Conservation, community, and culture? New organizational challenges of community forest concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve of Guatemala

Journal of Rural Studies 26 (2010) 173–184

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Conservation, community, and culture? New organizational challenges of community forest concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve of Guatemala Peter Leigh Taylor* Department of Sociology, Clark B258, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Guatemala Community forestry Forest conservation Grassroots organizations Protected areas Environmental governance

Community-based forestry has received much recent attention as an effort to protect threatened Southern forests by linking conservation with sustainable livelihoods. Many researchers have emphasized the importance of effective organization for successful community-based forestry. While significant attention has been paid to community-level organizational design for collective action, less attention has been given to the role secondary-level grassroots associations play in supporting forest governance. The case of the Association of Forest Communities of Pete´n (ACOFOP) in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve is discussed, using a framework drawn from research on multipurpose agrarian federations. As it confronts ongoing problems of representation, equity and legitimacy, ACOFOP now encourages associated community forest concessions to diversify beyond commercial timber into collectively organized non-timber forest activities. Diversification, however, brings new governance issues with new participants, objectives and organizational logics that challenge ACOFOP to change while maintaining characteristics that support successful advocacy of its members’ interests. ACOFOP and its members actively experiment with several organizational alternatives, each with diverse implications for the balancing of political and economic roles. To better understand and support community forestry initiatives, their associations and similar agrarian organizations should be viewed in dynamic rather than static terms, and the central role local participants play in adapting their own organizations recognized. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Community-based forestry has received much attention in recent years as an effort to protect threatened forests in the global South by linking conservation with sustainable local livelihoods. Many researchers have emphasized the importance of effective organization for successful community-based conservation. Yet while there has been extensive discussion of appropriate organizational design at the individual community level, less attention has been devoted to the role secondary-level grassroots organizations may play in supporting and coordinating communities involved in forest management. Analysis is needed of these community-based associations as dynamic rather than static collaborative arrangements, as they change in response to internal and external pressures emerging both from changing political economic contexts and their own past successes. Participants actively reshape their organizations while struggling to preserve the social and political characteristics underlying successful advocacy of members’ interests.

* Tel.: þ1 970 491 6043; fax: þ1 970 491 2191. E-mail address: [email protected] 0743-0167/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2009.09.006

This paper discusses the experience of the Association of Forest Communities of Pete´n (ACOFOP), a representative organization of forest communities holding government concessions to manage forests in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. Originally organized as a political organization, which advocated successfully for community resource access and management rights, ACOFOP subsequently assumed additional roles of helping coordinate members’ commercial timber production, facilitation of external funds and direct provision of technical support services. Though commercial timber has been the vehicle for developing the concessions, ACOFOP and its members today pursue a new diversified but collective approach to the forest beyond timber. These non-timber forest product and services activities aim to address internal and external pressures related to changing relationships among community members, the current distribution of benefits, and the legitimacy of ACOFOP and the communities’ role in forest management. Collectively organized diversification, nevertheless, poses governance issues for ACOFOP, challenging it to organize a new balance between its political and economic roles. ACOFOP’s experience underscores the challenges facing even established community organizations as they cope with structural pressures simultaneously requiring ever more sophisticated political capacity

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and intensified integration into global markets. Below, I develop a framework adapted from the experience of agrarian federations elsewhere. ACOFOP’s experience highlights problems faced by multipurpose agrarian federations which are claiming and receiving greater responsibilities for managing natural resources. Much like these organizations, ACOFOP struggles to change quickly without losing the characteristics that underlie its past strengths. The future of ACOFOP and its community concession members depends not on establishing new sets of organizational structures designed a priori, but rather on maintaining organizational processes which can adapt to rapidly changing conditions while maintaining adequate representativeness, equity, and legitimacy. 2. The Maya Biosphere Reserve and the community forest concessions Guatemala’s northern Pete´n region today contains what has been called one of the world’s largest contiguous expanses of forest under community management. The Pete´n is the location of the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), encompassing 2 112 940 ha. The MBR aims to conserve the region’s archaeological and biological treasures, safeguard its diverse ecosystems, and promote opportunities for sustainable use of natural and cultural resources (Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005: 5–7). Over the last fifteen years, a diverse set of communities and community-based associations have won legal concessions to manage timber and non-timber forest resources in the MBR’s Multiple Use Zone (MUZ). While it does not itself hold a forest concession, ACOFOP has played a key role in negotiating and managing the concessions with support from government agencies, Reserve administration, and international donors (Cronkleton et al., 2008; Monterroso, 2007b; Monterroso and Barry, 2007; Taylor et al., 2008). For many years the nation’s most geographically and politically isolated region, the Pete´n has been shaped by competition to control its natural resource wealth, including chicle gum and xate palm leaf, petroleum, precious minerals and timber, wildlife and agricultural and animal raising potential. The region has suffered both from high levels of poverty and forest degradation (Carr, 2006; 2008; Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005; Katz, 1995; Monterroso and Barry, 2007; Schwartz, 1995; Sundberg, 1998). More recently, new competition has emerged among national and international groups to protect the Pete´n’s ancient Mayan sites and develop their potential for tourism (Cronkleton et al., 2008; Monterroso, 2007b). Thirteen ACOFOP-affiliated community and community-based members hold 25 year government concessions to manage forests in the MBR’s Multiple Use Zone. The concession system establishes a regulatory framework overseen by the National Commission on Protected Areas (CONAP). Five year management plans and annual operating plans define timber cutting cycles, allowable cuts, harvestable species, minimum cutting diameters and silvicultural treatments (CONAP, 1994, cited in Gretzinger, 1998: 116; ACOFOP, 2008). Concessionaries’ timber operations are required to obtain Forest Stewardship Council certification (Taylor et al., 2008). This paper emerged from a three year collaboration with a Ford Foundation funded, Center for International Forestry Researchsponsored research and assistance project in support of grassroots forest organizations in Central America and Brazil (Cronkleton et al., 2008; Taylor et al., 2008). In addition, this study draws directly on three weeks of field research in Pete´n between 2005 and 2007, carried out with CIFOR and ACOFOP financial and logistical support. Four community-based concessions were selected for study: Carmelita, Uaxactu´n, Arbol Verde and Custodios de la Selva. These four are targeted by ACOFOP for promotion of communitybased non-timber forest activities. They also reflect important dimensions of the concessions’ historical and cultural diversity.

