Some of Mexico's forest people are already being paid to manage trees sustainably, while doubts grow over wider U.N. REDD programme
p>SAN ANTONIO TUK, Mexico (AlertNet) - "Climate change is a very serious problem - we Mayan producers want to show how it can be done differently," says environmentalist Miguel Cante Chuc looking up at the forest canopy that has provided for him his whole life.The San Antonio Tuk community forest, a three-hour drive south from Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula, is just one of Mexico's many communal land trusts, or ejiros. Created on the back of the Mexican revolution a century ago, they account for a staggering 70 percent of the country's 64 million hectares of forest cover.
Environmental NGOs say they are perfect for preserving forests under the fledgling Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Land Degradation (REDD) regime now under negotiation at the U.N. climate change conference in Cancun.
The difference is stark between Cancun - a tourist playground where mangrove forests have long made way for dozens of air-conditioned hotels, one of which, the gigantic Moon Palace, is host to the climate conference - and the forest village of San Antonio Tuk.
The contrast exemplifies the threat facing Mexico's forests. "It's not logging or fires that are the biggest threats to our forests, but development in the tourism, mining and agricultural sectors," says Sergio Madrid Zubirán of the Consejo Civil Mexicana para la Silvicultura Sostenible, a network of NGOs that work on forests.
The Consejo supports four forest projects which it hopes will benefit from a future REDD scheme by sequestering carbon and protecting trees. San Antonia Tuk lies in one of the larger zones, a 70,000-hectare community forest in the heavily deforested state of Quintana Roo, home to 54 Mayan communities.
LOCAL PARTICIPATION IN REDD?
In Mexico, conservationists are divided on whether to protect forests by keeping people out of them, or by appointing indigenous Mayan forest dwellers as their official custodians. Some REDD proposals on the table take an ambivalent approach to the participation of indigenous communities, with some nations reluctant to use the scheme as a way of empowering local ethnic groups.
"It's the people who live in the forest that know best how to preserve it," counters Zubirán. "A non-touch strategy won't work because nobody accrues benefits from conserving the forest. If we involve local communities, we win much more."
Community member and biologist Marco Antonio explains that the project was launched with the aim of giving economic support to the keepers of the forest. "Over 40 groups of land owners deliver essential environmental services for which they receive an incentive from the central government," he says.
This concept in which forest people get paid for safeguarding, for instance, the water supply used by downstream communities is rapidly gaining ground. "For our stewardship, the government gives us 326 pesos ($26 US) per hectare per year," says Cante Chuc who runs a privately owned network that mediates between communities and project funders.
It doesn't seem much, but with hundreds of hectares per community member, it provides an additional income, while the trend of deforestation has been halted, says the Consejo's spokesperson, Iván Zúñiga Pérez-Tejada.
The project is supported by a $200,000 grant from HSBC Bank, the Ford Foundation and the Consejo.
The Mexican NGO hopes to complete a baseline survey of carbon sequestration in the forest in June next year, and has an eye on how it could benefit from a REDD agreement at the Cancun climate talks.
The Consejo argues that many of the tricky issues associated with REDD - such as ensuring loss of forests doesn't occur in other ways, verifying how much extra carbon is stored as a result, and making sure that carbon isn't simply released later - could be solved by putting the Mayan forest communities in charge of monitoring schemes, because they have used the forest sustainably for centuries.
"A well-organised community is the most effective remedy against illegal logging," argues Zubirán.
FORESTS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
Catalina Briceño Lopez, a sinewy 69-year old, was one of the first Maya to arrive in the area. "I came here at 15 with my husband who was one of the founders of San Antonio Tuk," she says.
She recalls a pristine forest where no one lived. "It is important to pass on this sense of conserving the forest for next generations. I have a piece of land, and when my children and grandchildren come to visit me, I teach them about how to live from the forest without over-exploiting it," she says.
"It is a beautiful thing to preserve the environment, I am very excited about this (project)."
Don Santos Ilichois, 64, carves out an environmentally sustainable living by harvesting gum (Chicle) for the chewing gum industry. A packet of "organic tropical forest chewing gum" sells for as much as 2 euros in European supermarkets.
While most Westerners his age are reaching for their slippers, Don Santos straps on a pair of spikes and readies himself to climb an 800-year-old Chicle tree. A couple metres above ground, he hacks diagonal lines into the ancient forest giant.
"The gum will run down the tree through these lines where we can collect it," he says. "It will not kill the tree."
Wiping the sweat off his tough, sun-hardened face, he explains it takes several hours to work the entire length of a tree like this. In one day, he can harvest about 1.5 kg of gum from a tree, with 1 kg of gum fetching about 55 pesos ($4).
"We hope that with an agreement on forests (at the U.N. talks), we can keep on using the trees in our traditional ways," he says. But the future of REDD - hailed only a few weeks back as one of the few likely successes from Cancun - seems uncertain.
The Japanese government reiterated last week it will not join a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol after the initial period expires next year, injecting a sense of pessimism into the negotiations.
The death of the Kyoto Protocol would jeopardise the carbon offsetting initiatives it has given birth to, including the Clean Development Mechanism. And any subsequent collapse of budding carbon markets around the world could pull the rug from under a hard-fought REDD deal before it even gets off the ground.
"Projects on the ground are looking for a signal that REDD is coming and that long-term sustainable finance will be available," said Davyth Stewart of Global Witness, a London-based NGO that advocates for the fair use of natural resources.
"Without a REDD deal here in Cancun, some of those projects will be forced to search for funding elsewhere, including multilateral development banks and the private sector, where they will be subject to different or minimal international common standards."
Servaas van den Bosch is a writer with an interest in climate issues based in Windhoek, Namibia.
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