Preventing Fires through Indigenous Forest Management in Petén, Guatemala

How can helping Indigenous leaders conserve the tropical rainforest also deter the activities of drug traffickers?

Indigenous groups have proven themselves to be particularly good at maintaining forests. Across Central America, rates of deforestation in Indigenous-managed forests are on average less than halfthose in other areas. Many Indigenous communities depend on sustainable forest-based businesses for their livelihoods, keeping them invested in the long-term health of forests.

So Indigenous forest management simultaneously represents a successful strategy for environmental conservation and a driver of sustainable economic development for a historically marginalized group. It also engages communities to monitor and stop forest fires, which are often set by traffickers and other actors seeking to illegally encroach on protected lands.

Drug traffickers set fires in forested areas to illegally clear land for their activities, which can include creating landing strips for transporting drugs or hosting economic activities that the traffickers use to launder money, such as raising cattle or African palms.

Protectors of the Forest

IAF grantee Asociación de Comunidades Forestales de Petén (ACOFOP) is an association of 24 community-led organizations in Petén, Guatemala, including member organizations that have received their own IAF grants, such as Carmelita, La Sociedad Civil de Nombre Organización, Manejo y Conservación, and El Esfuerzo. The association coordinates its member organizations and the communities they serve to monitor for forest fires in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

ACOFOP's information center receives daily satellite images, which it pushes out to a network of young community monitors trained in early detection of forest fires. The monitors review the images and if they find hot spots near their communities, they use drones to check the area to tell whether it's just a controlled bonfire. When they find wildfires, they deploy a brigade of trained community firefighters to put them out. "In our communities, there really aren't any large fires because there's an immediate response," says Erick Cuellar,

Communities working with ACOFOP also maintain systems of early detection. Their fire information centers raise public alerts in dry season when there are risk factors for wildfires such as high temperatures and low humidity, so community members know that setting their own fires is prohibited.

ACOFOP also fosters community tourism, sustainable timber harvesting, and other agroforestry activities to help people make a sustainable living (above the minimum wage) from the forest. By raising incomes, ACOFOP contributes to the wellbeing of families, investment in children's education, and rootedness among its community participants.

ACOFOP has been protecting the rainforests in northern Guatemala since 1995. Through three grants starting in 2008, totaling less than $750,000, the IAF helped ACOFOP become a recognized leader in Indigenous forest management that is now responsible for conserving 1.2 million forest hectares, benefitting 85,000 people. Thanks in part to the capacity it developed through IAF support, ACOFOP also became a USAID implementing partner in 2013. One of the secrets of ACOFOP's long-term success has been that community members have been involved in its decision making from the beginning and it has worked to involve women, young people, and other demographics that often face exclusion.

Scaling ACOFOP's Impact

To expand its impact, the IAF is funding ACOFOP to share its experience and lessons learned in protecting forests with a regional alliance of similar organizations across Central America, the Alianza Mesoamericana de Pueblos y Bosques. With this grant, ACOFOP is strengthening the next generation of grassroots Indigenous-led organizational leaders in strategic planning, financial management, alliance-building, project development, and strategic communications, to better equip them to manage their own local forests. ACOFOP funds the regional alliance's Mesoamerican School for Youth Training and Leadership Development to train young Indigenous agroforestry leaders. To date, 130 Indigenous youth leaders from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama have learned traditional practices of natural resource management and enhanced their leadership skills to help them guide local organizations and communities. Their learning has reinforced and revitalized their Guna Yala, Mamá, Q'eqchi', and Q'anjobal identities, and they are working in their own communities with entities such as the Youth Congress of Gunayala to share what they have learned with other young people.

By maintaining a strong and active presence as protectors of the forests in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, communities working with ACOFOP are having a dissuasive effect on organized criminal activity, building sustainable livelihoods, and investing in their young people's futures.

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