Sustainable Forest Management in the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (IADB)

By Alexandra Ortega, IADB-GEF Coordination Team

Local-indigenous traditional knowledge at the service of forests and community development

The Central American section of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) is well known for being one of the richest areas in the world, not only for its culture and tradition since it is home for at least 14 diverse ethnic groups of indigenous peoples speaking 39 languages, but also for its highly valued biodiversity shown in its large numbers of endemic species. The region has also gained fame of late for being subject to significant pressure from the agricultural frontier diminishing its ecosystems and biodiversity.

With the ultimate objectives of preserving and protecting the greatly threatened biodiversity at the MBC´s and the prevention of further land degradation, which was menacing environmental services and livelihoods, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) endorsed in November 2004 a US$ 9 million program for Integrated Ecosystem Management in Indigenous Communities (PMIIE). This grant was complemented by US $25.1 million and US$ 12.3 million from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and the World Bank (WB) respectively, as well as US$ 1.5 million by the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD) and US$ 1 million contributed by local beneficiary networks and organizations.

The program, approved in 2005 and executed until June 2011 for over 5 years, had a unique structure considered to be multinational, multilateral and multicultural. Multinational, due to the involvement of 10 ecoregions within seven countries of the Central America region: Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala; Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica y Panamá; multilateral, given that its implementing agencies were the WB and the IADB; multicultural since it targeted different local communities of indigenous peoples and farmers with a shared interest in protecting environment and land resources in the area. This composition implicated many different stakeholders and arenas, which were a challenge at all stages of the project, but especially during execution.

Within this overall and complex structure, IADB´s participation was to implement components 1 and 2 of the program, which entailed: 1) cultural and institutional strengthening as well as capacity building, and 2) the promotion of sustainable cultural land use and traditional ecosystem management. IADB´s main goal was to support an emerging network of indigenous communities in the design and implementation of their own Integrated Community Development Plans (ICDPs). In addition, the program allowed these Indigenous Peoples to recover their land management traditional knowledge (LMTK), as stated in Article 8j of the Convention on Biodiversity, and apply it in order to protect biodiversity. ¨These plans worked as internal planning tools that enabled communities to develop actions and define criteria for negotiating with other stakeholders¨ (Gómez Vargas, John Harold. IDB Final Report. Program for Integrated Ecosystem Management in Indigenous and Peasant Communities in Central America (PMIIE). IDB/GEF Fund No. GRT/FM-9011-RS. May 2011. Page 6).

Thus, the program strengthened community networks across the region by sharing their best practices and fostering environmental sustainability.

One of the program´s most innovative efforts was to map cultural uses of these lands based in their beliefs using a participatory approach. This process produced 15 ICDPs designed, implemented and executed by these communities. As an outcome, Indigenous Peoples were empowered to manage their own processes, resulting in 135,000 ha of community lands protected and 45,000 ha of sustainable cultural use of lands preserved a significant highlight of the program.

Given that many indigenous communities are settled near forests, swamps, rivers, and other relevant areas for biodiversity conservation, their sociocultural approach to sustainable ecosystem and forest management proved to be an effective tool for the establishment of extensive conservation of land use areas, and hence can be vital for mitigating the negative effects of climate change, as declared in the Nagoya Convention on Biological Diversity in 2011.

IADB is proud that after the program´s execution there is an increasing recognition that feasible ecosystem management can emerge from existing indigenous models, based on past, present and future biodiversity conservation agreements, where traditional land tenure, inheritance, and normative frameworks of land use are part of a recovered legacy put into practice for entire regions.