Making knowledge powerful: Mexican village project uses environmental information technologies to strengthen community voices in biodiversity conservation.
Alternatives Journal › Vol. 23 Nbr. 4, September 1997
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Summary
Community-based biodiversity programs can thrive provided environmental information, made easy through geographic information systems, is equitably shared for improved environmental management. Rural Mexican areas such as Chichinautzin recognize the importance of such.
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Making knowledge powerful: Mexican village project uses environmental information technologies to strengthen community voices in biodiversity conservation.
Rural communities facing urban expansion or other forms of development are one of the major battle fronts of environmental protection.
Mexico City is an exciting, complex and hugely ambitious human "experiment" - this vibrant and dynamic capital may be the biggest city on the planet, and it continues to attract new citizens.(1) While its many successes are largely ignored, its problems are trumpeted. Even in academic literature, its seeming near-chaos is presented as the quintessence of the environmental crisis, as "one of the most striking examples of the consequences of unplanned growth," or even as "the epitome of urban disaster."(2) The more astonishing, then, to first-time visitors are the pristine undeveloped landscapes close by. Steep volcanic mountains little more than an hour south and west of the heart of Mexico City support dense natural forests dotted with quiet villages. Life begins each morning in these villages pretty much as in other mountain forest communities around the world. There is no low horizon to catch the warm band of first light: rather, the sky lightens overhead along a continuous grey scale. There is often the smell of wood smoke, and a cavernous silence that catches and carries the barking of dogs or, now, the throaty diesel sound of heavy machinery preparing for the workday light. Mountain forest villages are special communities: endowed with a topographic beauty that inspires, and a bountiful resource that, unlike plowed fields, never asks, only gives. Harvesters walk in the inestimable carpeted beauty of a living ecosystem pu...See the full content of this document
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