Search

This article analyzes the knowledge and attitudes of high school students regarding the temperate mountain forest of La Malinche National Park, Tlaxcala, Mexico, before and after the implementation of the science communication program called "Los Tesoros de La Malinche" (The Treasures of La Malinche). The assessment included drawings, open questions, closed questions and Likert scale, and it was applied to 56 high school students (36 girls and 20 boys) from an urban school (29) in Mexico City and a rural school (27) located at the village of Ixtenco, Tlaxcala. The results showed that the development of the "Los Tesoros de La Malinche" program increased students' knowledge and awareness of biodiversity within the National Park. The program also reinforced positive attitudes toward biodiversity conservation at both local and global scales.

This article explores the relationship between institutional funding for research and community-based or co-enquiry research practice. It examines the implementation of co-enquiry research in the COMBIOSERVE project, which was funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme for research and innovation, between the years 2012 and 2015. Research partnerships between Latin American and European civil society organisations, research institutions, and Latin American rural communities are analysed. Challenges for effective collaboration in co-enquiry and lessons learned for research policy and practice are outlined. Based on our case study we suggest that: (1) the established values and practices of academia seem largely unfavourable towards alternative forms of research, such as co-enquiry; (2) the policies and administrative practices of this European Commission funding are unsuitable for adopting participatory forms of enquiry; and (3) the approach to research funding supports short engagements with communities whereas long-term collaborations are more desirable. Based on our case study, we propose more flexible funding models that support face-to-face meetings between researchers and communities from the time of proposal drafting, adaptation of research processes to local dynamics, adaptation of administrative processes to the capacities of all participants, and potential for long-term collaborations. Large-scale funding bodies such as European Commission research programmes are leaders in the evolution of research policy and practice. They have the power and the opportunity to publicly acknowledge the value of partnerships with civil society organisations and communities, actively support co-enquiry, and foment interest in innovative forms of research.

In the context of collaborative resource management, mental models can provide insights on participants' understanding of the resource management system and in so doing allow researchers and practitioners to derive lessons about the success or failure of comanagement approaches. We analyzed individual and group mental models in the comanaged small-scale fishery of La Encrucijada, Mexico, active since 2009. Mental models reveal a strong consensus around the idea that the comanagement initiative is a governmentled partnership to subsidize fishers. This belief reflects a history of state paternalism and coexists with a diversity of views about who are the actors involved in comanagement, their role in the fishery, and the resources mobilized through comanagement. We argue that local participants' limited understanding of the collaborative mechanisms established by the comanagement initiative suggests a failure of the promoting actors to communicate the initiative's environmental and social goals and to exploit its transformative potential in terms of actors' empowerment and participation in the long term. This research contributes to the burgeoning literature on the use of mental models as a means to unravel the cognitive aspects that may lie underneath the success or failure of natural resource governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of anthropogenic stress on ecological systems at multiple scales, involving rural people in planning for adaptation to social-ecological changes is crucial to strengthen local efforts in dealing with uncertainty. In protected areas, this enquiry is even more relevant since conservation regulations can impinge negatively on people's ability to adapt. In this paper, we use participatory scenarios to explore the desired adaptation options of four rural communities located in two biosphere reserves in Bolivia and Mexico. We collaboratively design four plausible scenarios in each country that encompass distinct climatic, policy, and socio-economic horizons up to 2030. In Bolivia, the scenarios consider colonisation and infrastructure development as key drivers of social-ecological change, whereas in Mexico drivers include rainfall variability and conservation regulations. We discuss these scenarios at community level and highlight that winners and losers of such scenarios are significantly determined by people's ability to access land and natural resources. Communities’ preferred policies and strategies for their future adaptation remain limited, thus revealing a context of restricted opportunities in both biosphere reserves. We conclude with policy recommendations to support local livelihoods in the studied protected areas and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]