Changing Lives, Changing Forests: Many Ways to Build a Future?

Chapter 7 looks carefully at the processes of change and major challenges that confront La Campa in the present. It contrasts these challenges with evidence for enduring resilience and capacity for collective action by examining the ways in which collective action continues to be an important dimension of community life. A synthetic assessment summarizes the dynamic relationships across time and space in people’s uses of forests and fields by considering La Campa as a dynamic social-ecological system. The assessment recognizes the challenges and contradictions that may pose threats to the community and its forests. The discussion points to the conjunction of geographic, sociocultural, and institutional dimensions that have contributed to forest cover persistence in La Campa, even in the current contexts of social, economic and political change. A key aspect is recognizing that forests experience dynamic change. The conclusion presents the ways in which La Campa’s experiences intersect with theoretical issues of conceptualizing forest change, institutional development and sustainable management of natural resources.