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Part I
A Regional Approach to the Maya Forest
Scientists working in the Maya Forest generally limit their research to sites within the boundaries of one country. The reasons for this practice are mainly pragmatic: it is difficult enough to obtain permission for research from one government without looking for additional headaches. Crossing international borders requires obtaining additional permits, paying additional fees, and completing additional time-consuming forms such as passport applications, customs documents, and inventory forms. When two nations are involved in political conflict, as happens from time to time in the region, these difficulties increase exponentially, particularly for scientists who are citizens of the quarreling countries.
In short, working across national borders is arduous, demanding work, so it is not surprising that few have attempted it. What is surprising is that some multinational projects have been attempted and have produced far-reaching results. Two examples are highlighted in this part. The first, a series of workshops sponsored by Conservation International, brought together specialists from all three countries as well as international experts to produce a regional assessment of the Maya Forestās characteristics. As reported by Rodstrom and colleagues, this project pooled Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data for all three countries to develop a perspective that encompassed the Maya Forest as a whole, freed from the limitations imposed by national boundaries.
The second example illustrates the ways that national governments can work together to achieve conservation goals in a shared ecosystem, even under circumstances of international conflict. Belize and Guatemala, historically not the friendliest of neighbors, created mirror-image reserves in the Chiquibul River basin to preserve the unique species that live in this area. The discussion by Matola and Platt suggests ways in which this cooperative venture might be further extended to benefit both nations as well as the greater Maya Forest region.
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Chapter 1
A Regional Approach to Conservation in the Maya Forest
Chris Rodstrom, Silvio Olivieri, and Laura Tangley
Stretching over southern Mexico, northern Guatemala, and Belize, the Maya Forest, or Selva Maya, constitutes one of the last large blocks of tropical forest remaining in North and Central America. Home to Mayan-speaking people for over 5,000 years, the region is also uncommonly rich in cultural and archaeological resources. Yet the survival of this vast bioregion, which at the peak of Maya civilization supported more than 5 million people, is endangered by fewer than 1 million people today.
Major threats to the Maya Forest include illegal logging, cattle ranching, and unsustainable forms of subsistence agriculture. These destructive practices wreak havoc on natural habitats while bringing little long-term benefit to the regionās human inhabitants, many of whom live in poverty. To combat these related problems, several local, national, and international organizations are working to promote conservation and sustainable development in different portions of the Maya Forest. These efforts so far have failed to stem the loss of natural habitat in the region as a whole, in part because the projects do not communicate or coordinate their activities, particularly among different countries. As part of a single ecosystem, the Maya Forestās plant and animal species and biological processes do not recognize national borders. Similarly, threats to species and their habitat in one country are intimately connected with events in others. Yet until now, research and management activities within the region have been restricted to single nations. Unless scientists and conservationists begin sharing information and coordinating efforts across borders, they will be unable to stop the powerful forces of destruction facing the Maya Forest today.
In an effort to overcome obstacles to information sharing and coordination, four organizations currently working in the Maya Forestāthe U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program (USMAB), Conservation International (CI), El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)āsponsored a workshop in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, in August 1995. The workshop brought together the leading biologists, social scientists, and conservationists working in this region to produce a consensus on conservation priorities and actions; it left behind a database combining relevant information from all three countries. Equally important, the gathering was the start of a process of collaboration among those who, together, have the power to stop the Maya Forestās destruction.
Conservation Priorities: The Need for Consensus
Lack of coordination among conservation professionals in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize has been a problem because there has been no broad consensus on conservation priorities within the region. Why is such consensus important? With limited time and funding, the first logical step in any regional conservation plan is to decide precisely where to work and what to do. Although international funding organizations including USMAB, CI, and USAID have been willing to invest in conservation in the Maya Forest, so far they have had limited guidance from regional experts as to which parts of the region are the most biologically importantāand, equally important, which are most threatened.
To achieve this consensus, workshop organizers adapted a methodology developed by CI six years ago (Olivieri et al. 1995). First used to set conservation priorities for the Amazon Basin at a workshop in 1990 (IBAMA/ INPA/CI 1991), this methodology has been employed in Papua New Guinea (Swartzendruber 1993), Madagascar (Hannah and Hough 1995), and the endangered Atlantic Forest of Brazil (Conservation International et al. 1995). The methodology involves bringing together the worldās leading experts on a given geographic regionās species, ecosystems, and biological and social processes. Each scientist may be an expert only on a few species or a small portion of the entire ecosystem, but the knowledge and experience of these experts taken together provide the best possible understanding of the region as a whole. To quickly capture the information the experts offer, the workshop model focuses their attention on Geographic Information System (GIS) maps, onto which they transmit and synthesize their diverse knowledge. As with the previous exercises, the consensus reached by participants at the Maya Forest workshop has provided a valuable resource for targeting scarce conservation dollars where they are needed most (Johnson 1995).
Information Sharing and Coordination
Fragmented efforts to conserve the Maya Forest also have meant that conservation professionals lack the considerable advantages provided by information sharing. This statement is especially true with respect to information on the rate and type of changes happening to the landscape, such as conversion of forest to agriculture. If organizations in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize want to make a case for conserving their bioregion to attract international funding, they must be able to determine how much forest once existed in the region, how much is left, the condition of the remaining forest, and the current deforestation rate. Thus far, however, conservationists have been unable to make these arguments because they lack comparative data across national boundaries.
Regional information exchange also allows conservation funding agencies to keep track of how well their projects are doing relative to others that are tackling similar problems. Such monitoring and evaluation of ongoing work is essential to continually fine-tune rapidly evolving methodologies. In addition, it ensures that scarce resources go to the projects that are making the greatest contribution to conservation and sustainable development.
At the local level, information sharing allows conservation organizations to build upon the experience of others, avoiding wasteful duplication of effort. Because the cost of building a conservation database from scratch is too high for most groups in developing countries and even for many international organizations, such collaboration is essential for any group to get enough information to launch a successful conservation strategy. Although still at an early stage, the Maya Forest project has launched a process to bring together the vast amount of disparate information housed in the three countries and to build, eventually, a regional conservation database.
The Workshopās Contributions
Preparation for the Maya Forest workshop began many months before its participants convened. One essential step was to compile a āmetadatabaseā that summarized what relevant data already existed and what institutions and individuals were responsible for collecting them. To do this, the groups sent out information request forms to more than 200 organizations. The results were ...
