Promising Business Models for Community-Company Collaboration in Brazil and Mexico

Abstract

"Agreements between forest companies and forest communities may offer potential solutions to one or more of the conflicting objectives the global forest sector has been required to face. Some studies (Mayers and Vermeulen, 2002; Scherr, White, and Kaimowitz, 2003) have identified characteristics of this type of agreements in several countries. Within this context, this study has been conducted in Brazil and Mexico with the aim of identifying potential partners in the forest industry that demonstrate interest in linking low-income forest producers to the private forest sector and market opportunities. Specific objectives focused on (1) identifying models of agreements that are obtaining success and that have potential for wider replication; (2) discussing the factors that led these models to be successful; and (3) documenting constraints hindering the involvement of low-income producers.

"Section 2 of this paper presents a brief review of the literature related to the origin of forest company-community agreements as well as information about these partnerships in Mexico and Brazil. Section 3 provides information on the methodology of these studies. Main results about the current status of these agreements in Brazil and Mexico are presented in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 discusses successful models and major trends on forest company-community agreements in these two countries."