Presentation short abstract

What makes restoration succeed? In Mexico's Mixteca Alta, communities and institutions answer differently. Communities define success through rootedness, enabling water, youth, belonging. Institutions measure trees and hectares. This mismatch matters: whose definitions shape restoration futures?

Presentation long abstract

International restoration frameworks celebrate Mexico's "success" 5.2 million hectares restored under Bonn Challenge commitments. Yet these metrics obscure fundamental questions: success for whom, defined by whom, and toward what future?

This research examines how different actors perceive and envision restoration success in two Mixteca Alta communities (Suchixtlahuaca and Tepelmeme), where people have led restoration for over 40 years from severe degradation. Through 50+ interviews, participatory mapping, and ethnographic observation, I reveal a fundamental mismatch in what successful restoration means.

Communities define success through "arraigo" (rootedness, intergenerational belonging, and territorial connection). Success means water returning, youth staying, knowledge flowing between generations, innovation (pine-maguey polycultures), and staying on their land. Arraigo emerges across ecological, social, economic, and cultural dimensions as what makes restoration persist beyond project cycles. Yet when asked to envision futures, communities expressed both hope and profound uncertainty. Some envision forests maturing, youth returning, communities thriving. Others fear demographic collapse, water scarcity, knowledge transmission breaking. Nearly all futures centred on one question: will the next generation stay or leave?

Institutional actors define success differently -tree survival rates, hectares covered- yet acknowledge these metrics' limitations. Analysis of 24 related policies reveals why: despite inclusion rhetoric, only 3 grant community’s decision-making power. Most position Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities as "consultees" without control -the very structure that erodes arraigo.

This mismatch matters. Communities insist restoration must build futures they can inhabit. Institutions count trees. Transformation requires centring community values. Without it, you get metrics met but systems collapsing when programs end.