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In the center of the most populous country in Central America, Guatemala, is one of the world’s highest spaces for biodiversity: the Maya Biosphere Reserve.
With a domain of more than 21,000 km2, the reserve covers approximately one-fifth of Guatemala’s total dominance and is the largest domain in Central America. As the largest rainforest in the north of the Amazon, the park has an important biological and cultural heritage, home to countless endangered species and ancient Mayan archaeological sites dating back thousands of years.
The forest also serves as a critical carbon sink, an area that absorbs more carbon than it produces, an ecosystem to address the climate crisis.
But the Mayan biosphere reserve is as vulnerable as it is powerful. Its geographical location along a major drug trafficking address has led to deforestation as drug traffickers transparent the forest to use as a contact zone, traveling from South America to Mexico and the United States. Agriculture and logging have also posed a serious risk to the park, as others seek to obtain merit from the land. Over the more than 20 years, the extent of the reserve has decreased to just 8, consistent with a penny, because illegal livestock producers are transparentating the forest. .
So why, in 1990, did Guatemalans grant 12 communities the right to tame and hold on to this critical space?
The concept of a concession program, under which indigenous and local communities were allowed to harvest the park’s herbal resources, provided that logging or agriculture is sustainable. All permitted economic activities were regulated and monitored through external teams such as the Forest Stewardship Council.
These practices were not allowed in the reserve, which was (and continues to be) divided into several spaces with other degrees of protection. Human settlements, herbal resource extraction and logging are explicitly prohibited in central spaces, which occupy just over a third of the park. These are basically composed of biotopes and national parks.
Buffer zones occupy about a quarter of the reserve, are between central and unprotected spaces and have little formal coverage or surveillance, their main objective is to act as a barrier around central spaces; Finally, there are multi-purpose spaces, which account for 40% of the total fleet, that’s where concessions were allowed.
As ordinary as it may seem, thirty years later, the spaces that actively allow logging and agriculture are the spaces with the lowest rate of deforestation. Since 2005, multi-use spaces have maintained a near-zero rate of deforestation. By comparison, the rate is twenty times higher in outdoor spaces than community-run concessions.
Where other parts of the reserve have faltered under heavy pressure from farm animal husbandry, drug trafficking and development, spaces run by indigenous and local teams have in fact remained sustainable.
After more than two decades of successful forest management, the Yale Forestry School
Given the recent problems of forest chimneys in California, Amazon and Australia, it is also worth noting that the reserve’s multi-purpose spaces have the weakest chimneys. In addition to protecting the land from illegal loggers and drug dealers, the communities operating in the reserve also help maintain the forest of the underworld.
This is a radical project, which Greenpeace, Conservation International and other local and foreign NGOs strongly opposed when it was launched.
But not only did conservation organizations have a problem, Guatemala entered the third decade of its brutal civil war, a scenario that left the forest ready for exploitation.
“Sometimes, when we were running in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, the army or guerrillas were on your way,” explains José Román Carrera, now director of parks and progression in Latin America at rainforest alliance, who helped identify the reserve.
“The biggest risk in this era was illegal logging through the army, which was heavily involved, so we rarely had to face the army, which was difficult!They were very strong and intimidating, but we had to deal with it.
On the other hand, the team had to manage communities that were part of the rebel guerrillas, who felt they were entitled to land and their herbal resources. Carrrera also faced threats, as one of the leading figures in the process.
“I’ve won 82 death threats. It’s just the writings. I’ve also won a lot of calls saying, “Get out of the country or we’ll kill you, we’ll take your mother. “I shot in my car – 17 bullets. On another occasion, they planted a bomb in my house.
“But I’m still here! They tried to kill me and they didn’t. In the end, they found out I’d never leave. I had to go to the Mayan biosphere reserve. “
Rainforest Alliance is one of the first foreign organizations to recognize the project’s perspective. The NGO has been working with the communities of Guatemala – and Carrera – for more than 20 years.
The disorders on the reserve floor are very different in those days, drug traffickers are a bigger problem, however, this is where the communities that administer the land come into action. concession.
“Communities organized and learned that they had to paint with this scenario and prevent that from happening.
“It was complicated and some people died,” he says, “but that means planes no longer land voluntarily in those areas. “
While the program has resulted in ecological coverage of the reserve, its economic benefits cannot be underestimated either.
Since its inception, the allocation has created nearly 9,000 jobs and generated more than five million euros in annual revenue, creating a physically powerful local economy. Communities sell products such as Jamaican honey and pepper, as well as wood products to consumers around the world. .
“People live much, much better,” says Carrera, “they have livelihoods, jobs, education. They paint in a foreign market and do business abroad on their own, with their peers.
“And you communicate with them and you see their faces, you see success! And then we see that there is no deforestation, there are no legal problems, archaeological sites are protected, biodiversity is better ”, he adds.
Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has primary monetary disorders for the communities involved in the program. Due to a breakdown in global supply chains, they face an estimated loss of 1. 3 million euros in sustainable timber revenue and another 30,000 euros consistent with the week of palm leaf sales.
The other main risk to the booking and the program in general is a little less anticipated. An American archaeologist and anthropologist, Richard Hansen, is struggling to create an ecological resort in El Mirador, an ancient Mayan village in the forest.
Hansen needs to create a privately run park funded by the United States, entirely with hotels, restaurants and a mini-railway for tourists. He has faithful much of his life to the forest and maintains that his progression ruins and reserve much greater. than anyone else in Guatemala.
But the indigenous and local communities that live in the reserve, running every day to save the forest, that this progression of ecotourism would be a crisis for the reserve and its inhabitants.
At the time of writing, more than 200,000 people signed a petition to save the US government. But it’s not the first time Hansen’s chimera, saying that if he cared about conservation, he would do so with the style of forest concession, a proven method.
This wave of support, as well as the recent public fulfilling of Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, offer a ray of hope to the communities at the center of the program, and rightly so, because after almost 3 decades of success in conservation, the award The style deserves to be a style that we all seek to be informed to destroy.
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