-----

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Distribution of PES funds===
PES payments are made every year or two, and sometimes are not distributed to individuals at all if there are public works that need to be funded. (Denham). Some community members want to see the money all distributed at once, but the majority understand that money must be held in common for community projects (Denham). A major road was built in 2005 and 2006 which would not have been possible had the monies all been distributed (Denham). This helps to clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task.

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-04T15:53:28Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: /* History */

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|thumb|100pxl|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (2017) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). Even Into the 1908's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). To help alleviate poverty in the region, the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way-----

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Distribution of PES funds===
"We give 250 or 375 a head—750 for a couple—but it depends on the agreements. The payment is every year or two, and sometimes we decide not to distribute it at all. We also give money to
young people. We can’t leave our youth without support. They’re our future. Some people want us to distribute everything, just use the resource all at once. But some of us think that one day we’re going to need that resource. For example, if we had distributed the whole resource when it came in in 2005 and 2006, where were we going to get money to build the road? This quote offers a window into the debates that occur inside the assemblies, and helps clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task."

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-03T17:49:35Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|thumb|100pxl|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (2017) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). However, even Into the 1908's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). However the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores during this time period which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way-----

===Freehold or State Owned Land===
Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===
Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===
Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===
The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Distribution of PES funds===
"We give 250 or 375 a head—750 for a couple—but it depends on the agreements. The payment is every year or two, and sometimes we decide not to distribute it at all. We also give money to
young people. We can’t leave our youth without support. They’re our future. Some people want us to distribute everything, just use the resource all at once. But some of us think that one day we’re going to need that resource. For example, if we had distributed the whole resource when it came in in 2005 and 2006, where were we going to get money to build the road? This quote offers a window into the debates that occur inside the assemblies, and helps clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task."

===Success===
Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-03T17:43:26Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

tie land tenure issues to topics we covered in class

include timeline

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government (which cabinet?) to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous/ Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|thumb|100pxl|Recent History of CORENCHI Community]]
Denham (XX) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). However, even Into the 1908's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). However the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way------------

===Freehold or State Owned Land===

Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===

Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# 1. Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# 2. Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# 3. Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# 4. All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# 5. PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===

Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===

The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===

Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Distribution of PES funds===
"We give 250 or 375 a head—750 for a couple—but it depends on the agreements. The payment is every year or two, and sometimes we decide not to distribute it at all. We also give money to
young people. We can’t leave our youth without support. They’re our future. Some people want us to distribute everything, just use the resource all at once. But some of us think that one day we’re going to need that resource. For example, if we had distributed the whole resource when it came in in 2005 and 2006, where were we going to get money to build the road? This quote offers a window into the debates that occur inside the assemblies, and helps clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-03T17:40:40Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

tie land tenure issues to topics we covered in class

include timeline

==Description==
[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government (which cabinet?) to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous/ Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
[[File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg|thumb|timelinehistory]]
Denham (XX) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). However, even Into the 1908's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). However the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way------------

===Freehold or State Owned Land===

Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===

Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# 1. Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# 2. Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# 3. Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# 4. All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# 5. PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===

Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===

The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===

Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Distribution of PES funds===
"We give 250 or 375 a head—750 for a couple—but it depends on the agreements. The payment is every year or two, and sometimes we decide not to distribute it at all. We also give money to
young people. We can’t leave our youth without support. They’re our future. Some people want us to distribute everything, just use the resource all at once. But some of us think that one day we’re going to need that resource. For example, if we had distributed the whole resource when it came in in 2005 and 2006, where were we going to get money to build the road? This quote offers a window into the debates that occur inside the assemblies, and helps clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

File:CORENCHI Community History.jpg

2017-12-03T17:39:17Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: User created page with UploadWizard

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File:Historical Timeline of CORENCHI Community.docx

2017-12-03T17:26:32Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN: User created page with UploadWizard

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Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-03T17:24:46Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

tie land tenure issues to topics we covered in class

include timeline

==Description==
'''Description of the community forestry case study – Where located; history; national or regional context (if appropriate)'''

[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government (which cabinet?) to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous/ Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==

Denham (XX) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). However, even Into the 1908's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012). However the Rural Food Supply Network (Diconsa), initiated community food stores which was the seed for later community assemblies (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way------------

===Freehold or State Owned Land===

Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===

Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# 1. Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# 2. Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# 3. Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# 4. All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# 5. PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===

Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===

The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===

Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Distribution of PES funds===
"We give 250 or 375 a head—750 for a couple—but it depends on the agreements. The payment is every year or two, and sometimes we decide not to distribute it at all. We also give money to
young people. We can’t leave our youth without support. They’re our future. Some people want us to distribute everything, just use the resource all at once. But some of us think that one day we’re going to need that resource. For example, if we had distributed the whole resource when it came in in 2005 and 2006, where were we going to get money to build the road? This quote offers a window into the debates that occur inside the assemblies, and helps clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-03T17:12:35Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

tie land tenure issues to topics we covered in class

include timeline

==Description==
'''Description of the community forestry case study – Where located; history; national or regional context (if appropriate)'''

[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government (which cabinet?) to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous/ Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

==History==
Denham (XX) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). The 1970's saw the first government programs establishing basic trust with the CORENCHI through the introduction of coffee production with the Mexican Coffee Institute (Bray). However, even Into the 1908's, CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world. Bray (2012) reports that "beginning around 2000, growing international concern over degradation and deforestation brought new national and international attention to the large intact forests of the Chinantla, and resulted in a rapid expansion in the number of external actors interested in the region, and a corresponding much greater density of the support networks in multi-scale governance."

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way------------

===Freehold or State Owned Land===

Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===

Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# 1. Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# 2. Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# 3. Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# 4. All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# 5. PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===

Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===

The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===

Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Distribution of PES funds===
"We give 250 or 375 a head—750 for a couple—but it depends on the agreements. The payment is every year or two, and sometimes we decide not to distribute it at all. We also give money to
young people. We can’t leave our youth without support. They’re our future. Some people want us to distribute everything, just use the resource all at once. But some of us think that one day we’re going to need that resource. For example, if we had distributed the whole resource when it came in in 2005 and 2006, where were we going to get money to build the road? This quote offers a window into the debates that occur inside the assemblies, and helps clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-03T16:26:13Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

tie land tenure issues to topics we covered in class

include timeline

==Description==
'''Description of the community forestry case study – Where located; history; national or regional context (if appropriate)'''

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government (which cabinet?) to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous/ Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

==History==
Denham (XX) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less until the 1980's, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world.

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way------------

===Freehold or State Owned Land===

Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was important for building support from the CORENCHI; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed their territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

===Who Controls Land Use Decisions===

Though the CORENCHI managed lands are ultimately owned by the state, they do have the ability to manage the land and appropriate funds as directed by the assemblies (Denham).

Denham (2012) reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# 1. Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# 2. Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# 3. Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# 4. All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# 5. PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

In addition to the self-direction appropriated by law, the CORENCHI have access to the ICCA and PES subsections of the ICCAs for most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA, along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields (Denham).

===Local Decision Making===

Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

===Administration of Capital from PES Program===

The PES program payments from the government follow existing community governance structures, and are subsequently distributed through the assembly with total transparency (Denham).
Denham reports "The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies (Bray). This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues (Denham). Affected stakeholders are user groups who are directly affected by land use decisions and include:

* Farmers/agricultural workers – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Bray 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado. They have a seat in the assemblies with voting power.
* Ranchers
* Wood cutters
* Coffee growers

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Interested stakeholders are stakeholders outside of the community who have an interest in the community operations.

* Interested stakeholders include:
* Mexican Government
* Oaxaca State Government
* World Bank
* Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI (Denham)
* Universities - visiting scientists, particularly climate change

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===

Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Distribution of PES funds===
"We give 250 or 375 a head—750 for a couple—but it depends on the agreements. The payment is every year or two, and sometimes we decide not to distribute it at all. We also give money to
young people. We can’t leave our youth without support. They’re our future. Some people want us to distribute everything, just use the resource all at once. But some of us think that one day we’re going to need that resource. For example, if we had distributed the whole resource when it came in in 2005 and 2006, where were we going to get money to build the road? This quote offers a window into the debates that occur inside the assemblies, and helps clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

{{Projectbox FRST522
|names=Dwight Chapman
|share=
}}

Documentation:Open Case Studies/FRST522/Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest

2017-12-03T01:16:08Z

DWIGHTCHAPMAN:

'''Payment for Ecosystem Services in the Chinantec Communities of the Mexican Cloud Forest'''

tie land tenure issues to topics we covered in class

include timeline

==Description==
'''Description of the community forestry case study – Where located; history; national or regional context (if appropriate)'''

The community forestry case study analyzed by this Wiki page is the Chinantec communifty of the Mexican cloud forest region in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This region is one of Mexico’s most biologically diverse regions, with over 3,000 species of vascular plants (Meave et al. 2006), as well as populations of jaguars and other felines (Figel et al. 2011). Agricultural areas support crops such as corn, chili, wild greens, and avocados (Bost 2009).

