Gustavo García López is an environmental policy and politics scholar who studies human-environment interactions through the lens of institutional analysis, common property scholarship, and political ecology. He is especially interested in research related to multi-level and community-based natural resource governance, sustainability of socio-ecological systems, participatory decision-making processes, grassroots development, and environmental movements and conflicts. Currently he is a post-doctoral fellow in the European Network for Political Ecology (ENTITLE) at ICTA-UAB.
His current work, based on his doctoral dissertation, focuses on the politics and governance of inter-community forestry networks (secondary forest associations) in Durango Mexico. Specifically, he looks at the ecological and socio-economic impacts that these networks have on community-based forest management; and how internal governance characteristics, policies and power relations influence their performance. Other ongoing research projects include an analysis of decentralization and recentralization in the forestry sector in Mexico and India, a socio-ecological analysis of forest governance over time in Indonesia, the relationship between common-pool resource management and de-growth in the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, the motivations and impacts of community-based conservation areas in Mexico, and the integration of common-pool resource and social movements theories.
His previous work has focused on participatory processes and conflicts over soybean expansion in Paraguay and Argentina, disturbances and adaptations in community-based resource management organizations in Indiana (USA), and the economic valuation of natural resources in Puerto Rico. Gustavo obtained his PhD. in Public Policy and Political Science at Indiana University-Bloomington, with concentrations in Environmental Policy and Political Theory & Methods (Institutional Analysis). He has a Masters in Environmental Policy (Cambridge University) and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Geography (University of Puerto Rico- Rio Piedras). His work has been published in the journals Ecological Economics and Ecology and Society.