Exploring local perceptions, implementation, benefits, and limitations of community-based restoration projects in Mexico

Environmental restoration success depends on the involvement of local communities, from the co-design of projects to their execution and follow-up. Nonetheless, community-based restoration has been poorly assessed and is frequently not incorporated into planning of institutional programs. Based on an online questionnaire addressing rural and indigenous communities involved in restoration projects across Mexico, we explored the local perceptions of restoration efforts, the main characteristics of actors' responsibilities in projects, benefits, and limitations of activities, and recommendations for performing community-based programs. Results showed that communities have an active participation from the assessment of goals to implementation of activities. Restoration is an important activity to generate revenues, recover the use of natural resources, and foster conservation. Most projects considered local knowledge, but were performed for a short term and constrained by funding. Restoration activities mainly focused on vegetation recovery, while animals were widely used for monitoring progress of actions. Our results suggest that communities are no longer involved as mere labor forces, but have an active role as critical decision makers in all process stages and in providing recommendations to enhance joint efforts with other stakeholders. Still, according to the literature review of Mexican restoration projects that contextualized our findings, less than 6% of the publications reported the incorporation of communities into restoration projects. This highlights the relevance of our work to portray community-restoration and emphasizes the importance to promote collective responses to sustainably manage natural resources, while strengthening a collaborative restoration agenda with communities, which is critical to enhance restoration success worldwide.