Fieldwork included multiple visits to each of the four concessions and 45 in-depth semi-structured interviews in the communities, ACOFOP, CONAP and NGO staff in the MBR.1 The study also benefitted from discussion of a Spanish language report presented formally to ACOFOP staff and concession leaders in June 2007 and subsequent follow up interviews with ACOFOP’s leadership. 3. The organizational analysis of community-based forestry Over the last two decades, a movement has taken place toward community participation in natural resource management. Community-based forestry (CBF) seeks to protect threatened forests by linking conservation and local livelihood objectives (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999; Brechin et al., 2003; Murray Li, 2002). CBF’s logic argues that local people possess significant resourcerelated knowledge and skills, and under the right conditions will manage resources sustainably. An extensive literature has emerged in which researchers point out that CBF’s chances for success are greatly enhanced with secure resource rights, supportive policy frameworks and appropriate technical assistance (Bray et al., 2005, 2008; Britt, 2002; Klooster, 2000; Peluso et al., 2008; Sekher, 2001; Taylor and Zabin, 2000). Nevertheless, an emerging critique of participatory natural resource management points to mixed performance (Campbell et al., 2001; Cleaver, 1999). Proponents of community participation often make unsound assumptions about communities’ homogeneity (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999; Barrett et al., 2001). Participatory initiatives too often privilege powerful, male elites and exclude women, youth and newcomers (Cleaver, 1999; Mayoux, 1995). Community members frequently lack the traditions and skills necessary for sustainable management or pursue livelihood strategies that run counter to ecological goals (Barrett et al., 2001: 499; Murray Li, 2002). They also face formidable obstacles to commercialization (Molnar, 2006). Finally, communities are seldom able to negotiate effectively with diverse actors across the scales of highly complex conservation and development contexts (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999: 641; Wells et al., 2004: 409). This critique notwithstanding, efforts to effectively engage communities in forest management cannot be easily abandoned. Wells et al. remark that ‘‘the notion that biodiversity can be conserved without considering local people’s needs and aspirations is simply not viable’’ (2004: 409). Governments’ capacity to manage forests in traditional top-down fashion continues to weaken as restructuring policies worldwide extend decentralization and deregulation (Larson et al., 2006; Taylor et al., 2006). Moreover, social movements of peasants, indigenous peoples, forest communities and others push from below for more secure resource access and tenure (Brechin et al., 2003; Cronkleton et al., 2008; Molnar, 2003; Sunderlin et al., 2008). White and Martin (2002), Molnar (2003) and Sunderlin et al. (2008) observe that as much as 27% of forests already lies in communities’ hands, a share likely to increase. While the degree of authentic community control varies greatly (Sunderlin et al., 2008; Taylor et al., 2006) it seems clear that communities must still be taken seriously if conservation and poverty reduction goals are to be feasible.

1 Interviews were done by the author in Spanish. In consultation with ACOFOP staff, individuals were selected in the communities and related agencies who had leadership or extended experience with the forest concessions. Interviewees were asked a series of semi-structured questions about the strengths and weaknesses of timber and non-timber activities, the challenges facing the communities concessions and their perspectives on appropriate responses. The close coordination with ACOFOP, including a reciprocal commitment to provide preliminary report for broad internal discussion, aimed to balance potential selection bias with achievement of greater local ownership of the study.

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A key to making community-based forestry more successful lies in effective organization. Forest resources are not necessarily the open access regimes of Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons (1968) but are governed rather by local ‘‘decision making, organizational and governance processesdboth customary and modern’’ (Wilshusen et al., 2002: 32). Successful resource governance depends on organizational capacity to mobilize authority, ability and willingness to restrict access and use, technical capacity to monitor ecological and social conditions, and managerial flexibility to respond to change (Barrett et al., 2001: 500). A well-developed literature on common property resources explores the optimal organizational design for community-based resource governance. Ostrom’s design principles for collective action (1990) predict the likelihood that communities may manage common pool resources successfully, focusing on rules governing benefits and costs, participation levels, systematic monitoring, effective sanctions and conflict resolution and external recognition of communities’ governance rights. These design principles have been widely tested and adapted (e.g. Oakerson, 1992; Sekher, 2001). This institutional choice framework has been highly influential in countering Hardinian open access assumptions, showing how organizational structure can harness individual rationality for collective resource and social objectives. Nevertheless, CPR’s roots in rational choice theory may lead it still to privilege individual rationality rather than historical and cultural context as the primary driver of actors’ behavior (Sick, 2008). CPR theory’s largely a priori approach to organizational design may encourage a view of community organization as largely static and locally bounded (Steins and Edwards, 1999). It often pays insufficient attention to communities’ insertion into a larger political economic context that shapes opportunities and limits for local management (Gautam and Shivakoti, 2005; Sick, 2008; Steins and Edwards, 1999). CPR theorizing usually focuses on the governance of a single resource rather than of multiple resources (Gautam and Shivakoti, 2005; Sick, 2008; Steins and Edwards, 1999). Finally, although Ostrom (1990) writes of the possibility of ‘‘nested enterprises’’ and others explore ‘‘cross-scale linkages’’ (Berkes, 2002) or ‘‘networks’’ (Britt, 2002), most CPR research focuses on local community organization (Bebbington, 1996: 1164; Antinori and Garcia-Lopez, 2008). This paper focuses on secondary-level community associations, formal organizations that often provide crucial support to local forest resource governance. It develops an analytical framework that conceives of community-based organizations as processes changing in response to shifting structural conditions rather than as sets of static characteristics (Argyris and Scho¨n, 1978; Brechin et al., 2003; Perrow, 1986; Steins and Edwards, 1999). Rather than being driven by individual rationality and best designed a priori, local resource organizations necessarily change as they confront new pressures and potentially conflicting organizational logics (Lawrence and Lorch, 1967; Perrow, 1986). This approach focuses on the collective, organizational process through which participants experiment and adapt while struggling with normal problems of representation, equity and legitimacy. 3.1. A framework for analysis from agrarian federations While there have been many studies of forest community organizations, with some exceptions (e.g. Britt, 2002; Rosen, 2008; Taylor, 2000; Taylor and Zabin, 2000; Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005, Monterroso, 2007b; Wilshusen and Murguı´a, 2003) there has been relatively little systematic research on secondary-level forest community-based associations (Antinori and Garcia-Lopez, 2008: 3). Recent studies of agrarian federations, nevertheless, suggest a framework which can be adapted to analyze the evolving roles

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that forest associations assume over time and the new challenges they confront. Forest community associations are arguably part of broader agrarian movements which advocate for rural producers and their communities and seek more democratic control of natural resources (McMichael, 2008; Borras et al., 2008; Edelman, 2008; Peluso et al., 2008: 380). Forest and agricultural producers, indeed, are often the same people, employing diversified production strategies. And, forest associations face many of the same organizational challenges that agrarian federations do as they deal with changing political economic contexts and often, the consequences of their own successes. Agrarian federations have a long history in Latin America as political interlocutors for peasant farmers, indigenous groups and communities (Bebbington, 1997, 2007; Bebbington et al., 1993; Carroll and Bebbington, 2000; Edelman, 1998, 2008). Also referred to variously as second-tier, second order, supracommunal or mesolevel organizations (Carroll and Bebbington, 2000), agrarian federations have typically formed to defend local resource rights and promote local interests inadequately addressed by the state (Bebbington, 1993, 1996, 1997; Carroll and Bebbington, 2000; Hitchcock, 2002; McDaniel, 2002). Bebbington argues that these organizations play critical political roles, helping localities renegotiate relationships with market, state and other civil society actors (1997: 189). 3.2. Federations as multipurpose organizations: problems of representation, equity and legitimacy According to Bebbington, while much research has addressed federations’ activities as political actors, relatively less attention has been paid to their roles as economic actors or resource managers. Federations often become rural development actors in their own right as they assume functions once exercised by state agencies or NGOs (Bebbington, 1996: 1161, 1164). Some researchers view these organizations and the new agrarian movements like Via Campesina of which they are part as harbingers of a more democratic reframing of rural development (McMichael, 2008; Borras, 2008; Borras et al., 2008). At the same time, others caution against overlooking the organizational problems that may weaken even the most successful of agrarian federations (Edelman, 1998, 2008). Bebbington remarks that peasant federations typically provide three natural resource-related services: advocacy for access rights, support of rural social enterprise and delivery of technical services (1996: 1162, 1170). Agrarian federations evolve over time as members’ needs and larger political and economic contexts change. Peasant federations have often begun as advocacy organizations within broader social and political movements, typically with significant support from state agencies, religious and other nongovernmental organizations. Federations such as the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) (Andolina, 2003), the Shuar Federation (McDaniel, 2002) and FUNORSAL in Ecuador, and El Ceibo (Bebbington, 1997) and CICOL (McDaniel, 2002) in Bolivia subsequently evolved into organizations providing multiple services, including political representation; direct production; channeling of external funds; commercialization, and technical services delivery. Support of members’ activities in the market represents one of agrarian federations’ most important activities yet to be effective, they must combine this support with strengthening of members’ political capacities (Bebbington, 1996: 1174, 1997: 811; Foweraker, 2001: 861). Bebbington et al. argue that agrarian federations’ challenge is not to resist modernization, ‘‘but to control it and take it further, increasing peoples’ ability to negotiate market relationships, administer rural enterprises and agroindustry, and compete in a hostile market’’ (1993: 289). Yet they remark that these

