About CTEM (Community Tropical Ecosystem Management Project)

This project aspires to support grassroots forest management organizations to move beyond an exclusive focus on forest management for timber, to a focus on managing all of the varied ecosystems that constitute central Quintana Roo: agricultural lands, secondary succession, savannas, “bajos” (seasonal wetlands), lagoons, and village areas. It is also intended to be an alternative to the concept of “community-based conservation”, which has focused exclusively on sustainable management with relation to protected areas. We are using the term community ecosystem management to refer to efforts to manage all of the lands and encompassing ecosystems that belong to a particular community.

Community-based ecosystem management refers to efforts to sustainably manage both community lands and the entire landscapes of which they are a part, and which may or may not have any relationship to protected areas. By an “adaptive approach” we refer to an adaptive management strategy, that attempts to focus academic research in the social and natural sciences on the management problems encountered by the communities and their organizations as they attempt to sustainably extract a living from these ecosystems. We want to support efforts to maintain sustainable land management as an option in the face of increasing employment attractions in the tourist corridors along the Quintana Roo coast. The project is currently supported by generous grants from the the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia of Mexico (CONACYT.) Collaborating institutions include the Universidad de Quintana Roo.