For anyone watching the news in the 1980s, - Central America was a land of leftist revolutionaries, right-wing militaries, and peasants caught in the cross fire. In those days, green signified camouflage fatigues not a lush rain forest.
It was tough being an environmentalist in the eighties as Guatemala was trying to put down a rebel insurgency. "Ten years ago, I couldn't talk to you about this situation," says Jorge Cabrera, a leading Guatemalan environmentalist. "I could be in very serious danger of extinction. But now, there's more freedom."
The end of the bloody civil wars has permitted an environmental movement to blossom in Central America. People have recognized that this land bridge between two continents contains a wealth of biodiversity worth preserving. Costa Rica and Panama together have more bird species than the US and Canada combined.
While the war was bad for environmentalists, the conflicts were, in their way, good for the environment. The terrorist bombings, kidnappings, and land mines scared away timber, mining, and petroleum companies.
"During the war, there was a positive result for nature, in a way," says Marco Gonzalez, an environmental lawyer from Nicaragua. "I remember visiting border areas between Honduras and Nicaragua in 1991 and I was amazed to discover how much the forest had grown in 12 years of conflict, because there were no people there."
US anthropologist Mac Chapin noticed the same thing in the rain forests of Nicaragua and Panama where he works on land-tenure issues with indigenous groups. "People were fighting, they weren't occupied in the pillage of natural resources," says Chapin.
Today, political stability, trade liberalization, and privatization have created a more attractive climate for foreign investment.
"The sheer scale of investment threatens to open up vast expanses of previously undisturbed natural areas. And the rate at which new concessions have been granted during just the last five years means that this threat is an immediate concern for conservation," concludes a recent report by Conservation International, looking at resource extraction throughout Latin America.
Many large projects are under way. In Panama, copper and gold-mining concessions have been granted on Kuna Indian territory. In Guatemala, the Canadian company Norcen Energy Resources has announced plans to explore for oil in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala. A Korean logging company is in the Atlantic coastal forests of Nicaragua. A Malaysian timber company is in the Mayan forest of Belize. And in Honduras, a Dallas oilman is building a giant sawmill amid the pine forests.
Central America is trying to make up for lost time. It must rebuild economies devastated by the wars and address the crushing poverty that fueled the guerrilla movements. In this light, foreign investment does not appear so sinister to some analysts in the region.
"It's a good thing peace has broken out and foreign investors are now taking a much greater interest in this region and are much more willing to come here and look at the potential of Central America for economic growth," says Stacy Rhodes, Guatemala-based regional director of the US Agency for International Development (AID).
On the whole, conservationists doubt the mining, timber, and oil companies will behave responsibly given the lack of environmental-protection laws and monitoring in most of Central America. But some environmentalists are encouraged, now that the wars are over, that the seven countries are finally talking seriously about the environment. And, in one ambitious project, they are discussing the creation of a Meso-American Biological Corridor that would stretch all the way from Mexico to Panama.
In what everyone agrees is a remarkably ambitious idea, these countries have agreed in principle to create a single Meso-American Biological Corridor--a network of national and transborder nature preserves to be interspersed with environmentally benign plantations.
Planners, biologists, and lawyers working on the corridor are quick to clarify that they do not envision an unbroken passageway of forest through which a panther could conceivably travel from Guatemala's Peten to Panama's Darien Gap.
"I understand the concept of a biological corridor, but we get lots of opposition when we declare protected areas," says Rodolfo Cardona, director of Guatemala's National Council of Protected Areas. "People think they [protected areas] are under glass and can't be used anymore. It's impossible to create more protected areas. So we're thinking about other ideas, more an ecological corridor that includes humans."
Costa Rica has proved to the rest of Latin America that ecotourism can be hugely profitable. In recent years, tourism has become Costa Rica's biggest industry, surpassing bananas, coffee, and timber.
"Those ecological treasures exist across the region, indeed even greater in other areas than in Costa Rica," says Rhodes of AID. "And I think the Central Americans know their economic future is also dependent on the future of their natural-resource base."
Central Americans are experimenting with two other types of sustainable development that might fit into this ecological corridor, such as shade-grown coffee plantations and tree plantations. Conservationists are looking seriously at a type of shade-tolerant coffee as a bird-friendly alternative to coffee that requires full sun.
"In El Salvador, for instance, it wasn't possible to talk about protected areas because El Salvador only has 1% of its territory covered by forest," says environmental lawyer Marco Gonzalez. "But then we discovered shade-coffee plantations contained more than 400 species of birds. In a way, the shade coffee acts as a biological corridor."
In the second example, some government biologists see tree plantations as another--albeit imperfect--way to protect biodiversity in the tropics. Commercially valuable trees provide wildlife habitats until they are cut in 10-15 years and a new forest is planted.
"This was completely pasture land. Now it's fully covered by about eight species of trees. It has excellent forest coverage; therefore, we're attracting more and more small mammals, deer, and birds to come back to this area," says Costa Rican forester Ricardo Villalobos, surveying a plantation of softwoods used to make popsicle sticks, located about 95 km east of San Jose.
Despite its misleading name, the Meso-American Biological Corridor has been gaining notoriety, not as a 3,200-km long nature preserve, but as a matrix into which other environmental projects can fit. These ideas include managing forests to preserve indigenous land rights and strengthening national environmental laws.
The US and European governments, private foundations, and international development banks have committed some US$600 million. The World Bank is the single largest donor, with US$160 million.
"I think the idea is good, but I'm not sure it will work," says Guatemalan activist Magali Rey Rosa, a veteran of many environmental battles. "Our most important protected areas are not protected at all. Now, if we're not protecting those important areas, how are we going to connect them?"
And would they want to connect the preserves even if they were truly protected? Some biologists question the whole premise of biological corridors because so little science exists that explains what actually happens inside them. "They are only an idea now, an act of faith," said one prominent ecologist.
Some scientists believe if corridor money is being spent to protect wildlife, it could be better used to add space for existing wilderness refuges. But others think that, as the environmental movement runs short of ideas, corridors do more good than harm.
"Sometimes they make biological sense, sometimes they don't. They generally make good conservation sense," says Amos Bien, director of the Costa Rican Association of Private Nature Preserves.
"I think the Meso-American biological corridor is probably never going to be completed in its entirety," Bien says. "But I think insofar as parts of it can be made, any single piece that can be added is better than not having it at all."
It would be easy to succumb to cynicism. Environmental victories are hard enough to win in the US, much less in a region saddled with endemic poverty, weak government institutions, and a private sector used to getting its way. But one participant pointed out that what is important about the Alliance for Sustainable Development is the process that has begun with the presidents' signatures.
"You take conservation for granted in the US. You invented national parks, you're at the top rung of the ladder," says attorney Marco Gonzalez. "Central America is on the bottom rung. We have a long way to climb. But now we've started."
The author, based in Austin, Texas, is a correspondent for National Public Radio in the United States. He can be reached via email
Conservation and Deforestation in Costa Rican Parks Guatemala Struggles to Protect Maya Rain Forest After the Wars: Protecting Central America's Environment
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