Protecting forests, improving livelihoods – Community forestry in Mexico

This report by Ernesto Herrera Guerra, outlines the lessons that have been learned from Mexico’s approach to community forestry.

Mexico’s community forests are among the most advanced in the world, with communities collectively owning more than 50 million hectares of the country’s 63 million hectares of forest and forest management decisions largely being made at local level.

This is one of four papers commissioned to inform discussions at a workshop held in Brussels in April 2014, which brought together participants from 30 countries to share their understanding and experience of community forestry, and develop action plans for their own countries. This was in response to many of Fern’s partner organisations lobbying for the creation of community forests as a way of allowing communities to directly benefit from forest management.