CENTRAL AMERICA

- Central America: ACICAFOC, An On-going Proposal

The Central American Community Agro-forestry Indigenous and Peasant Co-ordination Association, known as CICAFOC, operates in Central America --involving Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama-- and is a community-based social, non profit-making organisation, gathering organised associations, co-operatives, federations and community groups of small and medium sized agro-forestry producers, indigenous people and peasants. These groups are working to achieve access, use and management of natural resources, seeking community food security and economic sustainability in harmony with the environment.

CICAFOC was formally established in June 1994, as a result of a series of efforts, meetings and exchange among the different community experiences in the region that are working towards natural resource management. As a process, it has its own initiatives, experience, a vision placed on self-sufficiency, clear principles of transparency and trust, promoting tools making natural resource use and management possible.

Among its strategic objectives is the strengthening of technical capacity and local knowledge of natural resource management, the identification of the capacity of socio-productive experience with a view to making a better use of forests as a local development alternative to enhance their living conditions.

The opening up of political fora at a local, national and regional level has strengthened this process in construction and the experience of the indigenous and peasant communities has achieved an enhancement of the context for negotiations with local, national and regional governments. A good methodology has been to share experience among organisations. This horizontal exchange has made it possible to transmit lessons and techniques learnt to improve the process. It has also helped to understand that CICAFOC is an organisation promoting local processes that does not represent the groups and does not attempt to substitute them. Its input is to facilitate fora for negotiation with Universities, co-operation bodies, governments and NGOs, and to seek orchestration and dialogue among the parties.

CICAFOC has launched a new style of impact in the Central American region because it seeks technical and financial support that the groups can access. It is an organisation with socio-productive proposals aimed at strengthening local groups and already has 1:036,670 families involved in the project.

With regard to forest use and management, it should be noted that out of a total of 18 million hectares of forest cover in the Central American region, peasant and indigenous communities participating in the process manage 2:602,425 hectares --375,749 in agro-forestry systems. Thus, the percentage of forest cover in the region in the hands of CICAFOC member groups is 14,5 %, reflecting an encouraging situation at a time when increasingly, communities all over the world are struggling to recover access to and management of natural resources, once their source of life and now taken away from them by the successive central powers.

Based on numerous experiences of peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendants working towards the development of socio-productive proposals strengthening Central American biodiversity, CICAFOC emphasises the need for recognition of the existence of a Community Eco-Development Corridor (Corredor de Ecodesarrollo Comunitario - CEM), as an on-going proposal which is also a community regional development strategy. CEM is framed in a modern concept of forest conservation based on appropriate use and management of natural resources by the communities depending on them. Experience has shown that this approach is much more effective than demarking protected areas and excluding the local populations. On the contrary, for CEM, the involvement of local populations in resource management and use is precisely what ensures their long-term sustainability, while improving the peoples' living conditions.

By Alberto Chinchilla, Regional Resource Person, Central American Community Agroforestry Indigenous and Peasant Coordination Association (Asociación Coordinadora Indígena y Campesina de Agroforestería Comunitaria Centroamericana - ACICAFOC), e-mail: oficinaregional@acicafoc.org, web page: http://www.acicafoc.org

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- Nicaragua: Reforestation as Part of Community-Based Farm Planning in Rio San Juan

The Department of Rio San Juan is located near the southern frontier of Nicaragua, bordering Costa Rica, and the municipality of El Castillo is on the river between the Lake of Nicaragua and the Caribbean. During the eighties, the United States attacked us with a low intensity war that eroded the economy and uprooted Nicaraguan families. At the end of the war, during the nineties, twelve thousand people from Costa Rica and other parts of the country, immigrated to the Municipality. This mass migration made it even more necessary to adequately plan management of the scant community resources: its population and its forests.

A project was implemented to improve the population's conditions and quality of life, providing them with elements and instruments to enhance their living space, establishing the bases for sustainable development and consolidating their settlement in the zone. This was necessary because the two major projects already existing in the region, the oil palm and the medicinal plant Cephaelis ipecacuanha, were no longer economically viable due to the speculative drop in international prices for these products.

Logging in the zone is a lucrative activity for the large companies, but not for the peasants, who own the forest. Over the past decade, deforestation has approached 70% of the forest area, causing significant changes in the microclimate, water courses and ecosystems. The suitability of the land for forestation has led to the alternatives of planting trees for water protection and the introduction of fruit tree species.

We decided to work with 250 farms, in a participatory process, considering that the environment is composed of human beings and the rest of the environment. To consider that the environment does not include human beings is a non-scientific absurdity.

Participatory farm planning took place between the farm inhabitants and the resource people (forestry and agricultural/livestock technicians) under the supervision of a woman, in order to strengthen the almost absent gender component. Using seven steps, they defined the farm of today, the potential farm and the dream farm. This planning made it possible to define the area presently occupied by the forest for its management, the area devoted to agriculture, the area for grazing land and the river-banks having a potential for reforestation.

During the first year, 30 nurseries were established, using seeds gathered locally. This generated income and economic interest in the forest, both in gathering and as a local store of selected biodiversity and its redistribution in the region.

From the start, great interest was shown by the population in planting fruit trees (1). This seemed reasonable and ensured the care of the trees as these have a known use and are of real direct benefit to the producer. As mentioned earlier on, logging in Rio San Juan has essentially benefited the logging companies, as it is hard for the population to obtain logging permits, even in their own farms. The result has been reforestation of 132 has with native wood species and 626 has with fruit trees.

The conjunction of protected spaces by the peasants also made it possible to set up small collective reserves which, although remaining the property of individual peasants, on bordering the outer limits of the farms, de facto became micro reserves (50 to 200 hectares that are not used for livestock, agriculture or forestry activities, due to difficulty in accessing them).

A geographical information system was designed and set up, in order to systematise data from the farms. It has not been possible to consolidate this information because the project only lasted two years and there was no funding to ensure its continuity. More than 700 hectares were planted and large amounts of fruit will be produced. Plans have to be made for the 30 thousand tons of fruit that will be available in the municipality in three years time.

The participatory process led to priorities being established by the population and made it possible to reforest and protect 363 sources of water in addition to the drinking water sources in the settlements of Buena Vista, El Castillo and Laureano Mairena. The school areas in Buena Vista, Marcelo, Marlon Zelaya and Sábalos were also reforested.

One of the problems that arose is that, in spite of having land available for reforestation, the population had its doubts about planting trees and carrying out forest management, as they are sure it will be the logging companies that will benefit from this task. The clearest proof is that 80% of the plants requested by the population were fruit trees, which they can use without interference from external interests.

International processes such as debt swapping for forests or exchange of carbon sinks have been mentioned by officials from the capital city to the local population, but they have their doubts on the validity of these proposals.

If, on the one hand, there were no regulations hindering use of timber by the population that owns the land and, on the other real incentives were given to the producers to plant trees for timber, perhaps a change would be possible. So far, what has happened is that, for example, the Austrian government supports the region in the operation of a saw mill with a view to increase plantation of trees for timber, but when they log they only pay a symbolic US$ 25 per tree to the owner of the farm.

Summing up, reforestation has a potential for participatory processes of social environmental enhancement, both due to its short term effects and due to the results we can expect in the long term for conservation and sustainable forest use, although real incentives need to be generated for the peasants, sharing benefits as required by the Biological Diversity Convention.

(1) List of fruit tree species used: Avocado, Mango, Orange, Mandarin, Lemon, Lime, Coffee Shrub, Pear, Cacao, Peach Palm, Papaya, Cachimant, Coconut, Banana

By Daniel Querol, e-mail: gme@tmx.com.ni