Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

In Oaxaca’s Mixteca region, communities define restoration success through arraigo -a deep-rooted connection to land, water, and cultural belonging- which clashes with institutional metrics like hectares reforested. Our study exposes the power dynamics behind who defines “development” success.

Paper long abstract

In Oaxaca’s Mixteca Alta region of southern Mexico, an Indigenous territory scarred by centuries of deforestation and erosion, our research reveals a clear divide in how “successful” restoration is understood. Local Mixtec communities frame success through arraigo: a deep-rooted sense of place encompassing intergenerational knowledge, water security, and cultural belonging. This biocultural vision of restoration prioritises reviving communal lands and livelihoods, aiming to strengthen community autonomy and identity for future generations. By contrast, government and NGO programmes impose narrow ecological metrics (e.g. hectares reforested, tree survival rates) as the primary benchmarks of success amid ambitious reforestation efforts.

Using a political ecology lens, we show how these contrasting visions reflect broader power asymmetries and knowledge hierarchies in development. Institutional actors often “speak for” the community through technocratic indicators, marginalising Indigenous epistemologies and governance systems. Thus, dominant development discourse privileges numeric targets and external “expert” knowledge, while local well-being outcomes and voices remain undervalued.

Our study argues that centring Indigenous voices and knowledge in defining restoration and development is a crucial act of decolonising practice. It highlights how community-led visions of the future, grounded in arraigo and guided by Indigenous governance, challenge dominant development and restoration paradigms fixated on quantitative outcomes. By illuminating who gets to define success and why it matters, the paper calls for reimagining development futures that prioritise local agency, cultural values, and ecological justice over top-down metrics.