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Paper short abstract:

Green labor may be an special tool for States to attain environmental goals committed in the global arena. In Mexico, agroforestry and soil restoration could be seen as a state performance to achieve sustainability while warranting international "aid funds" flux for greening agendas.

Paper long abstract:

Environmental policy making has been a real conundrum for developing nations. Beyond the creation of enclosures as territorial tools to achieve environmental protection, there has been many mechanisms to involve people in self regulation in natural resources exploitation. One of these tools is green labor for agroforestry. even tough this might be not a new path to achieve environmental goals, the way it is institutionalized nowadays render populations into environmental policies as a way to get access to money of account. Agroforestry programs are becoming interesting to people due to the possibilities these brings to deal with increasing poverty and declining agricultural production. Yet the finantialization of these programs seems to have more significant results in money making within State burocracy, than alleviating poverty and scarcity among rural populations as a long term project. Conditioned Cash Transfers within agroforestry implies a calculation for populations who are losing their own labor force beyond urban areas.

Through a significant case in the Mexican Caribbean region I argue how State is used as a source of a conditioned "help". This paternalistic character of the sate has been reproduced for decades, however the convenient character of the environmental job for rural populations contrast with the convenient source of cheap labor that these populations represents for the state that speculates with territory of enclosures for exchange for big monies.