Browsing by Author "Duran, Elvira"

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Beyond Harvests in the Commons: Multi-scale Governance and Turbulence in Indigenous/Community Conserved Areas in Oaxaca, Mexico
(2012) Bray, David Barton; Duran, Elvira; Molina, Oscar
"Some important elements of common property theory include a focus on individual communities or user groups, local level adjudication of conflicts, local autonomy in rule making, physical harvests, and low levels of articulation with markets. We present a case study of multi-scale collective action around indigenous/community conserved areas (ICCAs) in Oaxaca, Mexico that suggests a modification of these components of common property theory. A multi-community ICCA in Oaxaca demonstrates the importance of inter-community collective action as key link in multi-scale governance, that conflicts are often negotiated in multiple arenas, that rules emerge at multiple scales, and that management for conservation and environmental services implies no physical harvests. Realizing economic gains from ICCAs for strict conservation may require something very different than traditional natural resource management. It requires intense engagement with extensive networks of government and civil society actors and new forms of community and inter-community collection action, or multi-scale governance. Multi-scale governance is built on trust and social capital at multiple scales and also constitutes collective action at multiple scales. However, processes of multi-scale governance are also necessarily 'turbulent' with actors frequently having conflicting values and goals to be negotiated. We present an analytic history of the process of emergence of community and inter-community collective action around strict conservation and examples of internal and external turbulence. We argue that this case study and other literature requires an extensions of the constitutive elements of common property theory."
Multilevel Governance for Local Management of Drinking Water in Latin America: Case Studies from Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico
(2016) Gumeta-Gómez, Fernando; Duran, Elvira; Bray, David B.
"Adequate supply of drinking water at local level depends, in many cases on community participation. We compare three governance regimes for drinking water management based on multilevel collective action: 1) ASADAS in Costa Rica, 2) Water Boards (JAA, for its acronym in spanish) in Honduras and 3) Water User Committees (CA, for its acronym in spanish) in Mexico. Our data is based on participant observation, and formal and informal interviews. Legal framework, structure and operation, and efficiency for provision and conservation of water resources are analyzed. ASADAS and Water Boards are legal entities with recognized community participation and collective action, while Water Committees have no legal support by the Mexican Government. Regimens showed similar structures and operation, but different economic capabilities and efficiencies in the provision of water and in ensuring water recharge. Recognition and empowerment of the Water Committees in Mexico could increase and ensure water provision in the long- term."
New Conservation and Development Frontier
(2008) Bray, David Barton; Duran, Elvira; Anta, Salvador; Martin, Gary J.; Mondragon, Fernando
"Most protected areas in the world are inhabited by people. Recent figures suggest that around 11.5% of the global terrestrial area is under some form of protection but about 90% of these protected areas are in IUCN categories III-VI that allow degrees of human presence and use. In addition, some 11% of forests globally have been devolved to local communities to varying degrees by governments. Thus, the vast majority of protected areas in the world have human presence in them, although frequently with unclear rights to forests and their products when they are present."
Tropical Deforestation, Community Forests, and Protected Areas in the Maya Forest
(2008) Bray, David Barton; Duran, Elvira; Ramos, Victor Hugo; Mas, Jean-Francois; Velazquez, Alejandro; McNab, Roan Balas; Barry, Deborah; Radachowsky, Jeremy
"Community forests and protected areas have each been proposed as strategies to stop deforestation. These management strategies should be regarded as hypotheses to be evaluated for their effectiveness in particular places. We evaluated the community - forestry hypothesis and the protected-area hypothesis in community forests with commercial timber production and strict protected areas in the Maya Forest of Guatemala and Mexico. From land-use and land cover change (LUCC) maps derived from satellite images, we compared deforestation in 19 community forests and 11 protected areas in both countries in varying periods from 1988 to 2005. Deforestation rates were higher in protected areas than in community forests, but the differences were not significant. An analysis of human presence showed similar deforestation rates in inhabited protected areas and recently inhabited community forests, but the differences were not significant. There was also no significant difference in deforestation between uninhabited protected areas, uninhabited community forests, and long-inhabited community forests. A logistic regression analysis indicated that the factors correlated with deforestation varied by country. Distance to human settlements, seasonal wetlands, and degree and length of human residence were significant in Guatemala, and distance to previous deforestation and tropical semideciduous forest were significant in Mexico. Varying contexts and especially colonization histories are highlighted as likely factors that influence different outcomes. Poorly governed protected areas perform no better as a conservation strategy than poorly governed community forests with recent colonists in active colonization fronts. Long-inhabited extractive communities perform as well as uninhabited strict protected areas under low colonization pressure. A review of costs and benefits suggests that community forests may generate more local income with lower costs. Small sample sizes may have limited the statistical power of our comparisons, but descriptive statistics on deforestation rates, logistic regression analyses, LUCC maps, data available on local economic impacts, and long-term ethnographic and action-research constitute a web of evidence supporting our conclusions. Long-inhabited community forest management for timber can be as effective as uninhabited parks at delivering long-term forest protection under certain circumstances and more effective at delivering local benefits."