Foreign Investments in the Forestry Sector As a Means of Increasing Community Resilience: Two Case Studies in Mexico

Community resilience is the sustained ability of a community to use available resources while responding to stress, as well as the ability to recover from adverse situations accounting for social vulnerability, environmental hazards, and economic conditions. As climate change increases risk and unpredictability for management and planning, understanding resilience is crucial. Focusing on Mexico, this work explores international forestry sector investments as a tool to increase resilience. This research uses interviews. surveys, and programmatic documents comparing two case studies to explore the impact of certain foreign investments on community resiliency. The resilience concepts measured include diversity, economic and ecological variability, social capital. tight feedbacks, innovation, governance overlap, and ecosystem services. Results show that such investments can increase community resilience by improving community management, resource utilization, and recovery ability in times of economic, social, or biophysical stress.