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organizations are ‘‘fragile, subject to internal tensions and internal pressures that undermine their capacity to promote sustainable and equitable resource management’’ (1993: 183). This fragility emerges not necessarily from internal design flaws, but largely from the very complexity of combined political and economic roles. Even successful federations struggle continually to maintain their effectiveness as advocates for local interests in the face of perennial, interrelated challenges to their representativeness, equitable operation and legitimacy. Representation refers to the degree to which an organization serves as an effective space for expression of the interests and perspectives of relevant constituencies. Bebbington argues that rural peoples’ organizations are potentially representative in ways that NGOs and government agencies can never be (1996: 1164). Borras et al., caution, however, that the representativeness of agrarian movements and their organizations should not be assumed to be automatic, permanent or unproblematic. Representativeness becomes complicated by members’ geographical dispersion, poor communications and transport and internal differentiation (2008: 182, 185). Federations often have particularly weak representation among their poorest participants (Bebbington, 2007: 811; Foweraker, 2001: 861), yet expectations that federations adequately represent marginalized groups are likely to increase with their own successes. Members’ interests also change over time (Edelman, 2008: 231). ‘‘Representation is constantly renegotiated within organizations or movements. This means that the degree of representation of a particular movement may increase or decrease over time, and in some cases may completely disappear’’ (Borras et al., 2008: 194). As federations become more directly involved in productive activities or channel external funds, a second organizational challenge emerges: to maintain appropriate equity in the distribution of benefits. Bebbington et al. found unequal distribution of federation benefits, in part because of agroecological variations among members, but also because of resource limits. Services tended to be concentrated in closer communities and in home communities of administrators and staff (1993: 188). Federations’ very successes in generating benefits increase the stakes of participation while at the same time creating incentives for barriers to entry of new participants (Bebbington, 1996: 1661). Roper observes that conflicts between indigenous communities and their federation, and among communities are likely to arise as ‘‘issues of apportionment of or access to limited resources and access to and control over positions of authority and decision making come into play’’ (2003: 154 also see Edelman, 2008). How federations manage problems of representation and equity shapes a third problem: maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of both members and external supporters such as state agencies, donors and NGOs. In Central America, Edelman observes that agrarian federations were weakened by a failure to adapt their agendas sufficiently to the restructuring of the agrarian sector and largescale outmigration of rural producers (2008; Borras et al., 2008). In Ecuador and Bolivia, Bebbington et al. found that federation leaders lost legitimacy when they pursued agendas incongruent with members’ material interests or were unable to sustain practices established with external funding. The federations they studied had had difficulty .in identifying and then sustaining economic and cultural projects that adequately resonate with their members concerns. This has meant that base support for the larger political and cultural projects is weakened and the federations’ legitimacy among their bases is itself not assured (1993: 187). Loss of legitimacy among community-based constituents likely leads to reduced credibility among external institutional supporters, as

‘‘their role in adding cohesion and strength to rural society is also weakened, along with their potential role in local resource management programmes’’ (1993: 186, 187, 192). As structural conditions shift and as federations assume multiple activities, contradictory organizational logics may emerge. Selfa, for example, points out the trend among many Latin American NGOs (to which multipurpose federations are also susceptible) to foster entrepreneurship and technical training rather than addressing traditional political problems of justice, equity and community building (2004: 728). Conversely, Bebbington et al. ask what happens ‘‘if the socio-political logic of a popular organization suggests a resource management practice that differs from the ecological and economic ideal (1993: 183)? Foweraker (2001) and Bebbington (1997) both warn of the possibility of depoliticization as federations become drawn into more complex, development oriented activities. Foweraker argues that as they take on more NGO-like characteristics of service delivery, ‘‘grassroots organizations seem to blend into a more amorphous ‘third sector’, and so lose their edge as defenders of the excluded and impoverished’’ (2001: 861). Problems of representation, equity and legitimacy, therefore, must be periodically revisited as organizations change. Significantly, Joseph suggests that grassroots groups’ own efforts to manage organizational change be taken seriously: ‘‘.it is safe to assume that some grassroots groups somewhere are always experimenting with new forms of organization (1999, cited in Foweraker, 2001: 863). Forest community associations experience trajectories similar to those of agrarian federations. Forest community-based secondary organizations often begin with political advocacy (Antinori and Garcia-Lopez, 2008; Merino, 2004; Rosen, 2008; Taylor, 2000). Initial success often results in pressures to assume functions previously exercised by states and NGOs, shifting into more direct involvement in production, technical support and external assistance coordination activities. Their new activities introduce new governance problems related to new interests and constituencies, ways of participating, and conflicting organizational objectives. They struggle, therefore, with similar problems related to representation of community interests, equitable distribution of benefits and maintaining legitimacy. 4. ‘‘Ingovernability’’, conservation and the Pete´n’s community concessions The Maya Biosphere Reserve’s implementation has been shaped by the Pete´n’s high levels of conflict and frequent absence of formal state control, conditions locally referred to as ‘‘ingovernability’’ (Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005; Cronkleton et al., 2008). The Reserve’s original design failed to take sufficiently into account the complexity of preexisting settlement patterns and resource-related interests. The MBR’s original territorial scheme included a Nucleus Zone ruled by strict conservation rules; a Multiple Use Zone representing about 50% of the MBR and a Buffer Zone in which land and resource use were to be stabilized. The Biosphere and its administrators faced strong pressure from populations excluded from legal resource access, including violence against technicians and Reserve facilities (Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005: 10; Monterroso and Barry, 2007; Schwartz, 1995). International donor and conservation institutions played crucial roles in designing and implementing the MBR, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World ¨ r Wiederaufbau Bank, the German aid agency Kreditanstalkt fu (KFW), and the Ford Foundation. USAID alone invested an estimated $40 million in Pete´n between 1990 and 2004 and promoted involvement by international organizations such as Conservation

