Browsing by Author "Toledo, Victor M."

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Adaptations of a Yucatec Maya Multiple-Use Ecological Management Strategy to Ecotourism
(2008) Garcia-Frapolli, Eduardo; Toledo, Victor M.; Martinez-Alier, Joan
"Over the last 40 years, the Yucatan Peninsula has experienced the implementation and promotion of development programs that have economically and ecologically shaped this region of Mexico. Nowadays, tourist development has become the principal catalyst of social, economic, and ecological changes in the region. All these programs, which are based on a specialization rationale, have historically clashed with traditional Yucatec Maya management of natural resources. Using participant observation, informal and semi-structured interviews, and life-history interviews, we carried out an assessment of a Yucatec Maya natural resources management system implemented by three indigenous communities located within a natural protected area. The assessment, intended as an examination of the land-use practices and productive strategies currently implemented by households, was framed within an ecological economic approach to ecosystems appropriation. To examine the influence of tourism on the multiple-use strategy, we contrasted productive activities among households engaged primarily in ecotourism with those more oriented toward traditional agriculture. Results show that households from these communities allocated an annual average of 586 work days to implement a total of 15 activities in five different land-use units, and that those figures vary significantly in accordance with households productive strategy (agriculture oriented or service oriented). As the region is quickly becoming an important tourist destination and ecotourism is replacing many traditional activities, we discuss the need for a balance between traditional and alternative economic activities that will allow Yucatec Maya communities to diversify their economic options without compromising existing local management practices."
The Multiple Use of Tropical Forests by Indigenous Peoples in Mexico: A Case of Adaptive Management
(2003) Toledo, Victor M.; Ortiz-Espejel, Benjamin F.; Cortes, Leni; Moguel, Patricia; Ordonez, Maria de Jesus
"The quest for an appropriate system of management for tropical ecosystems necessitates that ecologists consider the accumulated experiences of indigenous peoples in their long-term management of local resources, a subject of current ethnoecology. This paper provides data and empirical evidence of an indigenous multiple-use strategy (MUS) of tropical forest management existing in Mexico, that can be considered a case of adaptive management. This conclusion is based on the observation that some indigenous communities avoid common modernization routes toward specialized, unsustainable, and ecologically disruptive systems of production, and yet probably achieve the most successful tropical forest utilization design, in terms of biodiversity conservation, resilience, and sustainability. This analysis relies on an exhaustive review of the literature and the authors' field research. Apparently, this MUS represents an endogenous reaction of indigenous communities to the intensification of natural resource use, responding to technological, demographic, cultural, and economic changes in the contemporary world. This transforms traditional shifting cultivators into multiple-use strategists. Based on a case study, three main features (biodiversity, resilience, and permanence) considered relevant to achieving adaptive and sustainable management of tropical ecosystems are discussed."
The Role of Tenurial Shells in Ecological Sustainability: Property Rights and Natural Resource Management in Mexico
(1995) Alcorn, Janis B.; Toledo, Victor M.
"In this paper, we posit that tenurial systems function as 'shells' in the sense that they provide the superstructure, or inner environment, within which activities are developed and operate. We assess the hypothesis that local tenurial shells play a critical role for enabling local subsystems to persist and participate in local renewal cycles within the larger global system. The tenurial shell is a constraining and enabling stricture with particular characteristics linked in very specific ways to the larger 'operating system' in which the shell is embedded. The shell responds to local, cultural, ecological and social factors, including those arising from externally generated stresses or opportunities. External recognition (especially with legal protection) of local property rights regimes strengthens shells so they also function as a protective border around a system that could not remain viable in the larger, outer environment if left unprotected. We explore how management systems adapted to local ecosystems have developed and flourished within the protective enabling shells of community based tenurial systems. We also stress that the strength of those local shells, and the resource management systems with them, depends on active, intercommunity organizations and institutions that adhere to community-based ethical values and confront the resource-seeking institutions and organizations of the outer milieu that dominate the larger global system. We suggest that subsystems depend on interactions with other subsystems in order to survive today's world, while at the same time local, dynamic subsystems are essential for sustainability of the larger global system."