Community Organization.   When the Maya Biosphere Reserve was created, the national park service (CONAP) tried to implement a model of coercive conservation whose ultimate objective was the expulsion of communities from these protected areas. Their coercive tactics were met with violence from communities inside the Reserve, and ProPetén began its village work amidst death threats, gunshots, and the systematic arson of CONAP guard stations. Through the careful and steady work of community organization and the implementation of different kinds of economically productive projects, ProPetén slowly gained acceptance for conservation. Due to ProPetén’s efforts, in the same communities where in the early 1990s CONAP workers were run out of town with machetes and stones, they are now welcomed as partners in community land management.

Sustainable Forest Management and Community Concessions.   One of the key factors in this shift of community opinion was the creation of community forest and agriculture concessions. Once ProPetén helped CONAP realize the value of community participation as a buffer against further in-migration, they began awarding concessions with usufruct land rights to villages that presented sustainable management plans. ProPetén has accompanied seven strategic communities in the heart of the Reserve in a multi-year process to develop and implement these management plans with a special focus on agroforestry. This involves working with villages to strengthen the traditional forest extractive systems by improving production methods, resource management, and market opportunities. One community, Carmelita, now generates more than 10,000 days of work each year through its forest management plan and has grossed more than four million quetzales since 1997 from sustainable timber extraction. The fame of this community’s success has traveled far and wide, as evidenced by the invitation of one of their leaders to participate in the 2002 U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Eco-Enterprises.   A critical part of the community management plans involves helping families diversify household livelihood strategies through alternative economic activities. In the past decade, ProPetén has accompanied community groups in the creation of two hugely successful Spanish-language schools for tourists, four community-run ecotourism routes, a Petén-wide artisans cooperative, and a regional museum and tourist information center. ProPetén provided initial training, credit, and marketing support to these businesses until they could organize this technical assistance for themselves through a cooperative marketing business called EcoMaya S.A. which is now owned and run entirely by eight community enterprises.

On a regional level, ProPetén has also catalyzed the creation of tourism policy for Petén’s protected areas. In the late 1990s, we facilitated the formal organization of 36 hotel owners and tour operators into a legally-registered group called “Alianza Verde” (The Green Alliance) to promote sustainable and ecological tourism development in the Petén. Since then, they have developed their own code of “best practices” and a complementary training program. Out of this ProPetén developed the first certification program for micro and small tourism businesses in Guatemala called the “green seal.”

Environmental Education.   To build upon our own village environmental education projects, publications, and training manuals, ProPetén convened an interinstitutional commission called CISEA to lobby the Guatemalan government to create a mandatory environmental education program in all public elementary schools in Petén. Through the participation of 55 teachers in ProPetén’s geographic area of influence, ProPetén designed a regionally-appropriate curriculum which was approved by the Ministry of Education in September 2002 and will be implemented in all the schools in Petén next year. Having a locally designed environmental curriculum is a historic first for Petén, and the government has indicated that this approach may be scaled up to all of Guatemala.

In addition to transforming formal education, ProPetén has developed three innovative programs in informal or “popular” education. The first is a training program in agroforestry for community leaders across the Reserve. Run as an extension program of Petén’s public university, the program has gained sufficient prestige that the national park service (CONAP) sends its workers to be trained along with village leaders. To date, 83 men and women have been trained in this intensive, 36-day school spread over the course of a year. ProPetén’s second informal education program is the “Biósfera Móvil,” a 4X4 vehicle equipped with fun educational materials (puppets, games, videos, posters, and the like) to provide informal and popular education on health, gender, and environmental themes on a bi-monthly basis to 17 villages in the Reserve (reaching about 6,000 people a year). Finally, ProPetén sponsors a weekly radio show, “Connection with Nature.”

“Remedios” (Health, gender, population).   Until ProPetén began its work in health, no family planning services could be found in Petén - in neither the governmental nor nongovernmental sectors. Not surprisingly, Petén had an average fertility rate of 6.8 children per woman, the highest in all of Latin America. To address this problem, ProPetén created a health program called “Remedios” which raised the logistical and financial support for two Guatemalan NGOs (APROFAM and AGES) to establish reproductive health programs in Petén in 1998. Meanwhile, we trained 55 midwives and 35 male health promoters from 27 communities in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in reproductive health. Through them, ProPetén has set up 16 village programs to distribute family planning methods. With our community work in place, ProPetén then developed a close relationship with the Ministry of Health which has led to: (1) the training of every public health worker in Petén (220 people) in family planning, (2) the development of a standard illustrated prenatal control card for midwives, (3) full equipment of Petén’s health centers with reproductive education materials and supplies, (4) regular women’s health fairs around the Petén to provide free gynecological exams and pap smears, and (5) the availability of emergency conception for women in cases of rape in all public health centers. In addition to this work to improve government reproductive health services, ProPetén established a regional reproductive health commission made of a dozen NGOs and grassroots women’s groups—who together have trained 350 women leaders across Petén about their reproductive rights. They also organized a graduate program in women’s health to provide ongoing training to health professionals.

