Carbon forestry and agrarian change: access and land control in a Mexican rainforest

Abstract

Over the last decade, carbon forestry has grown in Chiapas, where small farmers are increasingly turning to planting carbon-sequestering trees and the carbon market as a new source of income. Using an agrarian political ecology approach, and based on empirical research in a rainforest community in the Lacandon Jungle, I argue that while carbon offset producers continue to have formal land rights, they lose some of the short-term benefits of land in part through the use of land for carbon-sequestering trees but mostly through the preoccupation of labor. The labor requirements for carbon production act as a type of enclosure mechanism that constrains more traditional land uses such as the production of subsistence and annual cash crops. Nevertheless, campesinos continue to participate in carbon forestry as a means to maintain a foothold on their land in the wake of neoliberal agrarian policies that threaten to displace them. Carbon forestry enables campesinos to maintain their land through productive activity, which, though it delivers limited short-term income, allows them to stake claims to land by demonstrating active land use. This paper illustrates the continued relevance of the agrarian question.

Keywords:

• carbon forestry
• carbon market
• environmental enclosure
• agrarian question
• Chiapas
• Mexico

Notes

¹Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). The plus refers to the enhancement of carbon stocks through sustainable forest management and attention to needs of local communities.

²Additionality signifies the degree to which emission reductions are additional and would not have occurred in the absence of the carbon offset project.

³According to the IPCC, leakage ‘refers to the situation in which a carbon sequestration activity (e.g. tree planting) on one piece of land inadvertently, directly, or indirectly triggers an activity which, in whole or part, counteracts the carbon effects of the initial activity’ (Metz 2001, 331).

⁴AMBIO is not an acronym, but is the fusion of the words Ambiente (meaning environment in Spanish) and bio (meaning life from the Greek word bios) (AMBIO webpage, July 2011). The full name of the NGO is COOPERATIVA AMBIO. It is always written in capital letters.

⁵El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (The Research Institution of the Southern Border).

⁶CONAFOR, national forestry commission; CONANP, conservation agency; SEMARNAT, national agency in charge of environment and natural resources; INEGI, national agency governing statistics and geography.

⁷Scolel Te is a well studied carbon forestry project, from which a number of articles have been published (Brown and Corbera 2003, Corbera and Brown 2010, Corbera et al. 2007, De Jong et al. 1995, Nelson and de Jong 2003).

⁸Mexican farmers have been integral to ecosystem service projects because, despite increasing land privatization, they continue to control a large area of productive agrarian land in the form of ejidos and comunidades (McAfee and Shapiro 2010).

⁹‘We Work Together’, in Tzotzil. Pajal was formed in 1982 to offer credit, marketing, and technical support to coffee producers and end financial dependency on the state (Benjamin 1996).

¹⁰Interview with Richard Tipper (26 April 2006).

¹¹The carbon market represents emissions trades of greenhouse gas emissions associated with climate change.

¹²International Federation of the Automobile.

¹³Interview with AMBIO staff member (16 October 2009).

¹⁴Throughout this document use the word corn to mean maize.

¹⁵At the higher level, this amounts to approximately $138 USD per hectare per annual payment. Based on interviews and data provided by AMBIO.

¹⁶Payments are provided in years 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10.

¹⁷Through the Clean Development Mechanism, developing countries can implement clean energy or forestry-based projects that offset greenhouse gas emissions, and sell associated carbon credits to industrialized countries, which have emissions limits under the Kyoto Protocol climate change treaty.

¹⁸Afforestation refers to the establishment of forests on land not previously forested, and reforestation refers to the establishment of forests on previously forested land.

¹⁹Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales.

²⁰In the Land use, Land-use Change and Forestry report, the IPCC defines permanence as ‘The longevity of a carbon pool and the stability of its stocks, given the management and disturbance environment in which it occurs’ (Watson 2000, 20).

²¹Interview with Richard Tipper (26 April 2006).

²²An ejido is a form of communal land tenure where members have use rights to both individual and communal plots of land. According to Stephen, ‘The formation of ejidos since the Mexican Revolution has involved the transference of over 70 million hectares from large estates to slightly more than three million peasant beneficiaries’ (Stephen 1998, 9).

²³An agrarian community is a communal form of land tenure for indigenous communities.

²⁴The Lacandones occupy the communities of Naja, Metzabok, and Lacanja; the Tzeltales occupy Neuvo Palistina, and the Choles occupy Frontera Corozal. In March 1972, a presidential decree gave 66 indigenous Lacandon families, based on the assumption that they were the original inhabitants of the Lacandon Jungle, rights to over 600,000 hectares of rainforest land. Later, the Tzeltales and Choles claimed that they, not the Lacandones, were the original inhabitants of the Lacandon Jungle, and in 1976, these groups also gained access to land as members of the Lacandon Community (Trench 2008).

²⁵Luis Echeverria, who then served as Minister of Interior, was largely held responsible for the massacre of student activists following a 1968 demonstration in Mexico City's Tlatelolco Square. When he became president in 1970, he supported a number of peasant and populist programs, some argue in an effort to improve his public image (Collier and Quaratiello 1999).

