Merino, Leticia

Latin America hosts an immense biological and natural wealth as well as a rich cultural diversity. Still today, the most preserved ecosystems in the region are managed and protected as commons by indigenous and local communities. Nevertheless, since colonial times, extractive practices were imposed as the mail economic activities. The intense extraction of minerals and the vast production of sugar, exported to Europe, relied on land grabbing, over-exploitation of natural resources and forced labor. Together with a wide cultural destruction, these violent changes imposed irreversible damage and suffering on nature and people. Despite this brutal story, by 2000, because of long struggles and commoning, 32% of the forestlands in LA were commons, with a much larger share in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.
During the past four decades a new strong wave of extractivism has been imposed in the region in response to the increasing global demand of raw materials lead by China´s strong economic growth. In the context of the negotiation of their debt with the financial international agencies, and in need of foreign currency, LA countries assumed the role of net providers of mineral, oil and agricultural products, globally traded as commodities.
National industrial development as well as food security were largely lost, inequality rapidly increased, authoritarian governments from right and left took hold, imposing privatization of water, lands and forest commons. In this dramatic context, commoning is at the core of the defense of land, water, forests and cultural commons.
The work I propose to present is part of a wider collaborative research project, part of the International Panel for Social Progress www.isp.org reflecting on the joint impact of inequality, loss of governability and ecological deterioration. With this frame we seek to document: legal and political processes of commons defense in LA, as well as initiatives of commons governance, use and creation. A key question I want to address is whether these initiatives contribute to the construction of post-extractivist realities and if so, how they do it.

Mexican forests host a wide biodiversity and provide invaluable environmental benefits, but still today in the middle of water shortages and wide deforestation, they are only valued in limited ways. According with the IPES findings on the relevance of local and indigenous communities in forest conservation, those forests best preserved and more resilient in Mexico are owned and managed by communities.
Over the last four decades an important number of community forestry initiatives aroused, maintaining forest areas, creating local employment, forest governance, investing in local public goods, creating technical abilities for forest protection and informed perspectives on the value forest ecosystems, that often merged with traditional visions and knowledge. These initiatives gained international, more than national, recognition including the certification for good forest management by the Forest Stewardship Council of 90 communities. These abilities are especially important regarding climate change and the growing presence of droughts, forest fires and pests.
Despite its achievements, community forestry has been largely disregarded by public policies, that on the contrary have imposed an unfair fiscal treatment, favoring export agriculture and mining in forest regions. During the federal administration 2018-2024, forest and environmental policies suffered cuts of around 70%, while criminal groups gained control of many forest regions and illegal logging reached 66% of the forest extractions. Meanwhile communal forest activities are over-regulated, even criminalized. Not surprisingly, the area under forest management lowered, and deforestation reached 250,000 has in 2022.
During 2024 we did fieldwork in 7 different regions, aiming to document and understand the commoning responses of forest communities to these complex conditions. Among them we found few, but meaningful community efforts for peace keeping; regional associations for joint forest industrial projects; development of new silvicultural methods; national groups aiming to gain political influence. We also found new productive projects of certified honey and coffee, quality furniture and ecotourism, as well as widespread commoning in defense of the lands against mining and infrastructure projects.
Our results show that despite this very adverse contex, commoning is present and vibrant in many forest regions, even more, it has proved to be the most viable way to preserve forest commons against the pressures created by the Antrhopocene and neoliberalism.