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Agrarian Reforms in Bolivia and Chile, Cooperative Approach
(2011) Barrero, Alfonso; Cea, Sebastian
"We make a historical review of the agrarian reform in Bolivia and Chile. Specifically, analyzing the two critical experiences. Bolivia has a social explotion before the agrarian reform and Chile after, giving the cases where reforms were responses to a social explotion and other case where successive reforms does not stop a social chaos. However, at this time, both countries laments a seriously deficient wealth distribution. We believe that a solution via must conclude in a need of equality, development and the end of poverty is not a problem of wealth redistribution, but of cooperation and a new business concept that involve owners and workers in a common cause."
Anicut Systems in Sri Lanka: The Case of Upper Walawe River Basin
(2003) Molle, François; Jayakody, Priyantha; de Silva, Shyamalie
"This exploratory study was designed to capture the main features of agrarian change in the upper part of the basin that depends mostly on anicuts. These anicuts amount to 59 percent of the total basin anicuts in terms of numbers, but to only 43 percent in terms of irrigated area. They are generally very old and obviously, many changes have occurred during this time. The study does not allow the reconstitution of all past transformations but offers some insight on recent changes: changes in population pressure over resources and changes in hydrology, crop choice, livelihoods and collective action. The analysis is based on exploratory surveys carried out by the authors and by students of the University of Sabaragamuwa and is not a detailed or in-depth investigation of agricultural systems in the Upper Walawe basin. However, it provides a useful outline of the situation in this part of the basin."
Are Local People Conservationists? Analysis of Transition Dynamics from Agroforests to Monoculture Plantations in Indonesia
(2010) Feintrenie, Laurène; Schwarze, Stefan; Levang, Patrice
"Cash crops are developing in the once forested areas of Indonesia in parallel with market and economic improvements. Perennial crops such as coffee, cocoa, and rubber were first planted in estates by private or public companies. Local people then integrated these crops into their farming systems, often through the planting of agroforests, that is, intercropping the new cash crop with upland rice and food crops. The crop was generally mixed with fruit trees, timber, and other useful plants. A geographic specialization occurred, driven by biophysical constraints and market opportunities, with expansion of cocoa in Sulawesi, coffee in Lampung, and natural rubber in eastern Sumatra. However, during the past three decades, these agroforests have increasingly been converted into more productive monoculture plantations. A common trajectory can be observed in agricultural landscapes dominated by a perennial cash crop: from ladang to agroforests, and then to monoculture plantations. This process combines agricultural expansion at the expense of natural forests and specialization of the land cover at the expense of biodiversity and wildlife habitats. We determined the main drivers of agricultural expansion and intensification in three regions of Indonesia based on perception surveys and land use profitability analysis. When the national and international contexts clearly influence farmers’ decisions, local people appear very responsive to economic opportunities. They do not hesitate to change their livelihood system if it can increase their income. Their cultural or sentimental attachment to the forest is not sufficient to prevent forest conversion."
'Bright Spots' in Uzbekistan, Reversing Land and Water Degradation while Improving Livelihoods: Key Developments and Sustaining Ingredients for Transition Economies of the former Soviet Union
(2005) Noble, Andrew; ul Hassan, Mehmood; Kazbekov, Jusipbek
"Following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and the collapse of existing trade arrangements, the newly independent states of Central Asia have been left with the task of developing their own independent market economies. The region has undergone tremendous economic and social changes. Economies have shrunk, incomes have fallen, poverty has increased and food security has been compromised. Significant agricultural reform has occurred, mainly targeted at privatizing the large collective farms that were established during the Soviet era. These reforms include the establishment of smaller private and cooperative farms in order to improve the efficiency and equity of existing production systems. Within Uzbekistan, this move to privatize farms has, in the majority of cases, led to declining productivity and net incomes. However, there are instances where privatized farms and smaller collectives have been able to capitalize on these changes and perform at levels exceeding the norm. The objectives of this study were to identify the key attributes of these successful farms that have been termed 'bright' spots. A multistage purposive sampling technique was used to identify three cases in degraded areas of Uzbekistan, that is, locations experiencing a slow and gradual transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-based economy. Subsequently, we compared an improved farming system (research object) and the norm (control), closely analyzing each of the farming operations to identify the key drivers contributing to the success of the research objects."
The Common-Field Village of Midland England
(2008) Goodacre, John
"The enclosure of the open fields farmed in common in the Midlands of England was accomplished in several stages. The enclosures of the seventeenth century were a turning point in the development of capitalist production. Paradoxically this was a triumph for open-field farming. "This paper is based on an analysis of the local agrarian economy and illustrated from the writings of two contemporary protagonists in the national debate on development."
