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| Community-based forest management systems of San Juan Nuevo |
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Reference |
| Alcorn, Janis B., and Victor M Toledo. 1995. "The Role of Tenurial Shells in Ecological Sustainability: Property Rights and Natural Resource Management in Mexico." Presented at "Reinventing the Commons," the fifth annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bodoe, Norway, May 24-28, 1995. Link: http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/archive/00002853/ |
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Introduction to the Institution |
| San Juan Nuevo is among the few internationally recognized for its successful and profitable forest management. San Juan Nuevo illustrates a process of entreprenurial efficiency and modernization within the traditional tenurial shell. Tenurial rights create a delicate balance between family rights, communal responsibility and enterprise efficiency. San Juan Nuevo's forestry enterprise has grown in both size and scope. In the last 10 years, profits have increased 2,000 percent, and the personnel from 100 to 1,000, with salaries well above the minimum wages for the region. Although forestry is the main activity at San Juan, families also rely on milpa fields, homegardens, forestry activities (wood, resin and gathering of medicinal and food plants, mushroom species, lumber, etc.) and cattle raising |
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Rules for Management
of the Institution |
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(a) Boundary Rules |
| Spacial Boundaries: San Juan Nuevo in pine-oak forest on the high plateau of western Michoacan. The oak-pine forests and the intervening grass and shrubland areas support an estimated flora of some 1,000 species. Social Boundaries |
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(b) Governance
rules |
| The San Juan Nuevo Purepechans have developed a new local institution associated with the operation of the community's forestry enterprises and the forest co-management rules linked to sustainable extraction for the enterprises. A Communal Council was established which includes 10 representatives from San Juan Nuevo's six sub-units, the enterprise directors, property administrators, and a techincal commitee (Alvarez Icaza 1993). This group oversees and directs the community's projects, and serves as a forum for developing concensus. The comunidad has agreed to reinvest all profits into the enterprise, rather than distributing the profits. |
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(c) Resource Allocation |
| San Juan Nuevo Purepecha (population 10,000) has used its forest resources and organizational connections to acquire modern machinery for a vertically integrated forest products industry, including factories for moldings, parquet, furniture, packing crates, charcoal and sawn wood for export markets. The forests are divided into family patches for exploitation on an individual basis for resin extraction and small-scale woodworking shops. |
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Conflict Resolution Mechanism |
| Not mentioned |
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Problems Faced by Institution |
| Not mentioned |
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Changes in the Institution over time |
| Until 1970, marketing was controlled by middlemen and much of the forest eventually became degraded from overextraction. But during the 1970's, the comunidad joined the Union of Forest Ejidos and Comunidades and worked for government authorization of community-based forest management and production. By 1981, the community's General Assembly approved the formation of a community enterprise which successfully competed with middlemen by offering a better price. |
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Purpose |
| profitable and sustainable forest management |
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Country |
| Mexico |
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Date Of Publication |
| RS-05/1995 |
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