Challenges to sustainable forest management and stewardship in Mexico

Mexico’s forests, cover 56.5 million hectares characterized by high biological diversity and biological productivity. Forest regions nationwide are home to 14 million people, 28 % of whom speak an indigenous language, half of them live in extreme poverty. Forest communities own 80 % of the country's forest lands and produce 80 % of its ´ timber production, their share of the harvest of non-timber forest products is even larger. Community forest management in Mexico is the result of different processes and policies: the Land Tenure Reform carried on from the 1930 to the 1970 and various forest policies that for the last 25 years, that have seek to promote a sustained forest use. Some of communities have achieved remarkable conservation gains: the largest and best preserved area of cloud forest in the country is located in community-protected areas. 46 % of the forest communities of Mexico's main temperate forest states have areas devoted exclusively to conservation. No other country in the world has as much community-managed forest land, neither a similar extent of community forest land certified as managed in a sustainable manner