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

跨境土著环境治理：评估美国土著墨西哥人与其原籍社区的联系

• 批准号: 1127534
• 负责人: Daniel Klooster
• 金额: $ 16.2万
• 依托单位: University of Redlands
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1127534&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Trans; Border; Indigenous; Environmental; Governance

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).

该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。 墨西哥是一个巨大的生物多样性国家，农业驯化的中心，以及一个土著社区控制超过10%的国土面积的国家。墨西哥土著“领土社区”通过其环境治理，对帮助保护和维持该国的生物多样性至关重要。 社区的集体决定不仅指导个人成员使用公共土地，而且他们也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行为者，包括社区林业，社区保护区，土地使用规划和分区，以及环境服务方案的支付。 所有这些环境管理战略都依赖于社区机构和关于社区领土使用的集体决策。然而，领土社区治理其领土环境的能力受到了向外移民模式的威胁，这种模式消除了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。在以前的时代，理想的情况是社区成员出生、生活和死亡都在家乡，只有临时迁移才会中断。这种地理环境正在发生变化。目前，许多人已成为跨界社区，其成员并不长期居住在社区领土上，但他们往往在经济上支持家乡的家庭，他们可能在远方参与集体决策，他们可能在一生中的不同时期返回家乡领土。该项目审查墨西哥土著领土社区（即Ejidos和Comunidades）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和领土的机构。 该项目与墨西哥科学家合作，通过对美国移民进行半结构化访谈，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，他们是否响应家乡社区的号召返回墨西哥担任无薪领导职务，支付社区征收的劳动税，为环境或其他活动汇款，以及他们是否计划在以后的生活中返回家园。访谈还将调查家乡地区的农业土地使用情况，如对其他家庭成员的贷款、土地放弃和未来使用土地的计划。该项目展示了墨西哥跨界土著社区在生物多样性地区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出国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来加强研究基础设施。该项目由NSF地理和空间科学计划与国际科学与工程办公室（OISE）共同资助。