Mexico’s Water Solution from Integrated Landscape Management

MexiCo

The Amanalco-Valle Bravo Basin located near Mexico City is one of Mexico’s highly valued natural resources. Some describe it as a promising area for creating markets for environmental services, and for good reason. The valley’s rich natural resource base includes over 35,000 hectares of temperate forest, nearly 18,000 hectares of agricultural land, 5,300 hectares of pastureland, and 1,770 hectares of surface bodies of water.

Today, the Amanalco-Valle Bravo Basin feeds the Valle de Bravo dam that supplies water to 8 million people, including 40 percent of the drinking water of the Cutzamala System, which accounts for 20 percent of the water that is consumed in Mexico City and other cities and towns in the State of Mexico. The basin’s natural resources support the livelihoods of 53 highly marginalized rural communities. But it was not always this way. Population pressure and unplanned development led to the basin’s environmental degradation over at least 15 years.

Then, in 2007, the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS)—a nongovernmental not-for-profit organization that was created in 1996 to address community forest use, forest conservation, forest industrialization, and forest commercialization—started working in the basin under the Integrated Landscape Management Project. Guided by a few core principles, CCMSS’s strategy became strengthening governance capacities and sustainable land use management to improve the living conditions of the local population.

CCMSS focuses on three major activities: strengthening local governance and building social capital; applying sustainable land management

through the hands of rural communities; and setting up mechanisms of payment for environmental services (PES) and Reduced Carbon Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). Governance and social capital are built through a communal approach. In Mexico, ejidos and communities collectively own 60 percent of the land, so CCMSS is working with a dozen communities and ejidos to implement land use plans and improve their natural resource management strategies. Some 1,500 smallholder farmer families practice sustainable agriculture and forestry management on over 15,200 hectares of communal areas and ejidos. The benefits are apparent down to the household level. The communities have worked on restoration of over 2,800 hectares of forest and have planted 22 new hectares of native tree forests.

CCMSS also works closely with 122 peasant families that have converted their 200 hectares of agricultural land to sustainable agriculture, while eliminating agrochemicals and developing activities to regenerate and protect soils and improve hydrological services.

At least 10 percent of the families now produce 3–5 tons of compost per hectare per year to improve soil fertility. There is evidence of increased food security among the farming families and crop diversity has increased from just one—corn—to seven crops, including fruit trees. Further, women make up 40 percent of the participants and agricultural productivity for the participating families increased by 20 to 50 percent. CCMSS promotes community forest management as a means to achieve forest conservation and stimulate development for people living in the forests. It is also expected to help rural communities apply forest management schemes on par with international standards of best forest management practices. CCMSS participates in research and public policy analyses that promote favorable governmental actions for community management and forest use and that aim to improve the living conditions of hundreds of rural communities. CCMSS also focuses on encouraging forest research and knowledge sharing about the principle problems and important trends in forest management. The Integrated Landscape Management Project could achieve more, much more, if scaled up.