Medicinal plants and organic agriculture.   Closely connected to ProPetén’s reproductive health work is our newest program in medicinal plants and organic agriculture. We have provided technical assistance to a Maya Itzá women’s medicinal plant group in San José to establish a demonstrative garden of hundreds of plants as well as a production center for the artisanal production of medicinal tinctures, capsules, teas, soaps, and shampoos. Then, working with healers from across Petén through ethnobotanic interviews, retreats, and intercommunity exchanges, ProPetén has documented the use of more than 400 plants, resulting in the publication of two books, “Medicinal Plants of Petén” and “Medicinal Plants of the Itzá,” as well as other popular education materials. Most recently, ProPetén established an inter-institutional commission (COMETAP) of NGOs and the Ministry of Health to create a plan for implementing a commitment in the 1996 Guatemalan Peace Accords to incorporate traditional medicine into governmental health services.

In 1999, ProPetén carried out the first research on pesticides dangers in Petén, discovering that 53% of pesticides used by two-thirds of Petén’s farmers are chemicals recommended for worldwide ban by the 1998 Rotterdam Convention, while another 68% are considered “bad actors” by the Pesticides Action Network based on criteria by the World Health Organization. Based on that information and on a request from a community group, ProPetén began experimenting with farmers to make natural pesticides based on their knowledge of forest plants that repel insects. With them, ProPetén published a popular farmer’s manual on organic agriculture. This project has grown to include three cooperatives (one men’s group and two women’s groups) in two villages which now have a revolving seed bank, a canning business, and a plan to begin bottling natural pesticides mixtures for sale. Through the Biósfera Movil (described above in environmental education), ProPetén began a farmer-to-farmer exchange (the “AgroMovil”) in 2000 to disseminate information about pesticides risks and organic alternatives. Finally, ProPetén began sharing this advice to farmers on a mass scale through a daily, one-hour radio program, “Mi Amigo, El Agrónomo” (My Friend, the Agronomist)—which since 2000 has gained an audience of approximately 100,000 listeners, making it the #2 show in Petén.

Applied biodiversity research.   Just days before ProPetén’s biological station “Las Guacamayas” (Scarlet Macaws) was to be inaugurated, farmers and cattle ranchers who had illegally settled in the surrounding national park (Laguna del Tigre) on the west side of the Maya Biosphere Reserve burnt it to the ground and kidnapped thirteen of ProPetén’s staff. As soon as ProPetén negotiated their safe release, these valiant workers returned to the site with tents, ready to rebuild upon the still smoking embers. The station was inaugurated two years later with the participation of the some of the same village leaders who had been responsible for burning it down due to the station’s new efforts in environmental education and community training. Today, through the biological station, ProPetén’s scientists monitor deforestation rates in the Reserve through satellite imagery, investigate nesting areas of the endangered scarlet macaw, research the potential for crocodile breeding and carry out other applied biodiversity research projects. They have also hosted an international AQUARAP (a rapid assessment of wetland biodiversity) which resulted in the discovery of seven species of different taxa, underscoring Laguna del Tigre National Park’s value for biodiversity conservation.

Policy work.   Through this program ProPetén counseled CONAP how to establish norms and guidelines for the approval of community forest concessions, which had previously been a process subject to political whim and personal influence. These days CONAP is implementing more objective and scientifically-based criteria for accepting community concession management plans. Also in collaboration with CONAP, ProPetén developed an improved administrative system for the Maya Biosphere Reserve and through a participatory process that included community, private and government sector, CONAP has developed a badly needed tourism policy for protected areas.

Recognizing the value of decentralization, ProPetén was the earliest advocate of involving municipalities in conservation of the Reserve. As a result of our work, two municipalities whose jurisdictions cover about two-thirds of the entire Reserve, have formed active environmental commissions which coordinate activities like forest fires prevention and control programs and reforestation. Finally, ProPetén has been a key leader in forming many inter-institutional working groups in Petén, including the Environmental Regional Commission which we were elected to represent in the national NGO forum advising the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.