Guatemala's Maya Put Their Lives on the Line to Protect an Irreplaceable Rainforest

[Omaha Steve]

The forest that surrounds the Maya ruins in Tikal, Petén, about 300 miles from Guatemala City. (Photo: Saul Martinez)

NOV 30, 2015 Alexander Zaitchik has written for The New Republic, The Nation, Salon, Rolling Stone, and Mother Jones. He lives in New Orleans.

PETÉN, Guatemala—It doesn’t look like much, this thatch-roof factory in the middle of the Guatemalan rainforest. The cement floor is scattered with low piles of xate, an unassuming palm leaf. A dozen workers from the village of Carmelita quietly haul, separate, and stem the bright-green fronds, bundling them in brown paper. There is no electricity, and the silence is only broken by the rumbling bellows of distant howler monkeys. Nothing in the languid scene suggests much of consequence for tiny Carmelita, let alone anyone outside Petén, a Belgium-size province in northern Guatemala known for its spectacular Maya ruins. It is also is home to the Maya Biosphere Reserve, the biggest block of protected broadleaf rainforest north of the Amazon.

Appearances are deceiving. This humble business that exports xate, a plant popular in flower shops from Kansas to Kyoto, is part of a radical land-redistribution program with global implications. Initiated at the end of Guatemala’s brutal 36-year civil war, the program has incubated dozens of community-owned sustainable industries that generate millions of dollars to build schools and health clinics in the indigenous villages of Petén. Of more interest to the wider world: It has also drastically reduced deforestation and locked down local forest carbon, hundreds of billions of tons of which are stored in the planet’s tropical regions. Though forests are massive natural emitters of CO2, they absorb much more, making them terrestrial carbon sinks on par with the oceans and key to slowing down climate change. According to research published in the journal Science, they have sucked up as much as 30 percent of human-made emissions since 1990.

The idea at the heart of the Guatemalan program is simple: Carmelita and 10 other forest communities agree to monitor a territory of nearly 1 million acres for illegal logging, drug trafficking, and other illicit activities. In return, these concession communities get legal title to the land and rights to profits from forest goods such as xati, chicle (a rubberlike sap used in chewing gum), and timber as well as ecotourism. The enterprises must adhere to strict international sustainability standards.

FULL COVERAGE: Climate Change(d): The Future Is Now (http://www.takepart.com/climate)

Despite the program’s success, the Maya guardians of the rainforest face a slew of challenges, from violent threats from loggers and drug runners to fears that their government could one daysell the rights to their land right to timber and oil interests—a not unrealistic concern given that the concessions begin to expire over the next several years.

FULL story at link.


Women select leaves of xate at a factory in Carmelita, Petén. (Photo: Saul Martinez)

[DFW]

1. Our planet's lungs

The ravaging has gone on for too long, and it's not like the danger was any secret. I hope they manage to keep this place safe from intrusion for the next few millenia, much as I how know how little chance there is of that.