Topic: nicaragua

Tropical Americas (Reefs at Risk Regional Map)

Richard Waite — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:45:02 -0400

About 9 percent of the world’s mapped reefs are found in this region, most of which are located along the Central American coast and off the Caribbean islands.

Our results indicate that almost two-thirds of reefs here are at risk (about one-third at high risk). Sedimentation from upland deforestation, poor agricultural practices, coastal development, pollution, and overfishing are major threats to many reefs here.[1][2]

Most reefs of the Antilles and Lesser Antilles (including Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Dominica, and Barbados) are under high potential threat.

Virtually all of the reefs of the Lesser Antilles are at risk.

Almost all reefs of the Florida Keys are at moderate threat, largely from coastal development, inappropriate agricultural practices, overfishing of target species such as conch and lobster, and pollution associated with development and farming.

Those of the Bahamas and the Yucatan Peninsula and the remoter reefs off Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua are largely at low risk from mapped human activity.

During review of these final threat classifications, coral reef experts provided the following observations:

The Florida Keys reefs are classified as under medium threat from marine pollution and coastal development. This is regarded as a potential underestimate of threat.
The reefs off southern Belize are classified as being under high threat, largely from inland pollution and erosion. This is regarded as a potential overestimate of threat, relative to other reefs in that region.
The reefs off western Costa Rica were estimated to be under high threat from coastal development and inland pollution and erosion. One researcher suggested that this overestimates threat in that area.
Bermuda’s reefs are classified as being under high threat from overexploitation. This is an overestimate of current threat since the pot fishing industry was closed in 1990.

NOTES

S.C. Jameson, J.W. McManus and M.M. Spalding, State of the Reefs: Regional and Global Perspectives (Washington, DC) ICRI, U.S. Department of State, 1995), 6-7.
Jorge Cortes, “Status of the Caribbean Coral reefs of central America,” in Proceedings of the 8th International Coral Reef Symposium (Balboa, Panama, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, 1997), 339.

Maya Nut Trees Make A Comeback

Karen Bennett — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:43:07 -0400

In Central America, the Maya Nut is making it clear that trees are worth more standing than cut down.

Photo by elliebrown/Flickr

Trees are critical to the well being of forest inhabitants in Central America. Ironically though, many forest dependent communities find it pays more to cut trees down than to keep them standing. That’s because timber can be used for firewood, building material, or sold internationally, and cleared land can genreate income from agricultural products. Unfortunately, deforestation eliminates other ecosystem services that forests provide, such as climate regulation, soil retention, and water regulation. As current deforestation rates attest, many of these forest benefits have received little recognition.

That is starting to change. For the past few years, 56 women in Ixlu, Guatemala, which is located on the border of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, have discovered the financial potential of many of the forest’s often overlooked services. They founded a business to market the Maya Nut, also known as the Breadnut or Ramón. Dried and roasted, the Maya Nut can taste like chocolate or coffee and can be used to make cereal, cookies, cakes and other foods.

The Maya Nut is native to the rainforests of Central America, but it is currently endangered by unsustainable practices. But Alimentos Nutri Naturales, the business owned by the Ixlu women, recognizes that the Maya Nut has the potential to be one of the world’s most profitable non-timber forest products. They employ more than 650 people from the community, providing them with food and a steady income. The women of Ixlu have partnered with their local government to have Maya Nut given to schoolchildren as a nutritious snack.

The formation and success of this company is one outcome of work by the Equilibrium Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to gathering indigenous knowledge on the value and uses of the Maya Nut tree and distributing that knowledge to local women in Central America. The Equilibrium Fund works with hundreds of villages in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras to provide them with the knowledge and incentives to maintain and replant Maya Nut forests. As a result, locals have planted 200,000 Maya Nut trees, with plans for many more. In the process they have conserved 90,000 hectares of existing forest. With this preservation comes increased food (one tree alone can be the source of up to 400 pounds of food every year), income, and stability (through climate regulation, erosion regulation, and other services) for the residents of these countries.

Value from the Maya Nut tree’s other ecosystem services is also being captured. The Equilibrium Fund recently started a project to reforest Maya Nut trees to offset carbon dioxide emissions. And women in Chinandega, Nicaragua are working with their local government to plant tens of thousands of trees to protect watersheds.

