A delicate balance

Community and Participatory Management of Natural Resources: Experiences from Mesoamerica’s Indigenous Peoples and Forest Communities

By Jeff Brez and Greg Benchwick
In today’s side event Community and Participatory Management of Natural Resources: Experiences from Mesoamerica’s Indigenous Peoples and Forest Communities, IFAD’s Latin America and the Caribbean Division hosted a robust discussion on how international organizations, indigenous peoples, governments and other key stakeholders can come together to create sustainable livelihood solutions from the world’s forests. It’s a matter of balancing development with poverty reduction - and sustainable forestry management with economic development - to create business (and development) models that work for all involved.

What was very clear in the discussion was the strong desire of the communities to identify more sustainable livelihood solutions within the forests, both from timber and non-timber products. These types of mechanisms would allow them to continue their way of life.

There was also a lot of excitement regarding the variety of ways that some communities are managing to earn sustainable incomes - such as through the sale of resin or by tapping the still-unknown potential of the forest to provide other sources of income, for example through medicinal plants or protection of biodiversity that may have other medical applications. (...)

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