ABUD

The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (MBBR) in central Mexico is a World Heritage Site that serves as a crucial winter refuge for monarch butterflies. Each year, about one million butterflies migrate up to 3,000 miles from Canada and the U.S. to overwinter in Mexico’s oyamel forests from November to March. Around 27,000 people, mainly from the Mazahua and Otomi indigenous communities, live in the reserve’s buffer zones. For these communities, the oyamel forest holds deep cultural significance, serving as both a habitat for the butterflies and a space for practicing milpa, a traditional agricultural system. In recent years, systemic failure has threatened the local economy, governance and habitats in the MBBR causing an increase in illegal logging by organized crime for the timber trade and the expansion of avocado plantations. In response, local communities have mobilized to protect the monarch's habitat through grassroots organizations. Yet these efforts are hindered by systemic challenges including escalating violence, weak law enforcement, widespread corruption, and the growing impacts of climate change. There is an urgent need to focus current institutional conservation initiatives on restoring their land rights and legitimizing their governance power in order to effectively protect the reserve's biocultural heritage, build its resilience, and address the systemic causes of the Monarch butterfly’s population decline from a holistic approach. This research examines how a new holistic co-governance model should be established that legitimizes local communities, institutions, and economic and conservation practices that support MBBR social- ecological systems while preserving their cultural values. Using Systems Mapping tools, the study analyzes the interconnected factors driving the loss of biocultural heritage in the MBBR. Additionally, the Critical Institutional Analysis Framework (CIAD) is applied to assess institutional structures and propose recommendations for sustainable biodiversity conservation, cultural preservation, and local development in the MBBR. The research highlights that a formalization of a "common property regime" is necessary when it is based on collaborative work through reciprocity, mutuality, care, and collectivity against shared systems of oppression that support the flourishing of local communities of the biosphere. This study demonstrates how indigenous autonomous institutions and traditional ecological knowledge enhance the adaptive capacity to restore and maintain a fragile social-ecological system. Understanding Monarch butterflies in the context of traditional knowledge creates a story that makes this migratory insect an important cultural cornerstone. The existing ritualized ecological relationships (e.g. agricultural cycles and traditional beliefs) show other ways for local communities to relate to the Monarch butterfly that are not based on restrictive governance models for conservation like the current one. This new co-governance model suggests a possible approach to address the increasing deadly violence in the region while preserving the MBBR's biocultural heritage within the framework of sustainable agroecological practices, autonomous indigenous institutions, and community-based natural resource management.