Most of the territory known as the Chinantla—14 municipalities spread over 460,000 ha—is communally governed (Denam 20xx). The Chinantla people formed the Chinantec community which is an inter-community membership organization called the Natural Resources Committee of the Upper Chinantla (Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla Alta-CORENCHI), which was legally established in 2005 with six communities: Santa Cruz, San Antonio el Barrio, San Pedro, Santiago Tlatepusco, Analco and Nopalera Rosario (Bray 2012).

===Payment for Ecosystem Services===
In 2004, the CORENCHI communities of Santa Cruz, El Barrio, Analco, and San Pedro worked with the Mexican government (which cabinet?) to implement a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program for stewardship of the Papaloapan watershed. They also established federally certified voluntary community conservation areas - known as Indigenous/ Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP)- which is the largest single block of certified ICCAs in Mexico (Bray 2012). Within Mexico, the specific PES system is referred to as the Payment for Hydrological Services (PHS). The PES makes payments to the CORENCHI community in compensation for restricting forest resource and development in sensitive ecosystem areas. The payments were originally funded from a tax on downstream water users, but more recently has shifted to a partially voluntary contribution system (Denham 2017).

[[File:Map of Chinantla Community of Oaxaca, Mexico.jpg|frame|50px|right|Map of Chinantla region]]

==History==
Denham (XX) reports "The agrarian reform won by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20)—a war fought against the land concentration that followed the dispossession of indigenous lands since the European conquest—offered two forms of tenure. The ejido granted usufruct rights to mestizo peasant communities for land over which the state retained ultimate ownership; the agrarian community was land granted to some indigenous communities that could prove their absolute, precolonial rights to particular territories with colonial documents (Bartra and Otero 2008)."

But for most of the 20th century, Chinantec communities were extremely mistrustful of outsiders, and reportedly fled to the forest when outsiders came into the community (Bevan 1938). CORENCHI communities were remote, and road-less until the 1980's, with limited interaction with the rest of the Mexican nation (De Teresa 2011). Authoritarian leadership regimes were common, and conflicts with neighbors lead to deadly boundary disputes between villages (Bray, 2012). Soil and forest resources were abundant, and populations were low, so though informal land use rules existed around corn and coffee lands, few rules existed on natural resource extraction (Bray 2012).

The first Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started arriving in the 1990's (Bray 2012). Research projects, and training workshops in domestic activities were initiated in several communities (Bray 2012). Trust with outside actors was slowly developed through these pioneering interactions with the outside world.

==Tenure arrangements==
'''Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.'''

Indigenous rights issues in Mexico and around the world were popularized during the 1970's and 1980's. After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which was based on armed indigenous people rebelling against the North American Free Trade Act over fear of losing title to their lands, the Oaxaca government amended the constitution in 1998 to reflect respect for collective rights of indigenous people’s ways of life and government, and formed the legal basis on which indigenous peoples could legitimize their demands (Denham 2017).

Management of the ICCA's and PES lands is not freehold: forest management agreements are conducted under oversight from the national government for limited periods of tenure. Mexico’s CONANP commission created a program to certify forest reserves such as the CORENCHI ICCAs for a period of 25 years (Martin et al. 2011). Despite the lack of permanent tenure to the land, the CORENCHI have worked together to establish integrated management of the land. The identification of these ICCAs as Voluntary Community Conservation Areas, was key to building support from the population; emphasizing the voluntary nature of their commitment reaffirmed territorial sovereignty (Denham 2015).

