Uaxactún, Guatemala — Research has shown that indigenous peoples and local communities play a key role in biodiversity and forest conservation in Central America and Mexico. Drawing on case studies from across the region, a new report adds to the mounting evidence that securing and implementing indigenous and community rights to their lands and forests effectively reduces deforestation and bolsters the protection of biodiversity.

The report, Conservation and Community Rights: Lessons from Mesoamerica, was authored by the PRISMA Foundation, an environmental and development research center based in El Salvador. The publication was released in Mexico City, coinciding with the thirteenth conference of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which took place December 4 to 17 in Cancun.

Promising success stories are examined in the report, including community forest management in northern Guatemala and indigenous conservation in eastern Panama. The report asserts the region is uniquely positioned to provide lessons in rights-based conservation to the rest of the world.

"From Mexico to Panama, indigenous peoples and local communities have legally recognized rights to approximately 65% of the forests in Mesoamerica, far exceeding any other region in the world," the report's authors write. That is more than twice the level of indigenous and community tenure rights of Latin America as a whole (32 percent) or of Asia (30 percent), according to their research.

Gaps in Rights and Recognition

The recognition of rights, however, doesn't automatically mean they are taken into consideration when it comes to conservation policy.

"As a nation, Mexico has recognized the rights of indigenous and rural peoples to a large part of our country's territory," Gustavo Sánchez, a representative of the Mexican Network of Community Forest Organizations, said in a December 8 statement marking the release of the PRISMA report.