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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how Indigenous women’s collectives establish new forms of forest governance in a Mexican national park, enacting alternative logics of protection and securitization.

Paper long abstract

This contribution outlines the conceptual foundations of a first-year doctoral research project among forest defenders in a national park in Puebla, Mexico. It engages the framework of “Planetary Healing” to rethink security in forest landscapes under climate crisis. Accelerating droughts, wildfires, and the spread of bark beetle infestations − having destroyed up to 80% of trees in parts of the park − intersect with illegal logging and extractive pressure, reshaping rural life and intensifying conflicts over forest governance.

Disputes between local communities and state authorities over rehabilitation and management have framed the national park, and in some cases Indigenous communities, as spaces of insecurity and risk. This securitizing logic legitimizes new forms of surveillance and intervention, while marginalizing local ecological knowledge and practices of care. In response, new governance arrangements are emerging in which predominantly Indigenous women’s collectives assume responsibilities for reforestation, environmental education, and care work − often filling gaps left by state institutions.

Drawing from the notion of Planetary Healing as a conceptual lens, the research explores how land-based practices and multispecies relations enact alternative logics of protection grounded in reciprocity and repair rather than control and exclusion. I argue that the reinterpretation of security in this context operates not only as political resistance but also as a form of collective and ecological healing. By foregrounding Indigenous women’s forest practices, the paper contributes to debates on the securitization of ecologies and offers ethnographic insight into forests as contested terrains where security, care, and multispecies futures are actively reimagined.