Commons Theory and Collective Forest Property in Mexico: When Formal Recognition of Local Rights is Important, But Not Enough
(2011) Ortiz, Gabriela; Merino, Leticia
"Collective action theory and 'the commons approach' are particularly relevant for Mexico, the first country in the world where collective property was recognized by the state, through an extended Agrarian Reform implemented from the 1930‘s to the 1980‘s. Today, more than 60% of the country is owned by communities. Collective tenure is particularly important in forest regions where it accounts for more than 70% of the lands; on the other hand, 90% of communal lands are forested. During the last thirty years collective property and community‘s social capital have sustained the coming to light of numerous community forest enterprises, such as producers of timber, resin, and bottled water; have been providers of ecological and recreational services. Where this process has taken place, community members have had incentives to invest in sustainability, participate in collective action which is required for forest management and local governance, and at the same time, local institutions and social capital have also strengthened. Successful forest community enterprises in Mexico are clear examples of key impacts due to the official recognition of property rights to local communities on the sustainability of the commons. However, these cases only account for less than 20% of the common forests in Mexico. The others face a wide range of problems such as land-use change, forest fires, illegal logging, illegal cropping, and intense migration. We propose that both historically and at present the incomplete 'devolution' or recognition of property rights has been a critical factor for this failure. More often than not communities receive formal rights, but the federal government keeps on managing them and even uses rights in forests or areas where logging concessions were granted to outsiders. Even today more than 20% of Mexico's forests are placed within the borders of protected areas where communities have lost means of livelihoods and have little to say in the governance of these territories. The lack of nesting among the central government actions and the local efforts has impeded the development of appropriate rules and effective monitoring and sanctioning in most of Mexico's forest areas. We argue that full recognition of local rights and the strengthening of local productive and institutional capacities should be considered central axis of policies that aim to contribute to the sustainability and resilience of forest commons."
Farmers, Workers: Thirty Years of New Rural Labor Unionism in Brazil
(2007) Favareto, Arilson
"This article analyses the dependencies and conditionings net that supports the origin, evolution, and the current configuration of the new Brazilian rural syndicalism. The study rebuilds the characteristics of the social basis of the movement, the leaders profile, agenda, and behavior privileged in each of the three moments of the adopted time line. The research covers from the genesis, in middle seventies; through the constitution of the CUT, the crisis in the late eighties; up to the union with Contag, in the beginning of current decade. The study highlights the growing dissemination of specific organizations representing family based agriculture."
'Forests', Agrarian Landscapes and Public Policies in the Central Western Ghats of South India
(2008) Menon, Ajit; Hinnewinkel, Christelle; Guillerme, Sylvie; Laval, Marie; Garcia, Claude
"Decentralization policies around forest management in developing countries such as India have received a large amount of attention in the recent past. But invariably analysis has been limited to the specificities of policies and to what extent they have provided forest produce benefits or not to forest-dependent communities. Public policies around forests must be contextualized and analysed in a broader historical context that attempts to understand what 'forests' mean to local communities in their segmented forms and how such policies have been part of a wider process of transformation of the agrarian landscape. This paper based on on-going research in three states of the central Western Ghats of south India examines the historical transformation of the agrarian landscape and how recent public policies in the name of decentralization often fall short not only in their implementation but also in their vision. Hence, while decentralized forest management might open up spaces for communities to address some of their forest needs in particular contexts, they are as likely to marginalize other needs in the process of redefining the agrarian landscape in the name of environmental management."
From Agrarian to Forest Tenure Reforms in Latin America: Assessing Their Impacts for Local People and Forests
(2008) Pacheco, Pablo; Barry, Deborah; Cronkleton, Peter; Larson, Anne; Monterroso, Iliana
"This paper assesses a new wave of land reform underway in Latin America, which we have labeled a 'forest reform.' This forest reform is aimed at harmonizing development and conservation concerns, while taking into account the demands of indigenous peoples, extractive communities and smallholders regarding secure land tenure rights and improved institutional, market and legal conditions for sustainable forest management. While the shift from agrarian to forest tenure reform is an important step for enhancing the livelihoods and cultures of forest-based people, these reforms fall short of achieving their expected goals due to shortcomings in national policy frameworks, combined with restrictive market, and other institutional conditions that tend to be biased against smallholders and community forestry. Recognition of existing --or the granting of new-- tenure rights to these actors, renewed efforts for adapting local institutions to evolving contexts and the development or strengthening of economic and social coalitions with other forest actors are all crucial factors for overcoming the almost insurmountable barriers for smallholders and communities to improving livelihoods and prospering from the sustainable management of their forests. Reconciling these efforts with conservation principles and implementing realistic policies based on a more nuanced understanding of the strengths and constraints faced by community level stakeholders, as well as of market conditions they interact with, constitute the principal tasks for the state to deepen forest reforms."