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International, The Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund (Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005: 23–24). These and other international actors encouraged greater community involvement in resource management. Significantly, Guatemala’s 1996 Peace Accords also called for access to land and resources for ex-Civil War combatants and refugees (Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005: 12; Cronkleton et al., 2008). After extended negotiation among the government, Biosphere administrators, industry, community and pro-environmental groups, 25 year management concessions were granted to six local communities within the Multiple Use Zone, six communities bordering the MUZ and two local forest industry companies (Nittler and Tschinkel, 2005: 8; Gretzinger, 1998; Monterroso, 2007b; Monterroso and Barry, 2007). A key participant in the original concession’s negotiation, ACOFOP today strives to ‘‘improve the standard and quality of life of Pete´n’s communities, through sustainable management of the forest’s resources’’ (ACOFOP, 2008). ACOFOP does not itself hold a forest concession or engage directly in resource management. Rather it represents 23 member communities and organizations (including the community concessions, now totaling 13) representing nearly 2000 individuals. ACOFOP’s members include indigenous and ladino (mixed) communities, and a range of organizations including not-for-profit cooperatives and for-profit associations. The number of participants in each group ranges from 10 to over 400; concession areas range from 350 to over 80 000 ha (ACOFOP, 2005; Tropico Verde, 2005). ACOFOP is governed by a general assembly of members, an administrative council of concession representatives headed by a president elected to a two year term, and a three member oversight committee. An Executive Director, currently a member of a local community but holding no concession membership, leads ACOFOP’s professional staff.

concluded that the concessions were carrying out good faith efforts to protect archaeological sites (Roney et al., n.d.). Bray et al. found in a recent comparative study of deforestation that community logging was as effective as Protected Areas in inhibiting deforestation, with strongest positive impacts in long-settled community forests with fewer colonization pressures. However, neither poorly governed Protected Areas nor poorly governed community forests were effective bulwarks against colonization (2008:56). Bray et al. remark that compared with Protected Areas, ‘‘community benefits are greater under community logging’’ (2008:56). Nittler and Tschinkel found that ACOFOP-affiliated concessions generate each year as much as $US 5 million from wood products and $US 2–3 million from NTFPs, representing incomes 2–3 times regional averages. In 2003 community concessions created over 50 000 person days of work valued at nearly $US 360 000 (Nittler and Tschinkel, 2005; Bray et al., 2008). ACOFOP observes that the concessions in 2003 paid over $US 424 000 in taxes (ACOFOP, 2005). Its members play a key role in controlling fire in their concessions without receiving state budgetary support for these activities. ACOFOP and its members have won prestigious awards, including most recently a Guatemalan Presidential Environment Award, a UNDP Equatorial Award for Excellence and the World Conservation Union (IUCN)’s prestigious Environmental Torch Award (Premio Antorcha). ACOFOP’s Executive Director in 2005 received the National Geographic Society’s Award for Conservation Leadership, the first time an individual had received this award in Latin America.

4.1. The community concessions’ commercial timber activities: environmental and social benefits

Though ACOFOP’s origins lay in community resistance to limits imposed on local resource rights, the association’s initial political role has expanded. ACOFOP works to maintain the collective vision underlying the concessions, representing them in national and international arenas via the Internet, participation in conferences and regional and national advisory bodies, and public positions on political issues affecting the communities (ACOFOP, 2008, Cortave, personal communication, 2008). ACOFOP has also assumed three additional roles in support of the concessions. First, ACOFOP has helped coordinate much of the significant external financial and technical assistance provided by bilateral agencies and donors. ACOFOP acts as source of local expertise and sometimes effective gatekeeper for agencies seeking to work in concession communities and associations. It once helped articulate community dissatisfaction with external assistance, resulting in reversal of an original USAID requirement that community concessions contract with certain NGOs for technical services (Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005; Sundberg, 1998). Second, ACOFOP provides technical assistance via a small staff of extension agents who regularly visit concession communities and associations. Financed largely with external funds, these extension agents provide advisory support to community timber activities and their organizations. ACOFOP’s leaders and staff regularly attend concession general assemblies and ad hoc meetings to help members analyze organizational problems, mediate conflicts, and develop new joint ventures. Third, ACOFOP has become directly involved in coordinating production. One of the most visible examples has been the Association’s role in establishing and maintaining a community-owned forest services firm, Forescom, which emerged out of a USAIDsupported commercialization effort. ACOFOP has worked closely with Forescom’s 11 community and community-based members to develop collective sawmilling and commercialization.

Commercial timber has been the vehicle until now for developing the community concessions and generating internal and external credibility. The communities practice low-impact harvesting with management plans in which an average of 1.3 trees per ha is removed, and a range of silvicultural practices employed (Radachowski et al., 2004). About 75% of the 450 000 ha managed by ACOFOP members is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council; another 112 000 ha is in the process of certification. According to interviewees, strengths of community timber operations include significant inventories of valuable commercial species, mainly mahogany and Spanish cedar, the mastering of the basics of timber activities, expansion into sawmilling and other processing, and in general, profitability. Weaknesses identified include organizational inefficiencies rooted in relatively low formal educational and skill levels, underutilized processing capacity, leadership turnover, and lack of commercialization skills (also see Nittler and Tschinkel, 2005). All four concessions need greater capitalization, activities with greater value added and use of lesser-known wood species. Reliable time series data on the conservation and development outcomes of ACOFOP and the community concessions are relatively limited. Yet several studies suggest positive impacts. In 2005, Nittler and Tschinkel remarked that compared with neighboring parks and multiple use areas whose conservation depends on government institutions and conservation NGOs, the forest concessions experienced reduced fires, deforestation and illegal extraction (2005: 21). Nittler and Tschinkel’s findings are supported by recent satellite monitoring studies (WCS et al., 2004). A biological monitoring study by Radachowski et al. (2004) found that at current intensities, logging appears not to pose a major threat to the MBR’s ecological integrity. Similarly, an archaeological impact study

4.2. From political advocacy to multipurpose organization: ACOFOP’s changing issues of representation, equity and legitimacy

