Community sawmills can save forests: Forest regrowth and avoided deforestation due to vertical integration of wood production in Mexican community forests
Efforts to link conservation with community development often rely on devolving forest management, yet benefits depend on communities capturing value from forest products. In southern Mexico, where most forests are communally managed, researchers used spatially explicit panel data to test whether vertical integration—signaled by community‑owned sawmills—improves forest outcomes. Comparing land‑use change across ejidos with different sawmill adoption timelines, they found that vertical integration reduced deforestation while increasing forest regrowth. These results challenge assumptions that expanding forestry operations harms forests; instead, providing communities with financial capacity to invest in processing can strengthen forest protection and restoration. The findings highlight the potential for community forestry to deliver regional and global benefits for climate, biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Subject Tags
- Forest
- Community-based conservation
- Natural climate solutions
Abstract
Integrated conservation and development efforts in low- and middle-income countries have emphasized the devolution of forest management to local communities. This approach is posited to benefit both communities and conservation, but those benefits may depend on community capacity to capture value added, e.g., by processing forest products. In Mexico, most forests are under community management, but only some communities have vertically integrated their wood products supply chain through the establishment of community sawmills. The different timing of sawmill construction allows us to test the hypothesis that vertical integration of the wood products supply chain under community management is protective of forests. We use detailed, spatially explicit panel data from southern Mexico that allow us to examine impacts on land use change (deforestation and forest regrowth) separately from temporary changes in tree cover within forest areas. We find that vertical integration, as indicated by the presence of community sawmills and corroborated by a government classification of ejidos, reduced deforestation while increasing forest regrowth. Our findings, thus, have a somewhat counter-intuitive policy implication: programs that increase financial resources for communities to invest in forestry operations could improve forest protection and restoration, with regional and global benefits for climate, biodiversity and other ecosystem services.
Citation
Miteva, D. A., Ellis, E. A., Ellis, P. W., Sills, E. O., Griscom, B. W., Rodriguez-Ward, D., ... & Uematsu, C. (2025). Community sawmills can save forests: Forest regrowth and avoided deforestation due to vertical integration of wood production in Mexican community forests. Ecological Economics, 236, 108658. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2025.108658
TNC Authors
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Peter W. Ellis
Director, Global Natural Climate Solutions Science
The Nature Conservancy
Email: pellis@tnc.org