Mexico’s Community Forest Enterprises: Success on the Commons and the Seeds of a Good Anthropocene

“At a time when climate change, deforestation, and rural poverty have emerged as global scourges, Mexico’s Community Forest Enterprises examines how forest communities in Mexico beat the odds by forming grassroots timber companies capable of managing collective resources and sustaining livelihoods. David Barton Bray brings decades of research to bear in this comprehensive examination of the theory and practice of common pool resource management in Mexican forests. The result is an indispensable study of how the interaction of institutions and social capital can address some of the most intractable challenges facing the world today.”—Christopher R. Boyer, author of Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico “Mexico’s Community Forest Enterprises is the culmination of a lifetime of research on how community forests in Mexico are successful and why some of them fail. Bray captures the complexity of Mexican forestry in a masterful way. Amidst all the negative news about global deforestation, Bray makes a compelling case for understanding the stories that we don’t get to hear much on the media, the success of common property regimes in Mexican forests can be a source of hope to the future of community forests.”—JosÉ E. MartÍnez-Reyes, author of Moral Ecology of a Forest: The Nature Industry and Maya Post-Conservation