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4.2.1. Problems of representation and equity Similar to the agrarian federations discussed above, ACOFOP faces ongoing problems of representation and equity. The concessions were originally granted to community members who organized to solicit forest concessions. Yet not all residents of concession communities chose to participate initially. Other concessions are held by for profit and not-for-profit associations of individuals from multiple communities. Interviewees explained that as the concessions have generated new resources, tensions between members and non-members have become a serious concern. These problems are most intensely experienced in communities physically located within their concessions such as Carmelita and Uaxactu´n. Because ACOFOP’s 23 members include both the 13 concession holding communities and associations and other types of community-based organizations, ACOFOP must effectively manage its diverse constituencies if it is to pursue its political agenda effectively. Critics of the community concession system have pointed to inequities in the distribution of benefits. The definition of equity is in an important sense locally contested. A Tropico Verde study (2005) for example, argued that the concessions’ economic benefits are few and limited almost exclusively to members. Yet while nonmembers seek access to growing forest benefits, existing members feel they have a superior claim because of their past sacrifices. One ACOFOP leader explained that members have struggled, invested and risked much to establish their concessions. ‘‘It would be nice to have everybody inside the system, but that would mean someone could come along later and eat the same amount of cake. It’s not fair to require that.’’ The concessions’ timber activities do often generate jobs for non-members as well as members. Internal statutes of many concessions moreover require investment of a proportion of net returns in projects benefiting the community. Nevertheless, Nittler and Tschinkel point out that these rules are not consistently followed and the concessionaires have been reluctant to admit new members (2005: 11). 4.2.2. Conservation-related problems and issues of legitimacy Despite evidence of positive social, economic and environmental impacts, ACOFOP and its members must continually defend the communities’ legitimacy as forest resource stewards. Go´mez and Me´ndez remark that the original decision to grant community concessions was as much the result of international environmental organizations’ distrust of industrial timber interests as it was faith in communities’ capacities (2005). Indeed, forest management has involved a steep learning curve for ACOFOP’s members. Nittler and Tschinkel point to significant organizational inefficiencies shaped by low formal educational levels, lack of administrative experience, frequent turnover of elected leadership, and difficulties forging unified strategies among highly diverse concession organizations (2005). In 2008, the weakest four ACOFOP members along the San Andres road, La Pasadita, Cruce a la Colorada, San Miguel and Coloradita, were a source of great concern. These communities have significant problems with illegal burning, expansion of cattle raising by third parties and other violations of the concession plan (ACOFOP, 2008; WCS et al., 2004: 16, 18; Bray et al., 2008; Tropico Verde, 2005: 11, 12; Cortave, person communication, 2008). Interviewees in ACOFOP and in the communities observed that many of the benefits they generate are not readily visible, such as ˜os evitados [damage prevented]. Comparative studies of forest dan degradation (WCS et al., 2004; Bray et al., 2008) suggest that though it is difficult to quantify, the concept of ‘‘damage prevented’’ is not entirely speculative. ACOFOP interviewees also spoke of social damage prevented, involving incidents which its leaders helped resolve conflicts in communities before they escalated.

CONAP interviewees observed in 2005 that some eighty percent of the concession experience were on a path to a ‘‘better future.’’ Although serious concerns existed with forest degradation in the four concessions along the San Andres road, forest cover in most community controlled forests was being maintained. ‘‘On balance’’ one CONAP official commented, ‘‘ there are more strengths than weaknesses.’’ 4.2.3. Competing use claims: the Mirador Basin Expansion Project Communities’ forest management rights in the Pete´n today face significant external pressure. Commercial timber continues to be a lightning rod for opposition to community management, which is often represented externally as ‘‘logging concessions,’’ (FARES, 2006; also see Gullison et al,. 2001). For many outsiders, logging elicits mental images of ecological devastation. ‘‘They don’t understand that one can conserve by rationally using the resources,’’ said one community leader. ‘‘We are facing very intense threats to the [community concession] process,’’ observed an ACOFOP leader. A recent example of the competition to control how Pete´n’s diverse resources are conserved and utilized is the proposed Mirador Basin Expansion project. In 2002, the U.S.-based Foundation for Anthropological Research and Environmental Studies (FARES) and its supporters proposed establishing a new protected area including recently discovered cultural sites in the Mirador Basin. The project would expand the existing Mirador National Park some 2000 km2 to include the Mirador-Rio Azul National Park, the Naachatu´n-Dos Lagunas Biotope and significant proportions of six forest concessions. The expansion project proposed to develop appropriate tourism initiatives in Mirador, but would have halted current community forest management activities in affected areas (Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005; Cronkleton et al., 2008; Monterroso, 2007b). The Mirador Expansion Project for a time achieved substantial international and national support. A Presidential Government Agreement declared in 2002 a ‘‘Regional System of Special Protection of Cultural Patrimony,’’ which effectively overlapped existing boundaries of the MBR. Opponents argued that the project would violate concession agreements and would likely increase pressure on threatened natural and cultural resources (Kepfer, 2003). After nearly three years of public protest and court cases by ACOFOP and the concessions’ supporters, Guatemala’s Supreme Court overturned the Mirador Basin Project’s legality in 2005. Yet strong external interest in developing the Pete´n’s natural and cultural resources continues. ACOFOP’s leaders say that they do not oppose new development of the region’s resources. Rather, they seek to be fully involved in planning new initiatives, to ensure that they strengthen community conservation and livelihood objectives (Cortave, personal communication, 2008). 5. The move toward diversified forest activities ACOFOP and its members face ongoing pressures to improve their representativeness. They are challenged to distribute growing forest benefits more widely. And their legitimacy as forest stewards faces continual pressures from within Guatemala and abroad. Many interviewees expressed concern that future political support for community concessions by the government, international agencies and the conservation community cannot be taken for granted. Several remarked that because of its controversial image, commercial timber might not ultimately be a reliable vehicle for secure community resource rights. ACOFOP is now encouraging collective management of its members’ three most important nontimber forest products (NTFPs) and services: xate palm, chicle gum and eco-tourism. Diversified, ‘‘integrated management’’ would help

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address these representation, equity and legitimacy issues by expanding community participation, generating economic opportunities, enhancing conservation impacts and consolidating external support for a strong community role in managing the Pete´n’s resources. ‘‘Integrated’’ management of these activities, for ACOFOP, should seek effective production coordination that also strengthens the overall unity of the community concession movement. The management of multiple forest resources has been discussed as ‘‘integrated forest management (IFM)’’ (Davidson-Hunt et al., 2001) and ‘‘integrated resource management’’ (Campbell and Sayer, 2003). Nevertheless, some of the most interesting discussions lie in the rapidly growing literature on NTFPs (Fisher et al., 2008; Guariguata et al., 2008; Panayoutou and Ashton, 1992). Despite early widespread enthusiasm, many researchers now argue that NTFPs rarely generate sufficient income to be adequate vehicles for poverty alleviation or economic development (Brown and Rosendo, 2000; Neumann and Hirsch, 2000; Bray et al., 2005; Browder, 1992). Evaluation of the economic feasibility of NTFPs in Pete´n is beyond the scope of this paper. Rather, this paper focuses on the organizational implications of ACOFOP and its members’ decision to pursue diversified forest management. As discussed below, for ACOFOP and its members, diversified forest management has significant political and cultural dimensions in addition to economic objectives. 5.1. Four community concessions ACOFOP has targeted four associated community concession members – Carmelita, Uaxactu´n, Arbol Verde and Custosel – for promotion of collective diversification. Carmelita and Uaxactu´n are among the oldest communities in Pete´n, having been established as xate and chicle camps in the 1940s. Arbol Verde and Custosel are actually not communities, but for-profit organizations that draw members from multiple communities. Significantly, Carmelita and Uaxactu´n are physically located within their concessions. Such ‘‘resident’’ concession-holders are reported to be able to more closely monitor their forests but experience greater tensions between members and non-members. Often described by outsiders as having ‘‘forest culture’’ because of their traditionally non-timber forest strategies, they have only recent experience with timber. Arbol Verde and Custosel’s members live in the Buffer Zone outside their concessions. Their members lack extensive NTFP experience but as many worked previously in the private timber industry, they are said to have developed business-oriented organizations. 5.2. Non-timber forest products and services The communities’ concession contracts with the National Commission for Protected Areas (CONAP) include the right to manage non-timber forest activities such as xate, chicle, allspice, bayal vines and tourism. Significant local NTFP experience exists, especially in Carmelita and Uaxactu´n yet NTFP work has been organized by individuals rather than by communities. One Carmelita leader explained that concession members appropriate [non timber activities] at an individual level, but not at an organized level..We haven’t been able to integrate xate and chicle into the cooperative, although it is an integrated cooperative. We have focused on wood. Rarely has the concession been seen as integral. A concession in Pete´n is wood. We’re trying to integrate NTFPs now. The law actually requires communities to allow outsiders holding CONAP permits to harvest NTFPs, although recently, the

