The Collective and the Individual: Social and Political Challenges to the Sustainable Management of Protected Areas in Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

"Although the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in the Lacandon Jungle (Chiapas, Mexico) was created in 1978 and Lacantun Biosphere Reserve was created in 1992 under the UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere programme, environmental authorities and local inhabitants have been unable to generate models for the sustainable management of the protected area’s natural resources. This is of course a complex problem, given that the implication is that the public good of biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource use prevails over diverse individual interests. We believe that this inertia could be unsettled by seeing this problem as an issue of democratic deficiencies in the relationship between the federal authorities and the communities that own large areas of the reserve. Although in recent years the communication and trust have grown to a certain degree between these two collective actors, there is still much to be done. But it does not only correspond to the authorities to face up to the diverse social and political challenges, but also to the communities’ own institutions and ways of organization. This paper analyzes a set of tensions generated by various private individual interests that have prevailed over the interests of conservation and sustainable management in the reserve. We pay special attention to the role played by particular practices (opportunism) in the internal organization of the towns of Nueva Palestina and Frontera Corozal, located within the reserves and we analyze the effects they have on the failures and limitations to move towards a more sustainable management in the Lacandon Jungle."