Green Rural Enterprises: guidelines for empowering local groups towards sustainable ventures

Abstract

In developing countries rural communities frequently face conditions of economic poverty, yet these areas are often rich in natural resources and biodiversity. We propose the concept of Green Rural Enterprise (GRE) and a methodology for its assessment by scoring 38 indicators based upon: (1) wise use of natural resources, (2) territorial rural development, (3) local rural groups and (4) sustainability-driven enterprise. Three cases of the auto-evaluation of community-based ecotourism groups are presented, where self-assessment is emphasised as an empowering tool. This method is useful for NGOs and funding agencies to compare and evaluate conservation ventures and to facilitate joint-work between them.

Keywords:

• rural entrepreneurship
• sustainability indicators
• community-based ecotourism
• Mexico

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by ITTO (PD349/05 Rev.2(F)) and RED-PD 045/11 Rev.2 (M), CONACYT (scholarship 208529). The authors wish to thank those who participated in the evaluation for helping us develop and test this methodology, especially David Díaz for his contribution to the GRE indicators; the Institute of Ecology A.C. (Mexico) (902-17), the Iberoamerican Biodiversity Centre (CIBIO) of the University of Alicante (Spain), Bianca Delfosse, Rubén Lazos, Allison Jermain, and the anonymous reviewers who enriched this paper with their valuable comments.