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concessions have been able to require local permits and to levy fees. In 2004, CONAP began encouraging concessions to include NTFPs in their annual Management Plans. One CONAP interviewee remarked that if done well, NTFPs could carry community forest industries ‘‘to a new level.’’ 5.2.1. Collectively organized xate The collection of xate jade palm (Chamaedorea elegans), an ornamental plant sold in US and European markets, brings a modest but steady year round income for many residents of communities like Uaxactu´n and Carmelita. Nevertheless, the traditional xate system, according to observers, has a number of problems (Monterroso, 2007a; Reyes Rodas and Wilshusen, 2006), including low wages and a payment by weight system that encourages unsustainable harvesting and high levels of waste. ACOFOP has strongly encouraged its members to organize to collaborate with a Rainforest Alliance-sponsored program to promote sustainable xate harvest. In 2005, the project began training xateros in Carmelita and Uaxactu´n to cut only marketable leaves and paid a higher price for commercial quality. Acceptable xate leaves are sorted by mostly female residents at community collection centers. A direct marketing relationship was established with a Houston firm. By early 2007, Carmelita and Uaxactu´n’s efforts were joined by four other community concessions and participants had formed a xate administrative committee. Arbol Verde and Custosel were not participating. In addition to Rainforest Alliance and ACOFOP, supporting institutions included the National Competitiveness Program (PRONACOM), CONAP, the Ministry of Agriculture, the World Conservation Society, and Counterpart International. Fifty xateros and 15 female palm leaf seleccionadoras were employed regularly. A cold storage room constructed with Ministry of Agriculture funds was installed rent-free near ACOFOP’s San Benito offices. Despite participants’ periodic difficulties in filling orders, the Houston buyer had increased its orders. Collective xate commercialization had increased in value from $US 58 700 the first year to nearly $US 210 000 in the first quarter of 2007 (Manzanero, 2007). The Rainforest Alliance coordinator reported that the xate group sought new markets in Europe and planned to seek certification (Pinelo, personal communication, 2007). Nevertheless, the organized xate activity in 2007 still faced significant challenges, including the need for significantly improved coordination and competition for labor with other activities such as tourism. Other administrative challenges included the need to develop effective financial tracking of the xate activity within concession books, and the need to separate and clarify specialized decision-making. The Rainforest Alliance coordinator observed ‘‘the key is organization.’’ He reported that Rainforest Alliance is encouraging participants to form an independent firm. ‘‘If [the communities] manage to form an organization, it will be very successful,’’ he remarked (Pinelo, personal communication 2007). 5.2.2. Collectively organized chicle Chicle (Manilkara sapota) is a natural gum extracted from the Chicozapote tree. Most of Guatemala’s current contribution to the world chicle market, 3500 quintales (quintal ¼ 46 kilos) a year, comes from the Pete´n. Petenera communities like Carmelita and Uaxactu´n have long histories of involvement with chicle. As with xate, while individual concession members have worked as chicleros and contratistas, the community concessions have had little organized involvement. Guatemala’s national chicle law predates the establishment of the MBR and in practice, supersedes many of the latter’s regulations. As one experienced chicle contractor explained, ‘‘the Chicle

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Law applies wherever there is forest. Any chiclero can carry out the activity in any forest, even on private land.’’ However, another contractor remarked that now in the MBR ‘‘nobody goes just where they want now. You go where you can.You pay for permits to the concessions you enter.’’ World demand and prices for chicle have dropped dramatically in recent years since the development of synthetic gums. Interviewees reported that recent poor rains and over harvesting have also reduced chicle inventories. These dual downward trends in chicle demand and supply have made the activity significantly less profitable than it once was. Nevertheless, a new opportunity has recently appeared for community involvement in chicle trade. CONAP presides over the National Chicle Council (CONACHI) which regulates chicle harvesting and commercialization in the Pete´n. After one of the Pete´n’s two licensed chicle cooperatives entered bankruptcy, CONAP and ACOFOP encouraged Carmelita, Uaxactu´n, Arbol Verde, Custosel and other concessions to organize to work with chicle. A community chicle activity would generate new jobs and income for concession members and non-members. Interviewees believed the activity, representing non-timber extraction, could also produce positive political impacts on the concessions’ national and international credibility. Carmelita and Uaxactu´n have the most chicle experience as most of its adult residents have worked part time chicleros. Uaxactu´n’s chicleros are mostly outsiders. Though significant chicle is believed to exist within their concessions, neither Arbol Verde’s nor Custosel’s members have extensive chicle experience. Most interviewees expressed cautious interest in collective organization to work with chicle. Many expressed concern about the heavy capital investments required and significant market risks. An additional problem is that chicle’s collection area, like that of xate, does not necessarily correspond to the area legally controlled by a single concession. Concessions Carmelita, AFISAP, Custodios de la Selva and Cruce a la Colorada organized to harvest and market nearly 250 quintales of chicle. Uaxactu´n chose not to participate in part because of internal resistance from locally based contractors. During the 2006–2007 season, two non-concession community groups joined the project and the six organizations marketed 500 quintales of chicle valued at $US 16 000, about 20% of Pete´n production that season. 110 persons were employed for five months, including concession members and non-members. The chicle project coordinator remarked that participants are seeking new markets that can bring higher prices for Peten’s chicle, including natural and fair trade outlets in Europe and the United States (Cuellar, personal communication 2007). Unlike the collective xate project, ACOFOP directly coordinates the chicle project; no secondary-level chicle organization has yet been developed. 5.2.3. Collectively organized tourism and cultural protection Guatemala’s Pete´n is internationally known for its ancient Mayan ruins. Several concession communities are popular tourist destinations. Carmelita is the gateway to the Mirador ruins. Uaxactu´n borders Tikal Park. Most tourism in the communities is organized by Flores-based agencies and brings little direct local benefit. The communities have the legal right to provide tourism services but most local offerings are organized by individual families. Long-time ACOFOP observer Rube´n Pasos believes that in addition to their demonstrated strengths in ‘‘conservation’’ and ‘‘community,’’ the concessions need to ‘‘assume the third ‘c’ of ‘culture’’’ (personal communication, 2005). ACOFOP’s leaders are not uncritical of tourism. ‘‘The idea that tourism is an ‘industry without chimneys’ is not true’’ ACOFOP’s Executive Director remarked. ‘‘There is a social, cultural and ecological impact.’’

