Many of the inhabitants of this planet are used to living in a city where it is normal to find pollution, cars, traffic, and little vegetation. However, for many of us, going out somewhere where we can't find the above means the perfect getaway. For this reason, many are deciding to change their urban life for a rural one, so some communities are demonstrating how to do it and also how to preserve it. And our country is a pioneer of what is known today as community forest management, a model that is based on the organization of communities to take advantage, in a sustainable manner, of the forests or jungles that are within their territory. To learn more about it, researcher Salvador Anta, member of the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS), explains that this model could be developed in the country thanks to the fact that between 60 and 70% of the forests and jungles are within territories that belong to ejidos or communities , where land ownership is communal.
Community forest management: These communities are an example of sustainable living According to an article published in Animal Político , during the 1950s, 1960s and much of the 1970s, the Mexican government gave concessions for forest exploitation in those places to private companies. In the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca, a paper manufacturing company had the concession to cut down and use the forests, says Nepal WhatsApp Number teacher Elías Santiago, forestry technical director of the Ixtlán de Juárez community . “The people of the communities organized themselves. They made alliances and achieved that no more concessions were given to those companies, through protections.” The communities also organized to be given official recognition of their territory and to be allowed to manage the forest. “ The government told them to take the forests and do it, believing that the communities did not have the capacity to do it,” highlights biologist and teacher in rural development Laura Jiménez, from the Union of Zapotec-Chinanteco Forestry Producing Communities of the Sierra Juárez (UZACHI ). To achieve this, the communities used traditional organizational methods, such as making decisions in community assemblies, and received advice from forest management specialists.
This process began in the early eighties in communities of Oaxaca, Durango and Quintana Roo and spread to other states such as Michoacán, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Veracruz, Campeche, Puebla, Jalisco, State of Mexico and others. For a time, government programs were even implemented to support communities in their forestry organization. Currently, according to data from the National Forestry Commission (Conafor), there are 2,362 ejidos and communities that carry out forest management in their territories and that represent around 18.2 million hectares, of which 73% are forest, 21% jungle and 6% bush areas. However, not all communities have the same level of development regarding forest management; The majority are at a basic level, which means that they have a Forest Management Program, that is, a study that allows them to know how many trees they can cut to guarantee the sustainability of their forest—but they do not have their own sawmills, so they sell their wood in rounds and, therefore, their profits are lower.