Maya Nut trees now provide a sustainable source of food and income to local populations while safeguarding Central American communities by regulating natural processes. According to one participant, Juan Jose Interiano, “I cut four huge Maya Nut trees this year because I thought they were worthless, now I am reforesting because I know how valuable they are.”

Poor in Senegal Denied Benefits of Forest Resources

Jesse Ribot — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:33:22 -0400

In many developing countries, forestry policies systematically exclude the poor from the wealth of the forests around them. Senegal provides an interesting example of how even good policies can fail to deliver the benefits they are intended to provide.

I wrote about this phenomenon as it occurs in both Senegal and Nicaragua (with reference to Mali, Honduras, Cameroon, Uganda, Brazil and India) in a study co-authored with Anne Larson of the Center for International Forestry (CIFOR), and published in the Journal of Sustainability Science.

Rural populations in Senegal lose out because they are denied access to forests and access to commercial trade. To be allowed to manage their own forests, rural communities must develop and use management plans approved by the National Forest Service (NFS). These plans are expensive to develop and require great labor to implement. It’s also not clear that they are ecologically necessary.

Meanwhile largely urban-based merchants hire migrant laborers to produce charcoal using traditional kilns, without having to present management plans. As a result, they can produce at lower cost, and without the responsibility for forest management.

Until 1998, the system of forest management in Senegal remained highly centralized, involving a system of licenses, permits, and quotas allocated by the NFS. The NFS fixed annual quotas for charcoal production, allocating them to their urban-based merchant allies. The 1998 forestry code eliminated the quotas as of February 2001, passing production decisions to local governments and rural councils. But despite the legal changes, the NFS continues to control forest access, issuing quotas and permits—as if no laws had changed.

NFS officials and agents claim that the quotas are based on national charcoal demand and available forest supply. But they do not really have sufficient data to know. The NFS has steadily lowered quotas as a “forest protection” measure, despite continued high demand, giving rise to illegal production to satisfy the shortages.

Meanwhile, rural communities continue to be excluded from forest management and policy development, not to mention being subject to double standards and arbitrary enforcement. As a result, their poverty continues, and they do not share in the benefits that the changes in law were nominally intended to provide.

Unfair Forestry Policies Abet Poverty, Finds New Study

Jon Talbot — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:41:00 -0400

Unfair government policies fail to benefit poor people who live in the forests of many developing countries. Those same policies fail even to protect forests, according to a new study.

Double standards and arbitrary enforcement are the main culprits. In Senegal, for example, rural communities must produce and follow detailed forestry management plans, while corporations need only a simple permit. In Honduras, authorities ensure that community groups follow certain regulations, while ignoring the activities of corporations bound by the same laws. Similar stories have played out in Mali, Honduras, Cameroon, Uganda, Brazil, Nicaragua and India, according to the study.

“People in poverty are not just left behind by government policy. They are excluded,” said Jesse Ribot of the Institutions and Governance Program of the World Resources Institute and co-author of the report. “Deliberate policy choices, including some environmental laws and decisions by environmental agencies, are a major cause of that exclusion.”

With an estimated 80 percent of the world’s forests on state-owned land, and 1.6 billion people dependent on forests for their livelihoods, government decisions about the use of forests are all-important to the effort to eradicate poverty.

“History shows us that the traditional model of ‘scientific forestry’ management focuses on maximizing profit for a few,” said Anne M. Larson of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the study’s other co-author. “Governments have the ability – and we would argue the obligation – to use these resources to combat poverty by first reexamining their forest policies.”

Forestry laws in many countries have changed very little since European colonists emphasized control of natural resources with no safeguards for the forest dwellers and few for the health of the environment. More participation in drafting forest policies by the people who live in the forested areas might help reduce poverty and the natural landscape, the study concludes.

“The poverty of forestry policy: Double standards on an uneven playing field” is published in Volume 2, Number 2 of the Journal of Sustainability Science, and is also available at www.wri.org.

Topic: nicaragua

Tropical Americas (Reefs at Risk Regional Map)

Maya Nut Trees Make A Comeback

Poor in Senegal Denied Benefits of Forest Resources

Related Links

Unfair Forestry Policies Abet Poverty, Finds New Study