Nevertheless, ACOFOP and many members believe that tourism has the most potential of all the region’s forest ‘‘products’’ to generate local economic benefits. It could also help increase external political support for the concession system. Each of the four concessions studied has varying levels of tourism experience. Tourism is Carmelita’s second most important economic activity, but is internally divided, with as many as seven competing tourism initiatives of uneven quality in the past. One local leader observed: ‘‘There are [external] donations available, but only if we are united. Money comes to organized groups.’’ Meanwhile, external pressure intensifies to develop tourism in Carmelita as a gateway to Mirador. According to ACOFOP leaders, the government has recently begun discussing improvement of Carmelita’s landing strip, and outside investors seek to purchase land for hotels and restaurants. Uaxactu´n is also an internationally known tourist destination. Several families run small hostels and restaurants or have members who work as guides or as Tikal Park employees. Tourists can purchase a ticket at Tikal’s Park entrance to visit Uaxactu´n’s Ocho Piedras site, but the community has no role in maintaining the site. Several residents interviewed complained that most organized tours are led by Flores-based agencies, bring their own guides and food, and leave behind only rubbish. Arbol Verde has invested in a small hotel, restaurant and meeting facility and reports that tourism generates about 36 jobs. ACOFOP and other groups have used the facilities for international meetings. Arbol Verde would like to tap more effectively into demand by tourists visiting nearby El Remate and Tikal. Custosel has recently begun developing a diversified farm and eco-tourism resort. Its leaders suggest that guests could be taken to visit the concession’s several archaeological sites and learn about its sustainable forestry operations. The communities need adequate infrastructure, training and studies of potential tourism attractions within their concessions. Perhaps most importantly, they need help developing an appropriate tourism ‘‘package’’ that would need not compete with bettercapitalized conventional eco-tourism. One Arbol Verde member suggested that Urban and rural people need each other. Not to try conquer one or the other, but to complement each other. The community manages information, about the forest, about wildlife. We don’t have to train them about that. We need an exchange. Not to annihilate the thought they have. The forest is a university of knowledge. Their knowledge serves us, and it serves them. We both learn. Indeed, Roney et al. (n.d.) recommended a cultural administration and monitoring system similar to that of the forest concessions. In 2007, ACOFOP, Arbol Verde, AFISAP, Custodios de la Selva, Carmelita and Uaxactu´n were working with the NGO Counterpart International to develop a tourism plan building on the communities’ unique identity as forest concessions. A community-based tourism committee has been formed but has not yet ‘‘developed its own momentum.’’ Unlike the chicle project, ACOFOP has not been able to dedicate staff to directly support tourism planning. 6. New organizational challenges for ACOFOP 6.1. Crosscutting organizational challenges of collective NTFP activities Through its roles of coordination, facilitation of external technical assistance, political representation, and direct technical services, ACOFOP has been helping members analyze how best to

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organize more diversified forest management. Collectively organized diversified forest activities pose new challenges as they bring into concession management new participants, sets of social relations, and commodity chains with diverse logics. Some implementation difficulties might be considered ‘‘normal’’ problems associated with added organizational complexity. Interviewees, for example, spoke of the administrative challenges of getting harvested xate and chicle to collection points and to market in timely fashion. Several argued for independent and professional management of each activity, separated from the concessions’ elected leadership. Other ‘‘normal’’ problems emerge from physical characteristics of the new activities and their productive processes. For example, the geographic distribution of the xate, chicle, and even tourism resources transcend individual concession boundaries, complicating concession organizations’ ability to regulate. The seasonal cycles of each resource sometimes set up conflicting demands for labor as with Carmelita’s difficulties in competing for xatero workers during high periods of demand for tourism and archaeological wage work. In addition to these expected organizational challenges, though, collectively organized diversified activities pose new crosscutting organizational problems for adequate representation, equity and legitimacy. 6.1.1. Representation Though collectively organized diversification aims to address growing tensions between concession members and nonmembers, it poses new representation challenges. First, the concessions have different histories, cultures and economic strategies and they are themselves internally diverse with complex politics, as underlined by Uaxactu´n’s decision not to join the collective chicle endeavor because of opposition by contractor members. New governance procedures will need to take into account these interested members as well as non-members in NTFP-related concession decision-making. Second, the disjunctures between concession boundaries and the natural distribution of non-timber resources require new types of coordination among concessions and other actors. Third, though some interviewees called for clear separation of concession organizations’ political and business decision-making, others feared that if too separate, a new collective endeavor might assume an independent trajectory, undermining cohesion within participating concession cooperatives and the concession system as a whole. Finally, ACOFOP fears that its community political representation and technical support roles could be undermined if it becomes too closely involved in direct business operations. 6.1.2. Equity Internal controversy related to equity has already emerged in the new collective NTFP activities. For example, some participants in the collective xate project argue that NTFP benefits should be distributed only among those directly investing time and money in the activity. By contrast, commercial timber returns are in most concessions distributed among all members after investment in recapitalization and social projects. Locally organized tourism, already internally divided, drives this debate in Carmelita, but also shapes discussion of the collective organization of xate and chicle. Several interviewees feared that more exclusive distribution practices would inevitably fragment the overall concession organization. 6.1.3. Legitimacy A move toward more diversified forest management, finally, has implications for the concessions’ legitimacy. Internal legitimacy of the new NTFP activities will be shaped by how the concessions arrange for adequate representation of interested member and

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non-member actors and organize distribution of benefits and costs to provide adequate incentives without undermining the concession movement’s political coherence. Externally, the collective NTFP activities require that new community management roles be acknowledged as legitimate by actors at multiple levels, some of which wield significant power. Though the concessions have legal NTFP rights, diversification invokes overlapping government jurisdictions. In tourism and cultural protection, for example, formal agreements to coordinate monitoring and regulation would need to be worked out with CONAP, the Ministries of Tourism and Culture and others. The Mirador Basin expansion initiative highlighted the intense international interest in developing the Pete´n’s tourism potential. National and international biodiversity and cultural conservation organizations continue to express concern for the integrity of Pete´n’s natural and cultural resources. ACOFOP and the community concessions will need to communicate persuasively how their diversified forest management strengthens community capacity to contribute to conservation and development. 6.2. Toward a new organizational approach As they diversify, ACOFOP and its members require new organizational approaches to balance effective production coordination with maintenance of adequate representation, equity and legitimacy. A priori organizational design is unlikely to be effective in the Pete´n, where ACOFOP’s members have in the past rejected topdown relations with external NGOS (Sundberg, 1998; Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005; Monterroso, 2007b). Indeed, ACOFOP and its members are already experimenting with at least three organizational approaches for incorporating NTFPs into the concession system. First, each NTFP activity could be decentralized by productive sector. The xate committee formed by participants in the Rainforest Alliance xate project and their plans for an independent firm, represent this alternative. This decentralized system could be flexible yet remain directly accountable to participating communities and associations. It would apply what global value chain researchers call ‘‘arms-length market relationships,’’ in which parameters of operation are defined autonomously by each firm at its point in the chain rather than being subject to governance from outside the chain (Fitter and Kaplinsky, 2001: 14). Nevertheless, the controversy over how to distribute NTFP profits underscores that all market activity, conventional or alternative, is structured by governance forms regulating market entry, links among actors, and benefit distribution (Polanyi, 1944; Taylor, 2005: 131). A second organizational alternative involves ACOFOP directly in developing and implementing NTFP activities, an approach first tested with the ACOFOP’s special Commercialization Liaison Office, eventually spun off as Forescom (Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005). ACOFOP’s direct coordination of the collective chicle project represents this approach. Some interviewees argued, nevertheless, that involving ACOFOP too directly in production could undermine its internal and external legitimacy as indigenous ‘‘accompanist’’ (Go´mez and Me´ndez, 2005; Cronkleton et al., 2008) to all its members. Indeed, Forescom was made independent of ACOFOP because of similar concerns. A related, third alternative has been suggested: to involve Forescom directly in NTFPs but in close coordination with ACOFOP, which sits on its board of directors. In interviews and feedback discussions, ACOFOP and concession leaders expressed strong support for integrating collective NTFP activities into Forescom once the firm overcomes current internal difficulties. One leader argued, ‘‘We’ve learned from our experience with Forescom that it is so costly, in money and time, to develop a new organization. It doesn’t make sense to create a new organization for every new