Globalization and the Commons of Rural Communities: A Case from Chile
(2004) Fernández, Gloria L. Gallardo
From pages 2-3: "The purpose of this study is to explore the difficulties that the globalization concept might present when applied to particular cases like to two examples of the institution of the commons through a commune of Chiles semi-arid Norte Chico. Taking as a starting point some of the issues formulated by the Biennial, I have chosen as an empirical case the Canela commune, where the institution of the commons predominates, side by side with private large landed states. From this commune I analyse three regional processes to illustrate some of the difficulties that can appear when applying the concept of globalization: (1) the legal recognition of the agricultural communities and (2) the conversion of former latifundia land into a sort of common property. Can we consider the recognition, and later on, the expansion of the institution of the commons in the middle of the expansion of market economy in the rural areas, as expressions of the process of globalization, or are they the result of internal political processes perhaps resulting of the understanding of the importance of the geographical environment upon the development of the communal form in the region? (3) Migration within the communities -- at what point in time does emigration becomes an expression of globalization?"
How Biodiversity Conservation Policy Accelerates Agrarian Differentiation: The Account of an Upland Village in Vietnam
(2013) Dressler, Wolfram H.; To, Phuc Xuan; Mahanty, Sango
"This paper shows how the implementation of Vietnam's recent biodiversity conservation policy in Ba Vi National Park has increased the economic value of nature, created sustained conflict, and exacerbated agrarian differentiation in an upland village in northern Vietnam. Increased global and national interest in biodiversity conservation has intersected with markets for ecosystem services that attempt to commoditise biodiversity resources in Ba Vi National Park and reconfigure conservation as market-based development. Efforts to marketise conservation have simultaneously increased the financial value of forestland and drawn new capital investments. In Ba Vi, local elites have captured these new forms of wealth through their connections to political parties, reinforcing the already unequal distributions of wealth and power. Coupled with political power, rising land value has also allowed local elites to become landlords, with the capacity to further dispossess other villagers. The resulting skewed access to natural resources has widened the gap between poor and wealthy villagers, and contributes to their over-exploitation of forests within the Park through informal agricultural expansion. The ensuing local conflicts have also negatively affected livelihoods and biodiversity resources."
Inadequacies in the Water Reforms in the Kyrgyz Republic: An Institutional Analysis
(2004) ul Hassan, Mehmood; Starkloff, Ralf; Nizamedinkhodjaeva, Nargiza
"Transition economies in Central Asian countries and elsewhere face unique challenges of carrying out synchronized reforms in most of the sectors simultaneously. A study of such reform efforts provides useful insights and lessons for many other similar countries. This report analyzes the evolving water-management institutions and their performance of five core water management functions, in the context of the ongoing economic and agrarian reform in the Kyrgyz Republic. These core water-management functions are, operation of water systems, maintenance, resource mobilization, conflict resolution and organizational management. Besides, the separation of the institutional powers of the four basic roles of regulation, governance, management (or implementation) and arbitration has also been studied. The separation of these functions supports clear relations of accountability and avoids conflicts of interest, which may occur if some of these powers are vested in the same organization. The report also identifies key issues and challenges that constrain effective stakeholder participation in water-resources management."
The Invisible Map: Community Tenure Rights
(2008) Barry, Deborah; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth
"Land tenure reforms in the worlds southern forests is transferring a broad set or bundle of rights to indigenous peoples, local communities and groups to access forestlands and resources, providing initial opportunity for improving the livelihoods of poor forest-dependent communities. The definition of these rights, the marking of how and where they are held, who grants them, and who holds them are not straightforward under the classic tenure system models. The range of land use rights from individual to common property use is obscured. Internal customary practice is also dynamic, changing during different seasons, with new leadership, and often interacting with new rules imposed by external regulations or market opportunities once tenure is granted. The expansion in the tenure reform in coupled with the development of the visual mapping technology has posed significant demands on local communities to clarify the nature of their existing and desired tenure rights. It highlights a growing need to need to represent these rights in order to both manage and defend them. Community mapping of land use has grown, but existing tools for gathering, organizing and presenting the rights related to land and resource use are scarce and insensitive to the complexity of practice. This paper presents a framework in which to consider how bundles of rights are distributed between the state, the collective, smaller groups and individuals within communal tenure systems. It then discusses how the framework has been turned into a tool for multi-purpose participatory research at the intra and inter community levels. It makes the case that the tool can help communities themselves give visibility to internal tenure systems within the perimeters of their forestlands. Finally, the paper presents cases that demonstrate how the shifting boundaries among the categories of rights holders are influencing the security of tenure to common property resources."
