Equity Trust Fund Borrower Projects Honduras Community Support Corporation -
Honduras, Central America
Equity
Trust has recently made a loan to help strike a working balance between
the economic needs and the environmental needs of a remote community in
Honduras. The community of Altos de La Paz is located on the headwaters
of Rio de La Paz in the Sierra Rio Tinto of northeastern Honduras. This
valley is accessible for less than half the year. Under the best of conditions,
it is at least 12 hours by pick-up truck, and finally by mule, to Altos
de La Paz from the town of Tocoa. In the rainy season, the clay soils of
these valleys turn to mud, and travel on land becomes impossible. The only
access in that season is by air to the town of Palaciocs, then in large
dugout canoes up the Rio Sico and Rio Paulaya. Altos de La Paz is a community
of 26 families, widely scattered on the western edge of the valley. There
is no school in the community, no store of any sort, and of course no electric
or phone service. Families keep herds of livestock, and grow corn and beans
in the valley.
In
this region, recent settlement and increasing cattle grazing have resulted
in t he clearing of forests in the valleys, but mountain forests are still
relatively undisturbed. The national government prohibits cutting of trees
in the mountains except through government-approved management plans, but
the ability of the government itself to enforce such restrictions in this
remote area has been extremely limited. The residents of Altos de La Paz
needed lumber to build their homes, and needed the income that the sale
of mahogany and other tropical hardwoods would generate, but they knew what
environmental affects deforestation would create. Deforestation of the mountains
would cause pollution and destabilization of the river, resulting in droughts
and uncontrolled run-off and reduction in the productivity of their valley
fields and pastures. Government policy permitted locally-based campesino cooperatives to seek official approval of professionally prepared forest management plans that allowed limited, sustainable timber harvesting. The community wished to manage the mountain forests on a sustainable, legal basis but they had no way to pay for such plans. They created a forest-management cooperative that would pool their resources and they set out to find a sustainable solution together. Equity Trust gave the Honduras Community Support Corporation the funding to make a loan to the cooperative so that they could pay for the preparation and approval of a detailed five-year "working plan." This plan will identify specific trees to be harvested, and generate a wood-harvesting schedule that will maintain the productivity and health of the mountain forests. With this plan, the community-based forest-management collective of Altos de La Paz will be able to proceed with harvesting forest products that will help their community economically, without contributing to deforestation or altering the climate of the region.
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