Productive Landscapes Community-Based Forestry Enterprises Mexico Field Verification Report

ProLand is undertaking a series of field trips to validate the draft Sourcebook for USAID field Missions on designing and implementing programs and activities incorporating community-based forestry enterprises (CBFEs) that emphasize timber production as an integral part of sustainable landscapes. These field visits provide information from in-country USAID officers and local practitioners as well as other knowledgeable sources.

The draft Sourcebook is based upon ProLand’s “An assessment of critical enabling conditions for community-based forestry enterprises.” The assessment identified four categories of critical enabling conditions required for successful CBFEs:

1. Secure rights to develop, exclude others, and sell a forest product or service and enable longterm CBFE investment. While these rights are the most basic policy requirement, other policies contribute to a robust enabling environment.
2. Governance, organization, and management that provides effective leadership and technical knowledge to the CBFE, accountability to the community, and ensures the CBFE’s financial integrity.
3. A viable social enterprise model that produces financial benefits sufficient to reinvest in forest and business management and growth, and provides economic benefits (though not necessarily cash) to the community as a whole.
4. Partnerships with value chain actors to access external funding and technical support, help aggregate timber from several communities or individual producers, market timber to buyers, and build/maintain infrastructure. These partners include national and local government, donors, civil society organizations, and private sector entities.

The assessment included input from 18 key informants, including several from USAID field missions. ProLand asked the latter if their Missions welcomed, and were suitable for, Sourcebook validation. Mexico’s Director, Office of Sustainable Development, expressed strong interest in participating on behalf of the Mission; thus, Mexico became the site of the first validation visit.