²⁶Neoliberalism is an economic ideology that promotes free markets, private property, and a minimalist state.

²⁷In combination with the Mexican Coffee Institute, protective international markets and price controls administered by London-based International Coffee Organization together were largely responsible for the “golden era” of coffee (Pérez-Grovas et al. 2001), which spanned from 1962 to 1989.

²⁸One example is PRONASOL, Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (National Solidarity Program).

²⁹Timber harvesting was not yet an option at this time due to the 1989 forestry ban.

³⁰Carbon producers in Frontera Corozal claimed that they chose to plant timber trees on their lands because various crops including corn had a lower market value since the implementation of NAFTA, and corn subsidies through PROCAMPO had ended. PROCAMPO was initiated in 1994 and was aimed at providing peasants with support during the initial years of NAFTA's implementation (Janvry and Sadoulet 2001). PROCAMPO provided cash payments (an income subsidy) based on the number of hectares planted with particular agricultural crops. Although many continued to grow corn for subsistence purposes, few campesinos now grow corn for sale on the market, and increasingly purchase less expensive imported US corn.

³¹The first phase of ejido privatization was initiated through a process of surveying and titling land called the Program for Certification of Ejidal Rights and Titling of Urban House Lots – commonly known as PROCEDE (Programa de Certificación de Derechos Ejidales y Titulación de Solares Urbanos). The equivalent for the mainly indigenous agrarian communities is called PROCECOM.

³²Interview with Pedro Díaz Solís (18 November 2007).

³³A comunero refers to a land rights holder in an agrarian community.

³⁴Solís calculated that each comunero has to date received approximately MX$100,000 pesos (USD 10,000).

³⁵Interview with Manuel (16 November 2007). The names of campesinos are pseudonyms. With the exception of leaders within the community, some institutional actors, and academic scholars, I have changed the names of informants associated with this study.

³⁶From interview with staff member of CONANP (15 September 2007).

³⁷Interview with Pedro Díaz Solís (18 November 2007).

³⁹ http://www.moon.com/files/map-images/chia_02_rio-usumacinta.jpg [emphasis added] (July 2010).

³⁸Programa Nacional de Reforestación.

⁴⁰Clearing one hectare with machete and axe requires 8 jornales or labor days as opposed to the 30 to 40 jornales required to clear one hectare of mature forest (Nations and Nigh 1980).

⁴¹Each comunero has land rights to 70 hectares, 20 hectares of which were to be shared between two sons, leaving comuneros with 50 hectares. Most of the comuneros have not shared land with their sons, and therefore maintain that they have rights to 70 hectares. This has caused intergenerational conflicts within Frontera Corozal.

⁴²Transport costs are approximately MX$20 to 30 pesos (USD 2–3) round-trip, and more if farmers are returning with bundles from a harvest (based on interviews with campesinos).

⁴³On multiple occasions, AMBIO staff described the project's time horizon as being linked to the first timber rotation, defined as 20 to 30 years, with an average of 25 years.

⁴⁴Interview with Duncan Golicher (5 December 2007).

⁴⁵ El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (The Research Institution of the Southern Border).

⁴⁶Interview with Esteban (27 May 2007).

⁴⁷Interview with Nancy Loosemore (Centro Nacional de Estudios Agronómicos de las Regiones Cálidas (CNEARC), Francia) (27 September 2007), and evident through my interviews with various comuneros in Frontera Corozal.

⁴⁸Remittances also play a significant role in household income for many families in Frontera Corozal.

⁴⁹The Plan Vivo is a land management tool intended to streamline project requirements so that smallholder land is sufficiently legible for the inclusion in the carbon market. As part of the Plan Vivo, carbon producers choose from a set of carbon activities and participate in land mapping and labor scheduling.

⁵⁰Interview with Manuel (16 November 2007).

⁵¹Interview with Francisco (19 May 2007).

⁵²According to the Scolel Té 2009 annual report, sapling survival rate is 88%. However, according to interviews, survival rates are between 60% and 83%, depending on the source of the seedlings. Sourced from a nursery, plants are more likely to survive, compared to saplings pulled from communal forest land (based on an interview with Estaban, 4 November 2007, and various comuneros between 29 October and 16 November 2007).

⁵³Interview with Francisco (19 May 2007).

⁵⁴Interview with Manuel (16 November 2007).

⁵⁵Two out of 10 active members said that they found carbon payments to be fair.

⁵⁶Interview with Esteban (4 November 2007).

⁵⁷The comuneros who appear to struggle most with labor demands of the project do not have consistent help in the field. This lack of family labor has been exacerbated with the exclusion of adult sons from land access. Many have abandoned farm work or left Frontera Corozal in search of wage labor in Mexican cities or across the border in the US.

⁵⁸Interview with Richard Tipper (26 April 2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tracey Muttoo Osborne

The author would like to thank Nancy Peluso, Christian Lund and the reviewers for their insightful comments on this paper; Gillian Hart for her earlier feedback on this research; and the community of Frontera Corozal for their time and hospitality.