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activity. We need to strengthen what we have.’’ This third alternative might best allow ACOFOP to balance economic coordination and assistance with political support of the concession system. It is not yet clear which organizational alternative or alternatives ACOFOP and its members will pursue. 7. Conclusion The community forest concessions of Pete´n emerged from an historical context of intense competition to manage the region’s natural and cultural wealth for development and conservation. While the concession experience is still in relatively early stages, preliminary comparative studies of forest degradation and economic and social evaluations suggest that despite serious weaknesses in some concessions, community-based resource management is producing significantly positive environmental and social outcomes. Nevertheless, the controversy over the Mirador Basin expansion illustrates that strong external interest in protecting and developing the Pete´n’s resources continues and that doubts about community-based management remain significant. As a secondary-level community-based organization, ACOFOP has provided crucial support to the concessions. Similar to agrarian federations elsewhere, ACOFOP began in a political advocacy role and later assumed additional activities of economic coordination, facilitation of external assistance, and direct provision of technical support. Though the community concessions are still largely focused on commercial timber as their main management activity, ACOFOP and many of its members believe that their future lies in diversification. Diversification may help them better manage ongoing problems of representation, equity and legitimacy, strengthening their role in managing Pete´n’s resources. Diversification poses new organizational challenges, yet ACOFOP and its participants are actively experimenting with arrangements appropriate to a rapidly changing ecological and political environment. The case of ACOFOP and the community concessions has larger implications for how community organization for resource management might be analyzed and strengthened. Instead of assuming that common pool resource management is driven mainly by individual rationality, it might be more fruitfully viewed as shaped by collective, organizational processes. Communities’ organizations can be seen as dynamic rather than static arrangements and as peopled by actors actively reshaping their organizations in response to changing internal and external conditions. Secondary-level community associations are particularly instructive cases for exploring the links between action at communitylevel scales and the larger political economy. Agrarian organizations such as ACOFOP struggle to change as they claim more responsibility for natural resources without undermining the characteristics of representativeness, equity and legitimacy that have often made them successful advocates for rural peoples. How might ACOFOP and similar community-based organizations best be supported from the outside? Bebbington writes that for agrarian federations to develop the capacity for their multiple roles, they require special and multiple forms of support (1996; Bebbington et al., 1996). In Pete´n, external financial and technical support has been crucial for developing the community concession system. Today, concession members and their new non-member colleagues need technical training and support, especially with commercialization, given the problems with NTFPs experienced elsewhere. Appropriate external assistance would recognize the significance of internal actors’ own efforts to experiment with organizational design. Effective technical assistance would provide necessary external expertise yet support this local capacity to build and adapt resilient organizations (Taylor et al., 2008).

The debate over the appropriate role of communities in natural resource management, especially in areas of threatened high value biodiversity, continues without clear resolution. Yet communities continue to claim growing responsibilities for managing local resources. Those living in and around forests in the foreseeable future will continue to need viable livelihoods compatible with conservation. They will continue to need effective ways to negotiate and consolidate their rights to manage resources. They will continue to need to critically evaluate the complex relationships among the diverse political and market-based claims they make to their resources. They will continue, therefore, to need to build and adapt community-based organizations that can pursue multiple purposes, but balance a capacity for change with commitment to their core community-based objectives. More attention and support is needed to local peoples’ own capacities to organize and reorganize for conservation and development. The experiences of ACOFOP and the concessions suggest that under the right conditions, with appropriate support, communities can be effective stewards of forest resources and conscientious partners in conservation. Communities’ relationships to the forest go beyond timber. Their economic organizations are much more than enterprises. Their benefits go beyond the economic bottom line because of local peoples’ unique, complex relationships to the forest. By building on the close connections among conservation, community and culture, community members themselves may well contribute innovative and useful organizational models needed to consolidate a more sustainable future for new generations of stakeholders in the world’s forests. Acknowledgements I wish to thank the Center for International Forestry Research and the Association of Forest Communities of Pete´n for financial and logistical support of the fieldwork portion of this study. I also owe a great debt to my colleagues in the CIFOR Grassroots Assistance Project, from whose work I’ve learned much, and especially to Rube´n Pasos of ACICAFOC, Peter Cronkleton of CIFOR and Deborah Barry of the Ford Foundation for their support of this study. It was the active interest and support of Marcedonio Cortave and the other leaders and members of the community concessions of Pete´n, however, which made this research possible. Special thanks are due to Isael Recinos for his community experience and to Bridget Julian for her editorial expertise. I am responsible, of course, for all errors of fact or interpretation. References Agrawal, A., Gibson, C.C., 1999. Enchantment and disenchantment: the role of community in natural resource conservation. World Dev. 27, 629–649. Andolina, R., 2003. The sovereign and its shadow: constituent assembly and indigenous movement in ecuador. J. Lat. Am. Stud. 35, 721–750. Antinori, C., Garcia-Lopez, G.A., 2008. Cross-scale linkages in common-pool resource management: the evolution of forest associations in the Mexican forest commons. In: Presented at the 12th IASC 2008 Biennial Conference, University of Gloucester, Cheltenham, England, U.K. Argyris, C., Scho¨n, D., 1978. Organizational Learning. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. Asociacio´n de Comunidades Forestales de Pete´n, 2008. ACOFOP: Asociacio´n de Comunidades Forestales de Pete´n. http://acofop.org/portal/index.php (accessed November 2008). Asociacio´n de Comunidades Forestales de Pete´n (ACOFOP), 2005. Representamos al Proyecto Forestal Comunitario ma´s Grande del Mundo. http://www.acofop.org/ (accessed February 2005). Barrett, C.B., Brandon, K., Gibson, C., Gjertsen, H., 2001. Conserving tropical biodiversity amid weak institutions. BioScience 51, 497–502. Bebbington, A., 1996. Organizations and intensifications: Campesino federations, rural livelihoods and agricultural technology in the Andes and Amazonia. World Dev. 24, 1161–1177. Bebbington, A., 1997. Social capital and rural intensification: local organizations and islands of sustainability in the rural Andes. The Geograph. J. 163, 189–197.

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