Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve shows how forest communities can fight deforestation
Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve shows how forest communities can fight deforestation
Margaret Badore (@mbadore)
Science / Climate Change
May 4, 2015
© Margaret Badore
At first I thought they were monkeys, from the way the animals leapt nimbly from tree to tree. When they got close enough to see clearly, I realized they had long ringed tails and narrow faces, like lanky raccoons. They were coatimundi, I later learned, diurnal mammals that aren’t shy—and indeed are related to raccoons.
© Margaret Badore. My encounter with a coatimundi.
The rainforests of the northern region of Guatemala are home to many animals, from toucans to jaguars, howler monkeys to tree frogs. It’s also home to about 180,000 people. These communities are a blend of descendants of the ancient Mayans, settlers who came from Mexico in the 1950s to harvest chicle (a tree sap used to make chewing gum), and migrants seeking to escape the country’s long civil war. Meeting the members of these communities was my primary interest in visiting the rainforests of Guatemala, although the wildlife was also exciting.
A number of reports from prominent non-governmental organizations, including World Resources Institute and the Center for International Forestry Research, have found that forest communities and indigenous forest people are good at protecting the forests they live in, provided they are given the collective right to do so. Protecting forests is not only important for conserving biodiversity, but is also a key means of mitigating climate change. What happens in these communities has relevance to anyone affected by global warming—which is all of us.
The Maya Biosphere Reserve, with its forest concessionary system, offers a prime example of how community land rights are good for forests. Within the 2.1 million hectares of the reserve, 36 percent is set aside exclusively for conservation, much of which is part of national parks, and prohibits all human activities besides research and some tourism. Another 40 percent is dedicated to community concessions, which allow people to live there and to harvest forest products, so long as all their activities are sustainable. The forests span the protected parks and the community concessions, allowing there to be a larger and unsegmented area of habitat. The remaining 24 percent of the reserve’s area is called the “Buffer Zone,” where agricultural activities are permitted and deforestation is more or less not controlled.
More:
http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/guatemalas-maya-biosphere-reserve-shows-how-forest-communities-can-fight-deforestation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+treehuggersite+%28Treehugger%29
Environment & Energy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112785089