Trans-Border Indigenous Environmental Governance: Assessing the Connections of Indigenous Mexicans in the U.S. to Their Communities of Origin

这个项目调查了墨西哥被认为是生物多样性热点地区的土著居民向美国移民的环境后果。墨西哥是一个生物多样性丰富的国家，是农业驯化的中心，也是一个土著社区控制着全国10%以上土地面积的国家。墨西哥土著“领土社区”对于通过其环境治理帮助保护和维持该国的生物多样性至关重要。社区的集体决策不仅指导个人成员使用公共土地，而且还被认为是墨西哥联邦政府和非政府组织日益推动的保护战略的关键角色，包括社区林业、社区保护区、土地使用规划和分区，以及环境服务项目的支付。所有这些环境管理战略都依赖于公共机构和关于使用公共领土的集体决策。然而，领土社区管理其领土环境的能力受到外移模式的威胁，这种模式使那些在公共工程的建设和维护中提供集体决策、领导和劳动力的人离开。在以前的时代，理想的情况是社区成员出生、生活和死亡都在自己的领土上，只有暂时的迁移才会中断。这种地理状况正在发生变化。目前，许多社区已经成为跨界社区，其成员并不长期居住在社区领土上，但往往在经济上支持母国境内的家庭，他们可能在遥远的地方参与集体决策，并可能在一生中的不同时期返回母国。本项目审查墨西哥土著领土社区（即ejidos和communades）环境治理的跨界方面，其中包括土地、社区成员以及这些居民管理自己及其领土的机构。与墨西哥科学家合作，该项目试图通过对美国移民的半结构化访谈来揭示这些社区的跨国界地理维度，了解他们与家乡的联系，特别是他们是否参加正式或非正式的家乡协会，他们是否响应当地社区的号召，返回墨西哥担任无偿领导职务，支付社区征收的劳动税，为环保或其他活动汇款，以及他们是否计划在以后的生活中返回祖国。访谈还将调查家乡的农业土地利用情况，如向其他家庭成员提供的贷款、土地放弃情况以及未来使用田地的计划。该项目显示了跨界墨西哥土著社区在生物多样性领土的环境治理中的作用。该项目扩大了美国拉丁裔学生作为项目研究助理和留学奖学金获得者的参与。该项目还通过巩固美国和墨西哥机构之间的合作，加强了研究基础设施。该项目由美国国家科学基金会地理与空间科学项目和国际科学与工程办公室（OISE）共同资助。

This project investigates the environmental consequences of the outmigration to the U.S. of indigenous people from areas of the Mexico that are considered biodiversity hotspots in Mexico. Mexico is a mega-biodiverse country, a center of agricultural domestication, and a country where indigenous communities control more than 10% of the national land area. Mexican indigenous "territorial communities" are essential for helping to conserve and maintain the biodiversity of the country through their environmental governance. Not only do the collective decisions of the communities guide individual members use of common lands, but they have also become recognized as key actors in conservation strategies increasingly promoted by the Mexican federal government and non-governmental organizations, including community forestry, community conservation areas, land use planning and zoning, and payment for environmental services programs. All of these environmental management strategies rest on communal institutions and collective decision-making about the use of communal territories. However, the ability of territorial communities to govern the environments of their territories is threatened by patterns of outmigration that remove the people that provide the collective decision-making, leadership, and labor in the construction and maintenance of public works. In a previous era, the ideal was for community members to be born, to live in and die in the home territory, with interruptions only for temporary migration. This geography is changing. Currently, many have become trans-border communities with members who do not live in the community territory for long periods of time, but who often financially support families in the home territory, who may participate in collective decision-making from afar, and who may return to the home territory at various times in their lives. This project examines trans-border aspects of environmental governance in Mexican indigenous territorial communities (i.e. ejidos and comunidades), which include land, the members of that community, and the institutions through which those residents govern themselves and their territory. In collaboration with Mexican scientists, this project seeks to uncover the trans-border geographic dimension of these communities through semi-structured interviews with migrants in the US about their connections to the home territory, especially whether they participate in formal or informal hometown associations, whether they answer their territorial community's call to return to Mexico to serve in unpaid leadership posts, to make payments to cover community-levied labor taxes, to send remittances for environmental or other activities, and whether they have plans to return to the home territory to live later in life. Interviews will also investigate agricultural land-use in the home territory, such as loans to other household members, land abandonment, and plans for using fields in the future. The project demonstrates the role of trans-border Mexican indigenous communities in the environmental governance of biologically-diverse territories. The project broadens the participation of US Latino students as project research assistants and study abroad scholarship recipients. The project also enhances the infrastructure for research by cementing collaboration between US and Mexican institutions.This project is supported through co-funding between NSF's Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).