The soyate palm (Brahea dulcis (HBK) Mart.), the leaves of which are used to make hats, matting, and a whole range of handicraft products, plays an important complementary role in the domestic economy of many peasant families in poor parts of the Mexican states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Puebla. It is also the source of a large number of products used in agriculture and the home. In some areas, intense commercial exploitation has led to a reduction in both the number and the quality of these trees and some communities have taken steps to try and halt this resource depletion.

It was in this connection that SSS Sanzekan Tinemi, a peasant umbrella organization for over a hundred communities in central Guerrero, approached Grupo de Estudios Ambientales, AC, to work with the communities on designing a Palm Management Plan, based on primary research on the species, that might lead to the sustainable use of this resource. Ecological and ethnobotanical research began in three communities in the area in 1995 with Topiltepec gradually emerging as the principal focus of the pilot study. The process of discussion at local level took place in 1997 leading to a draft Palm Management Plan and, this year, after the plan has been discussed and refined at community meetings and local agreements have been put in place, it will be implemented.

This palm is a resource freely available to all in the Guerrero communities, and it is the family unit which normally decides when, where, and how to use it. In several places over recent decades, this situation has lead to a notable dearth of standing trees —whose trunks are used by the building industry— and the high index of young frond coppicing for handicrafts use has left many trees with multiple trunks incapable of producing further fronds fit for use. In the face of such problems and in an attempt to halt resource depletion, some localities have banned certain activities of this kind. These are still, however, a long way from achieving the desired effect, and the aim of species restoration, with all the benefits that would bring, is even further off.

The Palm Management Plan accordingly involved collaboration with community efforts to ensure continuous provision of frond products by controlling propagation and recovering further derivative products. It has been developed in Topiltepec with community participation at every stage and is now firmly integrated in the local institutional fabric.

Ecological studies and the process of discussing the Management Plan both involved the participation of a variety of community groups and interests. A Commission on Palms and the Countryside was established in 1995 as an integral part of the institutional fabric of the communities and in accordance with local practice. It has played an active part in the collection of ecological and ethnobotanical data, the discussion of its findings, and the design of proposals based on these.

Discussion process involving the plan moved on from the Palm Commission, first to local agrarian and civil authorities and influential local individuals, and then to representatives of important local interests, such as cattle-owners and small landowners, and finally on to the gamut of commissions with responsibility for different aspects of local life (drinking water, schools, irrigation, afforestation, casual labor, and so on).

The result has been that discussion about this palm had generated a whole process of reconsideration by the community of the use it makes of other local natural resources such as pasture land and fuelwood, and to a process of coordination among local pressure groups which eventually led, at the instigation of the local authorities, to the creation of a Council of Committees, a new departure for Topiltepec. The local Agrarian Authority, spurred on by its desire to see progress towards making effective use of local natural resources (all of them today to some extent or another depleted), has assumed a central role in all of this, calling meetings and chairing discussions.

It should be said that individual men and women from the peasant community (simple citizens of Topiltepec, some of them members of the Palm Commission and the Afforestation Commission) have also contributed in no small measure to the process, keen as they are to ensure they bequeath to their children at least as much by way of natural resource wealth as they themselves inherited from their parents.

Early in 1998 the proposed Palm Management Plan will be debated at meetings of interest groups and at open gatherings involving the general public. It is hoped to:

• reach community agreement on regulations to govern coppicing;
• choose areas for intensive work on enhancing frond production and palm reproduction;
• decide which local group will monitor implementation of the Management Plan (probably the Agrarian Authority);
• appoint the body to conduct the intensive fieldwork (probably the Afforestation Commission);
• select the agency to carry out further ecological study (probably the Palm Commission); and
• arrive at a number of initial agreements covering pasture and the propagation of fuelwood species.

It is expected that the local authorities and commissions will consent to allocate some of the moneys assigned by government bodies for local community use to finance the intensive work provided for in the Plan. This will mean that local people will take a greater share of the responsibility for policy direction and public investment.

If the implementation of the plan develops in a positive fashion, improvement should become apparent within some ten years in the health of several local natural resources. It should be possible to obtain enough palm fronds to meet demand from a smaller area than at present, which will mean that land now occupied by palms, unproductive in terms of forage and fuelwood, can be made over to other uses and that other palm products can be more easily obtained since trees will be more accessible. It might even prove possible to turn some of the land over to biodiversity conservation in the form of oaks and smaller trees and shrubs, the stocks of which are presently much depleted.

Because the agencies responsible for the follow-up ecological studies and for monitoring the implementation of the Management Plan will be based locally, it will be local bodies who will have charge of the design, negotiation, and implementation of any adjustments that are deemed necessary in the light of the results that emerge and the effect of the regional market on indices of frond extraction.

It is proposed to conduct a thorough evaluation of the Plan after it has been operative for a period of six years. This should facilitate adjustments of a more major nature and produce solid results which can then be shared with other communities in the region so that they can, in turn, and through their own institutions, improve the use they make of their local palm trees. It should also allow the formulation of proposals, based on practical experience, for improvements in the official national regulations on palm management, and in particular of the soyate.

It has proved extremely fruitful to have this marriage of ecological research, conducted with all the proper research tools and scientific rigor, and serious consideration of input from the peasant community with its know-how, traditions, and rhythms, and to have that community involved in the ecological research itself.

It has proved both possible and positive to study, evaluate, and foster existing community organizational structures. In the process only two locally-based agencies have evolved (both respectful of existing local traditions and arrangements): the Palm Commission, set up at the request of the outside agencies, and the Council of Committees, suggested by the local authorities.

The constant presence of a regional organization involved in many ways in a number of facets of local life —Sanzekan Tinemi— was instrumental in generating confidence among the local people about this particular process of research and management of one of their natural resources and in ensuring their participation.

It would seem that, without the positive involvement of a local nucleus of peasants —of, that is, a handful of men and women with roots in the community, an attachment to peasant life, and a strong desire to influence the future of community land, the forest, and water— it would not be possible to generate and sustain this kind of process of reflection and decision-making directed at ensuring improvements in local natural resource use.