Land Access and Livelihoods in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste: No Magic Bullets
(2015) Batterbury, Simon P. J.; Palmer, Lisa; Reuter, Thomas; de Carvalho Demetrio, Amaral; Balthasar, Kehi; Cullen, Alex
"In Timor-Leste, customary institutions contribute to sustainable and equitable rural development and the establishment of improved access to and management of land, water and other natural resources. Drawing on multi-sited empirical research, we argue that the recognition and valorization of custom and common property management is a prerequisite for sustainable and equitable land tenure reform in Timor-Leste. In a four-community study of the relationship between land access and the practice of rural livelihoods in eastern and western districts of Timor-Leste, where customary management systems are dominant, we found different types of traditional dispute resolution, with deep roots in traditional forms of land management and with varying levels of conflict. The article shows how customary land tenure systems have already managed to create viable moral economies. Interviewees expressed a desire for the government to formalize its recognition and support for customary systems and to provide them with basic livelihood support and services. This was more important than instituting private landholding or state appropriation of community lands, which is perceived to be the focus of national draft land laws and an internationally supported project. We suggest ways in which diverse customary institutions can co-exist and work with state institutions to build collective political legitimacy in the rural hinterlands, within the context of upgrading the quality of rural life, promoting social and ecological harmony, and conflict management."
Land Reform in Bolivia: The Forestry Question
(2011) Pellegrini, Lorenzo; Dasgupta, Anirban
"In this paper we discuss forestry issues related to land reform in Bolivia. We find that although the current land reform satisfies most of the conditions necessary for adequately addressing development issues in the agrarian sector, it does not deal with many challenges related to forest management, and in fact contains provisions conflicting with the objectives of sustainable forest management. Given that a large part of the land being titled is actually forest land, omissions of, and conflicts with, the objectives of sustainable forest management are critical, and may have harmful ramifications for the preservation of forest resources as well as poverty reduction within forest-dependent communities."
Land Reform, Development, and Institutional Design
(1972) Loveman, Brian
"Land reform has often been viewed as a major remedy for the ills afflicting developing societies. Like the elixirs of the traveling medicine man, no one knows all of the ingredients; no one knows the side effects. But, land reform is guaranteed to cure all--or most all--diseases of developing nations. As John Montgomery has observed, land reform is an example of 'a principle which has been tested and has survived, though its effects have rarely been reported or explained'."
Las Tierras de Uso Comun en Ejidos Certificados
(2004) Perez Martin del Campo, Marco Antonio
From page 1: "Durante los ultimos meses de 1999 la Procuraduria Agraria aplico una encuesta en ejidos certificados para conocer la forma como se aprovechan los recursos de las tierras de uso comun de esos nucleos agrarios y estimar la importancia de ese aprovechamiento al interior de los mismos. Los resultados de ese acercamiento son interesantes porque permiten reconocer la dimension y la importancia de ese tipo de tierras, tres de cada cuatro hectareas de la propiedad social se destinan al uso comun; ademas, en esas areas es donde se encuentra la mayor proporcion de recursos bioticos por ejemplo, de los recursos forestales y donde se protagonizan los conflictos agrarios mas agudos y de mas dificil solucion. "El reporte completo incluye los resultados de la encuesta desagregados y analizados con detalle, aqua se subrayan algunas de las conclusiones mas generales con el fin de contribuir al debate que en torno a la viabilidad del campo mexicano, en el escenario del TLCAN y de la globalizacion, se esta desarrollando con la participacion de muchos de los actores y protagonistas del drama. Cabe senalar que, en esta ponencia, se presentan algunos datos actualizados a enero de este ano y que, la primera version, registra cifras de 2001. Esta contribucion enfoca un problema especÃ?Âafico, el uso y explotacion de las tierras de uso comun, (TUC), a partir del cual se articula un analisis en niveles diferentes."