Denham also reported that “sovereignty and self-determination were reinforced in the following ways:
# 1. Decisions regarding the approval and administration of conservation initiatives are made by the consensus-based assembly, the maximum governing body of indigenous communities in Mexico.
# 2. Labor requirements—while substantial—are determined in the assembly where those undertaking work decide when work will take place. Work is carried out through traditional communal work tequios, a decision made by the assembly to avoid weakening this pillar of local government.
# 3. Program implementation focused on improving rather than deterring subsistence farming. Unlike other PES programs, there was no attempt to reduce traditional maize production, which is the basis of local food security. Instead, CORENCHI successfully defended support for firebreaks targeting the spread of fires beyond the agricultural zone as part of their insistence on a holistic vision of territory.
# 4. All funds were managed with transparency through the assembly; some were reserved for locally prioritized development initiatives.
# 5. PES functions in conjunction with—and on land forming part of—an ICCA where community members retain rights to most traditional uses.”

(Denham)Part of the reason for general satisfaction is that the ICCA, including the subsection for which PES are made, allows most traditional uses. People collect firewood, food, medicinal plants and reeds from the ICCA. The rest of the forest—and it should be noted that “the forest” for residents refers to the entire territory, not just the ICCA—permits those uses along with agricultural uses, grazing and hunting of some animals in maize fields.

===Local Decision Making===

Communities which receive PES in Mexico develop a “Manual of Good Management,” which details how natural resources will be administered in the area receiving payments, and what activities will be implemented to protect the watershed (Denham). The National Forest Commission provides general guidelines as well as a list of approved conservation activities from which communities can choose to implement, but '''each plan is developed locally and validated by the assembly''' (Denham)

CORENCHI communities certified on average 77% of their territories as ICCAs, and PES were granted on 14–72% of the ICCA area, depending on the year and community (Denham 2015). Both ICCAs and PES have been implemented by this tradition of community organization (assemblies, tequios, and forest conservation). The assemblies approve and coordinate conservation initiatives, determine land use practices in conservation areas, decide what conservation labor will be carried out and when, and determine how PES funds will be distributed (Denham ). Denham (2015) reports that “When asked to explain the ICCA, one community member said: “We have the right to decide what to do with our territory. It’s not for the government to decide what we have to do. [The ICCA] is a voluntary recognition, in which our community is autonomous to make our own decisions.”

==Administrative arrangements==
'''Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.'''

Nietaka (2015) reports that “Under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and agrarian laws, indigenous communities, or comunidades, own their territory collectively and the management is the responsibility of the individual community members or comuneros.”

Bray (20012) further describes the administration of the ICCAs as follows:
“Community governance is a blend of traditional practices and structures mandated by Mexican agrarian law (Bray et al. 2006). The main decision-making body is the General Assembly, and the executor of Assembly decisions is the Comisariado (composed of a president, secretary and treasurer) and an Oversight Council (composed of a president and two secretaries) who carry out the decisions of the Assembly. The Comisariado and the Oversight Council are elected democratically for three-year terms, although the Assembly can reduce the period for non-performance. Crucially, it is the Assembly that establishes rules for land use and governs access and use of the forest common property, although constrained by agrarian and forest law. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies also are important players and are classified here as “local” (normally state-level), “national” (usually with offices in Mexico City), and international (main offices abroad; including bilateral and multilateral agencies)."

Denham reports “The PES program respects existing community governance structures by distributing payments through the assembly with total transparency. The National Forest Commission makes one lump-sum payment to the assembly, which determines allocation. CORENCHI agreed on a distribution system by percentages; one part is used for community infrastructure, another put in interest-drawing community savings accounts, and another paid out to households. In some communities a special distribution is made for youth or elders. The sum paid to households, variable depending on assembly decisions, ranged from 4000 to 8000 pesos per year (500–1000 dollars in purchasing power parity USD [PPP USD] at time of study, 2016) and is unrelated to work days contributed by members. Payments were used for basic household needs including food, medicine, shoes, clothing, schooling costs, and construction materials.”

The PES payments were originally paid to the CORENCHI communities directly by the government, which received the monies from fees collected from water users (Niertka 2015). However the payment scheme has changed to a voluntary payment from regional businesses which dropped the payments in half as of 2014 (Denham 2014).-------

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

Denham - male-run consensus-based assemblies. Traditional division of labor guides stewardship responsibilities, with most conservation work done by men; agroforestry activities are shared by women and men.

Farmers/agricultural – Most men are subsistence corn farmers with income historically coming primarily from coffee (Brzy 2012). Cultivation includes Maize, pineapple, avocado.

