Reforestation Plan’s Goal Is to Save Guatemala Trees

When the gringo arrived with his talk of putting trees and terraces in the fields, an intense debate began here.

The peasants were suspicious. Why did he care whether they planted any trees? Was it so the Americans could come and cut them down when they grew large?

Some, however, realized something had to be done. There was no place to go, no more forests to cut and burn and clear for crops. And every year the rains washed away more of the thin tropical topsoil.

“Some people understood that we ourselves are part of the problem,” said Hector Lopez, a farmer. “Others didn’t. They blamed other things. Some said it was the government. One man told me the weather was changing because the Americans were going to the moon.”

Lopez, 31, looked down at his 2-year-old son.

“When I was a kid of 6, 7, 8 years old there were more trees, more woods, more springs. It’s not even 20 years, but it has changed so much.”

Eleven percent of Guatemala’s forests have disappeared in the past decade, said Kirsten Johnson, head of a CARE agriforestry project trying to reverse the trend. The project recently won a $2-million grant from Applied Energy Services, a U.S. company that is building coal-fired power plants in the United States and is looking for a way to help offset the pollution the plants would cause.

Some of Guatemala’s forests have fallen victim to logging, ranching and agribusiness interests, others to pressure of a growing population, of peasants desperate for a plot of land to feed their families, Johnson said.

What is happening in this hamlet of about 300 families reflects a new approach to the problem. Forests are not being replanted. There is no place for them now: The people need the land.

The CARE project began in 1974 and now aims at changing lives, not landscapes, Johnson said. Massive reforestation projects of the 1970s and early 1980s failed because they did not take into account the causes of deforestation. “People have certain very clear needs for food, fuel and construction wood. They are not able to meet those needs.”

Guatemala has one of the most unequal distributions of land in the hemisphere. About 4.5% of landholders own 70% of the land, and that 70% is the richest. For peasants, “there’s no place to go except up the hillsides,” Johnson said.

Many hillsides, once covered by trees, now are bare, stripped for firewood and fence posts and to make way for the beans and corn on which peasants live.

The area around Guachipilin, 76 miles southeast of Guatemala City, was deforested by the early 1960s. Some peasants are now farming hillsides so steep they use ropes to hoist themselves up and down their plots.

The program moved into Guachipilin three years ago. Its budget is $300,000 a year, largely for design, planning and follow-up. Other support, supplies and Peace Corps volunteers are funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Guatemalan government.