A Modern Tragedy of the Non-Commons: Agro-Industrial Change and Equity in Brazil's Babassu Palm Zone
(1986) May, Peter H.
"Agrarian change and industrial innovation jointly affect the economic role of successional babassu palm forests that cover a large part of Maranhao, a state in Northeast Brazil. Over three hundred thousand landless peasant households derive nearly one-third of their cash incomes from the palm's oil-rich kernels, raw material for a regional vegetable oil industry; virtually all parts of the palm are useful to the subsistence economy for food, fuel, fiber, and shelter. The inquiry concentrates on social equity effects of property rights alterations, studied during 15 months of field research in Maranhao. Land use (chiefly pasture) conversion and technical change in both agriculture and babassu industries have redefined property rights. Rural employment contraction is the primary impact. Initial rights over palms and land effect the ultimate distribution of rewards from innovation. A tragedy of the non-commons arises where a powerless peasantry is unable to secure compensation for external costs caused by resource privatization. Delimitation of access to palms and land increases pressure on remaining resources traditionally managed in common, hastening their degradation. The study compared babassu's importance to rural producers differentiated by enterprise scale and social organization between two agro-ecological subregions. Palm exploitation rates vary considerably between the areas studied. This suggests that industrial development prospects and associated employment impacts are geographically distinct. If agro-pastoral development is combined with industrial innovation in babassu fruit processing in areas where peasants already exploit most palms, employment will be severely curtailed. However, where babassu exploitation rates and agro-pastoral development potential are low, industrial innovation may generate new employment. Technologies which supplant manual kernel extraction and subsistence uses with plantation agro-industry will invariably be accompanied by costly distributional consequences. To compensate those displaced means altering development policy to partition rewards so that peasant producers become beneficiaries rather than victims of technical progress. Policy and organizational strategies are suggested to ensure that benefits of industrial innovation are equitably distributed."
Of Land, Legislation and Litigation: Forest Leases, Agrarian Reform, Legal Ambiguity and Landscape Anomaly in the Nilgiris, 1969–2007
(2009) Krishnan, Siddhartha
"This paper provides a history and sociology of how and why the Janmam Act, an apparently well-intended scheme of agrarian reform in Gudalur, South India, has had unintended social, legal and ecological consequences. The Act sought to abolish a largely forested janmam (Zamindari) estate and reform its tenures. Some of its provisions pertaining to acquisition of forests leased to planters are still operative four decades since. Legal ambiguity, constituted chiefly by litigation and also by long periods of legal incertitude, has rendered ambivalent the revenue and forest departments administration of forests in leases. Planters have expanded and forested portions of leases have been occupied by migrant peasants. Forest leases appear legally and ecologically anomalous to the state. Popular and legal resistance to state efforts in establishing its interests, especially conservation, is rife. Due to sheer denudation and agrarian conversion, Gudalur is ceasing to be a constituency for conservation. This even as a title seeking social constituency has emerged, albeit problematically, because peasant claims are untenable as per the Act. Such local complexities, with distinct agrarian afflictions, have been wrought by the reformatory scheme and contribute to scheme incompletion."
People, Institutions and Agroecosystems in Transition
(2002) Gatzweiler, Franz W.; Hagedorn, Konrad; Sikor, Thomas
"This paper aims at explaining the role and importance of the evolution of institutions for sustainable agrienvironments during the transition process by referring to examples of agri-environmental problems faced in Central and Eastern European countries. It is often stated that the replacement of institutional structures in post socialist countries would bring a unique opportunity to implement new policies and institutions needed to ensure that economic growth is environmentally sustainable. This idea stems from the assumption that the breakdown of the socialist system resembles that (of the Schumpeterian type) of creative destruction - a process that incessantly revolutionizes economic structures from within. However, not all kinds of institutions, especially at local level, can simply be implemented, and even more, not incessantly. Instead, they evolve as a response to ecosystem and social system characteristics, and this is a rather slow process. A central question therefore is whether the required institutional arrangements for achieving sustainability in the area of agri-environmental resource management can be built more easily in periods of transition as they fill institutional gaps, or whether processes of transition make institution building a more difficult and far more time consuming task than previously thought. Above all, we want to find out, how these two processes of institution building at different scales affect the sustainable management of resources such as water and biodiversity in agriculture? It will become clear that the agrienvironmental problem areas faced during transition are complex and dynamic and require adequate institutions both by political design and from the grassroots, to be developed by the respective actors involved. Transition from centrally planned to pluralistic systems has to be considered as a particular and in some respect non-typical process of institutional change. Popular theories of institutional change do not necessarily apply. The privatisation experience from many CEE countries will serve as an example. Finally, we will provide some examples of missing or insufficient interaction between political actors or agencies and people in CEE countries."