Hunters (? not necessarily independent stakeholder: more of an activity that families engage in) - Hunting rules vary by community. People can hunt many animals in the agricultural zone, but not the ICCA; in El Barrio hunting is allowed in the ICCA during Days of the Dead where it is traditional to place freshly hunted meat on the altars as an offering. Prohibited animals vary somewhat by community; in Analco and Santa Cruz deer hunting is prohibited, while in El Barrio deer can be hunted in maize fields. (Denham)

Ranchers - Grazing
Wood cutters
Coffee growers

Stakeholder power is expressed in the community assemblies. This is the forum for expressing grievances and addressing issues. (Expand)

===FPIC===
Government applied it in this way------------

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power
Oaxaca State Government
World Bank
Geoconservación, a Mexican NGO that has worked for 12 years in the Chinantla and plays an intermediary role between the federal government and the CORENCHI. PES are made directly by the federal government with no funding provided by the NGO. Denham

Mexican government establishing PES and ICCS for watershed protection downstream.
Outside visiting scientists, particularly climate change.

Universities - ecologial and social studies

==Discussion==
'''A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed'''

As CORENCHI communities became more integrated with the culture and economic systems of the Mexican state, they adopted PES and ICCAs as an integrated initiative to satisfy livelihood needs based on traditional practices, while also implementing a community belief in the collective action necessary for long-term forest conservation (Denham).

===Success===

Bray (2012) emphasizes how the CORENCHI are an outlier case study of community governance within the literature on common property natural resource management. Bray reports "It is a case where communities managing their common property engaged first in turbulent collective action at the community level, and second in turbulent collective action at the inter-community level that overcame long-standing mistrust, to maximize benefits from a strategy of not harvesting from their forest common properties."

Denham discusses reasons why this particular PES system has worked for the CORENCHI, while it has not succeeded in other regions (cite.....). The PES as applied in the CORENCHI community was not explicit based on World Bank prescriptions of efficiency and market development, and have instead moved toward the more inclusive needs and contributions of rural communities to reflect “a more complex paradigm in which environmental services are co-produced by communities and nature” (McAfee and Shapiro 2010, 581).

Denham - Ninety percent of respondents felt they benefitted from the PES program

Denham – change management:
Implementation of CORENCHO initiated management proposals involved two unique features not specified in program design. First,CORENCHI proposed that conservation work take place through tequios; assemblies wished to protect this pillar of community organization and approved the proposal. Second, the CORENCHI negotiated with the National Forest Commission to insist on the inclusion of firebreaks in the agricultural zone as an officially recognized conservation activity. The National Forest Commission originally recognized only PES activities taking place within the limits conservation area, but conceded CORENCHI’s arguments for holistic territorial planning and amended national rules."

===Distribution of PES funds===
"We give 250 or 375 a head—750 for a couple—but it depends on the agreements. The payment is every year or two, and sometimes we decide not to distribute it at all. We also give money to
young people. We can’t leave our youth without support. They’re our future. Some people want us to distribute everything, just use the resource all at once. But some of us think that one day we’re going to need that resource. For example, if we had distributed the whole resource when it came in in 2005 and 2006, where were we going to get money to build the road? This quote offers a window into the debates that occur inside the assemblies, and helps clarify why payments are perceived as a reward for participation in mandatory tequios and not a compensation that corresponds precisely to a specific task."

===Criticism===
some disadvantages of the conservation area as described by community members include limitations on hunting and less space for growing maize, which warrant revision by assemblies as well as their organizational partners and policymakers. Improving fallow periods by changing ICCA boundaries or providing opportunities for seasonal hunting could be practical options for strengthening food sovereignty. (Neatka)

===Case Study in Conflict Resolution and Autonomy===
In 2005, the Oaxaca office of CONAP proposed to establish a Biosphere Reserve in the CORENCHI community, a much more restrictive form of land use, and which can be established by Presidential Decree. CORENCHI was initially interested in the idea, but tensions arose between government agencies desiring the reserve, and CORENCHI NGO’s, with similar splits arising in the communities. CORENCHI leadership worked with an NGO to obtain legal assistance in 2007 and gradually decided that they would lose too much autonomy over the land. Things came to a head at the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Yucatan in 2009, when CORENCHI leaders announced publicly that they did not want a Reserve decree. The decision was respected and no Biosphere Reserve Decree was issued.

