By Sara Vélez Zapata and Gonzalo A. Vargas
In early November, Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon raised their voices, reminding us that without forests there is no future: “sem floresta, não há futuro”. During the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 30), global leaders discussed how to protect tropical forests as a collective effort. However, it ended without a binding agreement to stop deforestation. Given that tropical forests are often found in countries with fragile institutional contexts, what can we learn from communities’ achievements over the last few years?
Community forestry is a set of diverse institutions and practices that enable rural communities to participate in managing forest resources; it is a strategy to curb deforestation and conserve biodiversity, while at the same time sustaining local livelihoods. Of course, community forestry is more likely to achieve its social and environmental aims when some key institutional conditions are right: the government is supportive, tenure rights are ensured, and communal institutions are strong. But case studies from Guatemala, Mexico and Nepal (among others) have shown that communities sometimes manage to protect forests despite corruption, violence, and weak government capacity. What can we learn from these communities? If the “correct” institutions are missing, under what conditions do they manage to make community forestry work?
An extreme case study: the San Lucas Mountains
In the San Lucas Mountains (Colombia), rural communities do not have sufficient communal institutions to establish proper rules for the use of common-pool resources such as forests. What’s more, there are no security conditions to enforce the few rules they have. While a few communities hold land rights, most are informal occupants of the forest. At the same time, this is also a highly biodiverse ecosystem, home to several endangered species. This situation, together with armed conflict, illegal mining and coca crops, makes unlikely a sustainable future for forests and their inhabitants. However, in a recent article in World Development, we showed how local rural communities in the San Lucas Mountains despite all this have managed the forest in a sustainable manner and contributed to forest regeneration.
A story of hope
Using qualitative data gathered through several participatory techniques, as well as satellite imagery, we compared the performance and practices of eleven villages in the San Lucas Mountains. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we identified the conditions that were relevant for reducing deforestation and regenerate degraded areas.
Based on prior empirical findings and theoretical debates on community forestry, we identified four conditions of interest related to the observed conservation effectiveness: legitimate environmental leadership, empowering interactions with external organisations, land occupied by outsiders and sustainable values and practices. We found that three of these conditions supported the desired conservation effectiveness.
Their “recipe” of the successful communities combined three ingredients. First, their communal leaders promoted sustainable values and practices through environmental education and training in agroforestry. They were also legitimate in the eyes of their communities and mobilised their younger members. Secondly, their sustainable practices, e.g. agroforestry, fallow enrichment, and apiculture, were rooted in traditional knowledge and as well as in training from external organisations. Finally, partnerships with external organisations empowered local communities, allowing them to participate in decision-making processes ensuring their interests and concerns were heard.
A particularly inspiring example is the “forestry pension” idea, promoted by the Medellin-based Corporación Grupo Trópico Diverso in collaboration with Colectivo Gente y Bosques. Their partnership introduced a new way of thinking about forests in the form of a forestry pension which enables communities to use forests in the future as part of their income for their retreat. They are strengthening communities’ capacity to consider the long-term economic value of keeping the forest standing. In a partnership with local leaders, communities have learned why reforestation is important and how to implement it in degraded lands. In their own words: “We have learned to keep stubble fields, to plant rubber trees, to avoid cutting down all the trees to have a pasture, to let some trees grow so that the land does not degrade”
What’s next?
What the San Lucas Mountains tell is a story of hope, as communities achieve social and environmental outcomes against all odds. However, this does not mean that they are not expecting the “right institutional conditions”. Our results do not imply that rural communities should be left alone. On the contrary, we found that they are doing a tremendous job of achieving forest regeneration.
Our call to action is for governments, companies in interaction with local communities and NGOs to get out of their offices and look back to the territory. Rural communities are waiting for opportunities in which their knowledge is recognised so they can create collaborative learning processes. This means that communities should be in the driver’s seat when considering solutions to tackle deforestation.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of the EADI Debating Development Blog or the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes
Sara Vélez Zapata is a Doctoral researcher at the Centre of Excellence for Sustainability at KEDGE Business School (France) and at the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands). She earned an MSc (Cum Laude) in Interdisciplinary Development Studies from Los Andes University and a BA in Political Science from EAFIT University, Colombia. Her research explores the interactions between companies and rural communities, with a focus on their impact on forest conservation in contexts of limited statehood.
Gonzalo A. Vargas is an Associate professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre of Development Studies (CIDER) at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). He holds a PhD in Development Studies from the London School of Economics (United Kingdom). His areas of interest include violence, development and institutions; hunger, malnutrition and agriculture; the political economy of development; and comparative analysis.
Image: by the authors