The Plot Thickens: Decentralisation and Land Administration in Indonesia
(2003) Thorburn, Craig
From p. 1: "The turbulent events in Indonesia during the closing years of the 20th century prompted the reopening of public discussion on many long-standing issues of social and economic reform. Land reform is one of many agendas that has preoccupied policy makers, scholars and activists as the nation attempts to reinvent itself in the wake of the collapse of the 32-year New Order government of ex-President Suharto. Voices from different sectors of society and state question whether Indonesia's 40-year-old agrarian laws and new regional and village autonomy laws are appropriate to address persistent and growing problems of social welfare and justice and stagnating production."
Social Capital Formation and Restructuring in Post Socialist Agriculture: A Research Agenda
(2002) Hanisch, Markus; Laschewski, Lutz
"The idea of the paper is to comparatively reflect the basic findings of our empirical research on rural restructuring in CEECs and Eastern Germany in the light of both, The New Institutional Economics and The Social Capital Thesis, both taken as heuristic concepts. We identify two pathways, we can observe as rather extreme outcomes of the restructuring process, as network strategies. From a network perspective both pathways describe unsatisfactory network strategies. From a network perspective both pathways describe unsatisfactory network structures. To understand the implications, we change the theoretical perspective and argue along a simple choice model. Along that model, we discuss the question of which elements in the structures we observe are responsible for our pessimistic assessment of the future perspectives of these strategies. This leads us to the some theoretical aspects of a research agenda on how to consider and normatively assess network structures. This research agenda is meant to be a contribution to further discussion about research objectives and methodology of workgroup three of the Transcoop project."
The Varying Effects of Neo-Liberal Land Policy on Communal Property in Rural Mexico
(2008) DiGiano, Maria; Racelis, Alexis; Barnes, Grenville; Barsimantov, James
"In 1992 Mexico amended its constitution and passed a new Agrarian Law that altered the fundamental tenure rules of the communally titled ejidos that covered over half the country. These reforms removed various restrictions and created the possibility of converting ejidos into private property. The expectation at the time was that widespread parcelization and conversion to private property would occur, resulting in the disappearance of the ejido as a form of communal property. While less than four percent of ejidos in southern Mexico have chosen to formally dissolve, others have chosen various degrees of legal and extra-legal individualization of common lands, and still others remain unchanged. In this paper we analyze why the response to neo-liberal land policy introduced in 1992 has had such varied responses. In our analysis we identify both internal and external factors that explain why these responses have varied within ejidos in the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo. Certain external factors, such as tourism, appear to be driving ejidos towards increased parcelization and individualization. Other external factors, like community forestry, have had the counter-effect of consolidating and promoting communal tenure. These external factors are either accelerated or retarded by internal factors, such as governance, culture, existing resource base, livelihood strategy and attitudes towards property. Our six case studies include two ejidos with successful community forestry, two waterfront ejidos under tourism pressure, and two control ejidos that are neither forestry nor tourism ejidos. Through this analysis we present a general framework to understand changes in land tenure and explain how policy goals are derailed or diverted as they move from the national stage to the local community level."
Why Some Communities keep the Commons in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico
(2008) Cortina, Sergio
"One consequence of Mexican agrarian reform is half of the country occupied by thousands of communities that have communal governance over their territories. However, not all communities have common land, which means that a true communal action cannot be achieved there. In the highlands of Chiapas some communities have divided their common land in individual plots, but some others have decided to keep their commons. Why has this happened considering that they share similar environment and cultural roots? Several factors contribute to explain the divergent position that communities have respect common land. One of them is demographic; communities have very different demographic growth rates, which are related to cultural and legal agreements on the access to land. Those with accords to limit the incorporation of new land users have not tended to see commons as a reserve terrain for new generations that want new plots to cultivate individually. A combination of economic and environmental characteristics explains why commons are linked to forestry use, and why this kind of land use stimulates the preservation of commons. The struggle for equality in access to land and forest resources within communities is also another factor involved in commons defence. Learning from experiences and resource scarcity are also elements implicated. All this analysis is put under the context of changes in agrarian and forestry policies in Mexico. The recent reforms to Article 27 of Mexican constitution and their possible effects on the continuity of the commons in the region are also addressed."

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