Development
of Collaborative Mechanisms between Universities and Forestry Organizations:
Community Planning and Land Use Dynamics in central Quintana Roo, Mexico,
has been made possible with generous financing from the Ford Foundation - Mexico
City, Deborah Barry, program officer. This grant was made to the Universidad
de Quintana Roo, Lic. Natalia Armijo, Principal Investigator, with FIU and the
Organizacion de Ejidos Productores Forestales de la Zona Maya (OEPFZM) as collaborating
institutions.
Goals and Objectives of the Project (for 18 months):
I. To use social science research and remote sensing
technologies to improve long-term ecosystem management among Mayan Indian
communities in central Quintana Roo, with an initial focus of working on three
communities.
A. To establish a GIS data base on 3 contrasting communities.
B. To assemble, digitize and analyze existing remote
images of the three communities.
C. To carry out community land use mapping exercise
in the three communities.
D. Administer structured and unstructured survey instruments
in the 3 communities, focusing on birth, mortality, and migration patterns.
E. Develop a participatory 20-year land use plan for
each of the three communities
II. To provide the foundation for a Carbon Sequestration/Joint
Implementation Project with the Mayan Zone Organization.
A. With funds received from the Summit Foundation,
carry out the initial technical studies for a carbon sequestration project.
B. Integrate the broader Summit Foundation study with
the more detailed land use knowledge yielded by the ford Foundation 3-community
study
III. To contribute to the theoretical understanding
of the social and ecological dynamics that underlie land use/land cover change
in southeastern Mexico.
A. Prepare for publication in semi-popular and academic
journal analyses of the root causes of land use/land cover change in Quintana
Roo, and lessons learned on how to create a new dynamic of reforestation and
forest management.
Project
Abstract
The UQROO has faculty with research
and field-level experience in the social and organizational aspects of community
natural resource management, and community-level mapping and problem analysis.
The Chairman of the Department of Environmental Studies at FIU has worked
with the Zona Maya Organization since 1991 in other capacities; both universities
have map digitizing and GIS facilities. The Zona Maya Organization , a 23-community
Maya Indian grass-roots organization has been supporting ejido-managed forestry
in an area covering a million acres of tropical forest since 1985. The first
phase of the project is focused on three contrasting forest communities: Cafetal-Limones,
a predominately mestizo colonist community undergoing rapid change due to
its location along a highway, Santa Maria, a more isolated traditional community
with rich forest resources, and finally Kampolcolche which is also relatively
isolated with poor forest resources.
The
three partners are joining together to help the rural economy of Quintana Roo
move from dependence on Mahogany timber extraction to multiple-use and multiple-value
sustainable ecosystem management that also gives a firm economic foundation
for the preservation of the traditional values of the Mayan People. It will
assert a continued role for community-based conservation and development in
a Quintana Roo economy evolving ever more strongly towards the service sector
and tourism. The Zona Maya Organization is part of the so-called "Pilot Plan"
community forest project in Quintana Roo, which has gained world recognition
for sustainable community tropical forest management. However, recent scientific
evidence suggests that the model on which the plan developed, one based almost
exclusively on sustainable management of mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) to
give economic value to the forest, is somewhat limited.
The
mahogany-based model has not favored those communities whose forests are not
rich in mahogany and who require support for harvesting other timber and non-timber
forest products, integrating their agricultural systems with forest management
and capitalizing on other ecosystem values - such as carbon sequestration or
water production. This research/action project is designed to help the communities
move from management exclusively for mahogany to broader ecosystem management.
The project will support, promote and evaluate grassroots efforts in community
land mapping and decision-making by combining the field-level experience of
the Zona Maya Organization and the UQROO with new advances in geomatics. This
will involve combining the use of remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems,
and community land-use mapping, designed to assist community-level decision
making and the production of land management plans; initially for three ejidos.
These plans may later form the baseline a broader "joint implementation" project
for the marketing of forest carbon storage capacity on the part of the Zona
Maya Organization, as an additional tool in reducing the threat of deforestation.
The
project will support the Zona Maya Organization's efforts to find new ways to
add value to the forest and enhance capacity building in the forest-dependent
communities. It builds on an on-going participatory process of community forest
management while providing an input from the latest advances in social science
methodologies, remote sensing and GIs to support community natural resource
planning. This will be one of the few tropical land use change/satellite-monitoring
projects aimed at assisting an ongoing and mature community forest management
effort. In most instances, these efforts currently monitor forest losses but
without being coupled to active forest, reforestation, and agroforestry management
strategies. Thus, geomatics will be taken by UQROO and FIU and adapted to the
needs of the Zona Maya Organization in close collaboration with their technical
advisors and peasant leaders.
Agroforestry plantation includes Mahogany
trees and Papaya
Meeting of the Zona Maya Organization
