Abstract

VALLEJO-ROMAN, Janett  and  RODRIGUEZ-TORRENT, Juan-Carlos. Natural Protected Areas and Co-management: Critical Aspects in the Cofre de Perote National Park (Veracruz, Mexico). Letras Verdes [online]. 2022, n.31, pp.25-41. ISSN 1390-6631.  https://doi.org/10.17141/letrasverdes.31.2022.5059.

This article discusses the National Protected Areas (NPA), focusing on the alterations of the life systems of people who live therein. Throughout qualitative ethnographic research, the interests, actions, and resistance of relevant actors in NPA are analyzed. The article explores the strategies and interests surrounding the Cofre de Perote National Park (CPNP), a protected area with populations who permanently live there, enjoy usufruct rights, and have a perpetual dependence on various forest resources. The park offers a set of ecosystemic services to a vast region: it generates humidity and rain while supplying water for human consumption and productive activities. It is concluded that, since the establishment of the CPNP, the State has intervened in various ways. Participation, conflict, and tensions between inhabitants, bureaucrats, and technical officials have been ongoing. This situation leads to revisiting critically the ways of intervention in these spaces, which are growing at the global level. Co-management is a path of shared responsibility for threatened ecosystems, with a balance of power and interaction among stakeholders, and transparency in information that would substantially improve management and make a real contribution to fighting climate change.

Keywords : conservation; co-management; local populations; protected areas; State.

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