Relationship between community capitals and governance: The perspective of local actors in the Maya Biosphere Reserve

Internationally, the decentralization of forest management from central government control to collaborative stewardship by local communities is gaining popularity. Forest decentralization is seen as a means of promoting both conservation and community economic development while decreasing government agencies’ management burdens. However, not all community forest programs have been able to successfully achieve both forest conservation and socio-economic development. A growing body of literature identifies under what circumstances local groups can collective action dilemmas in resource management. While a wealth of literature focuses on institutional influence in common-pool resource management, recent research emphasizes the need to understand both how the local context and local governance structures influence community forestry outcomes. The goal of this study is to understand how governance and community resources interact to facilitate or impede the establishment and management of community-based forest enterprises. This paper addresses this question through a cross-case analysis of community forest enterprises in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Results highlight the importance of social capital reflecting a growing body of research that has found that local-level network-based relationships are an important factor that either facilitates or impedes community governance processes. In addition, for many attributes of good governance, the resources that are typically seen as the most difficult to measure such as cultural capital, human capital and social relationships were also seen as having the greatest impact on governance.