===Inter-Community Collective Action===
Given the spatial inter-connectedness of the CORENCHI community (14 communities over 460,000 ha), conflict between populations would be expected. Neighboring communities often experience conflict and turbulence over territorial boundaries, and resource use. Bray (2012) discusses the idea of turbulence as negotiating the conflicts between between actors, in this case local governing bodies. In the CORENCHI communities, Bray (2012) reports that "turbulent multi-scale governance goes beyond “low cost adjudication” in conflict resolution and embraces the idea that conflict resolution is a process of on-going negotiations between actors in multiple arenas rather than discrete conflicts to be adjudicated." With multi-scale governmental systems, central governments should not undermine the authority of local governments. Multi-scale governance in this context includes the co-production of rules by multiple actors at multiple scales (Ostrom 1996). The information flow between governments and communities can alleviate cross purposes and prevent issues from developing into full scale conflict.
Bray -
Contemporary commons management, when rights have been
defined or are in a process of definition, takes place in a context of turbulent multiscale
governance where communities, governments, NGOs, and international
organizations must constantly negotiate the rules and resolve conflicts on the fly
over governance of harvests, territories, market access and government subsidies,
and monitoring and enforcement of co-produced rules at multiple levels (Alcorn
et al. 2003; Berkes 2007; Seixas and Davy 2008; Cronkleton et al. 2011).

==Assessment==
'''Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Group !! Interests !! Source of Power !! Scale of influence !! Means to Achieve Interests
|-
| Indigenous Peoples || Access to and use of forests
Recognition of traditional usufruct rights
|| Voting in Assemblies
Political voice but generally politically and economically disadvantaged
|| Local
Regional
||Local action
Networking
Coalitions
|-National forest agencies
|
|| State forest property rights || Forest ownership || Local
Regional
National||

|-Implements national policy
| || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example || Example || Example
|}

==Recommendations==
'''Your recommendations about this community forestry project'''
As an outsider, I can only suggest broad theoretical suggestions.
Woman should have a say on the councils which currently consist of only men.
From Ostrom's ( ) 8 destine principles, there could be some more attention paid to conflict management------

==References==

Alatorre-troncoso, A. (2014). Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program: In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. Gap Analysis and Assessment of Conservation Success, (September), 64. Retrieved from https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AlatorreTroncoso_Andrea_ConSci_2014.pdf

Baker, R. M., Rice, J., & Shapiro, E. (2012). Stakeholder Perceptions of Mexico’ s Payment for Environmental Services Program: A Comparative Study of Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts in Oaxaca and Yucatan.

Bevan, B. 1938. The Chinantec: Report on the Central and South-Eastern Chinantec Region. Publication No. 24. Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia.

Bray, D., Duran, E., & Molina-Gonzalez, O. A. (2012). Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons, 6(2), 151–178.

Denham, D. (2017). Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 30(9), 1064–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1295495

Dolsak, N., and E. Ostrom. 2003. The challenges of the commons. In The commons in the new millenium, ed. N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

De Teresa, A. P. 2011. QUIA-NA, La selva Chinanteca y sus pobladores. Juan Pablos Editor: Mexico City

ICCA Registry (2017). UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Chinantla Case Studies. Accessed Nov 6, 2017 from http://www.iccaregistry.org/en/explore/Mexico/chinantla-alta-corenchi

Kosoy, N., Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2008). Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: Case Studies from the Lacandon Rainforest, Mexico. Geoforum, 39(6), 2073–2083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.007

McAfee, K. & Elizabeth N. Shapiro (2010) Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 579-599

Nieratkaa, L., Bray, D., & Mozumder, P. (2015). Can Payments for Environmental Services Strengthen Social Capital, Encourage Distributional Equity, and Reduce Poverty? Conservation and Society, 13(4), 345. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.179880

Osborne, T., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657

Osborne, T.M. (2011) Carbon Forestry and Agrarian Change: Access and Land Control in a Mexican Rainforest, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:4, 859-883, DOI:10.1080/03066150.2011.611281
Rico García-Amado, L., Ruiz Pérez, M., & Barrasa García, S. (2013). Motivation for Conservation: Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Payments for Environmental Services in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, Chiapas. Ecological Economics, 89, 92–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.02.002

Ostrom, E. 1996. Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development 24(16):073–1087.

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