Conserving Biological Diversity,
Fostering Sustainability in Mesoamerica

By Elsa Chang
Director, Mesoamerican Biological Corridor Project
World Resources Institute

For millions of years, Mesoamerica has served as the Western Hemisphere's continental bridge, linking North and South America. Plants and animals have migrated through this isthmus over the millennia, resulting in enormous biodiversity throughout the many distinct ecosystems that exist in this diverse landscape.

Coral reefs, grasslands, lowland rainforests, mountain forests, and pine savannas are only a few of the ecoregions that biogeographers identify in the Mesoamerican region, encompassing the five southern states of Mexico and the Central American countries of Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Tiny Belize alone is home to more than 150 species of mammals, 540 species of birds, and 152 species of amphibians and reptiles. In Panama, 929 species of birds have been identified, more than are found in Canada and the United States combined.

These lands are also home to human populations that have known more than their share of misery. Civil conflict in the region in recent decades has brought human suffering and material and infrastructure destruction, exacerbating long-standing problems of social inequality, economic underdevelopment, and environmental decline. Currently almost half the population remains below the poverty line, and many lack access to basic healthcare, education, and clean water. Rapid population growth and economic dependence on agriculture have resulted in an unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, widespread water pollution, soil erosion, and deforestation.

Only 10 percent of the region's primary forests remain, the bulk of which have been converted into farms or replaced with tree plantations. About 60 percent of the region's 700 existing and proposed protected areas are not more than 10,000 hectares, too small for animal species to sustain their populations in the face of environmental change.

The scale and speed of habitat loss and fragmentation in one of the world's biologically richest areas has led some conservationists to consider Mesoamerica a biodiversity "hotspot." Governments of the region, donor nations, and domestic and international conservation groups are responding to these trends with a variety of initiatives and an integrated regional approach.

Most notable and ambitious is the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC), a region-wide initiative intended to conserve biological and ecosystem diversity in a manner that fosters sustainable social and economic development. The vision for the MBC is to link protected areas through "corridors" of natural and restored habitats stretching from southern Mexico to Panama, incorporating a holistic approach to the relationship between wild and human-impacted land.

At a summit in 1997, the regional heads-of-state publicly endorsed the MBC, making a commitment to the development of a land-use planning system that would improve the lives of Central Americans while maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. The aims of the MBC are to (a) protect key biodiversity sites; (b) connect these sites with corridors managed in such a way as to enable the movement and dispersal of animals and plants; and (c) promote forms of social and economic development in and around these areas that conserve biodiversity while being socially equitable and culturally sensitive.

The Central American Commission on Environment and Development (Comision Centroamericana de Ambiente y Desarrollo or CCAD) is responsible for coordinating regional planning and implementation of the MBC. This regional body was created in 1989 as regional presidents signed the Charter Agreement for the Protection of the Environment, and embodies a unified vision for regional environmental cooperation.

The heart of the MBC initiative is a proposed scheme that would establish four categories for land-use, with each addressing a different need:

• Core zones are protected areas, where wild habitats and biodiversity are maintained. Mesoamerica has a large number of protected areas already in place that will function as the MBC's core zones, but many of them would have to be increased in size if an ecological region is to be properly protected.

• Buffer zones are the areas surrounding the core zones, functioning to mitigate disturbances to the core zones from adjacent locales of human use and vice versa. These zones would create a physical space between protected areas that contain wildland and adjacent areas with farms, harvested forests, and other human uses.

• Corridor zones would provide land or water pathways that link the core zones with one another, allowing plants and animals to disperse, migrate, and adapt to the pressures of changing climate and habitat conditions.

• Multiple use zones would distinguish between the wildlands and the areas devoted to agriculture, managed forestry, and human settlement. These zones might be applied more widely to encourage diversity in land-use practices, recognizing that biodiversity is best maintained with a mosaic of croplands, forests, and wetlands.

With funding and support from a variety of governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), CCAD is working to develop operational plans and a comprehensive strategy to coordinate and mobilize action for the MBC. The supporting organizations are independently pursuing a variety of projects relevant to the long-term goals of the MBC. For instance, the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, and the U.S.-based University of Rhode Island are focusing on conservation and management of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef system, with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In Costa Rica, the national MBC office is coordinating efforts by NGOs to establish biological corridors that will connect indigenous reserves, protected areas, wetlands, and coastal zones.

In the range of worldwide activity to achieve greater sustainability, the MBC is particularly significant because of the scope and complexity of its goals and the array of institutions and social actors it involves. Those characteristics imbue the MBC with great promise, but also present major challenges that will have to be addressed if the initiative is to have a positive impact on the region.

Significant questions remain among the many people of the region who hold a stake in the future of the MBC. The project has grown to encompass concerns of economic sustainability and social equity because early proposals focused solely on biodiversity preservation, worrying many indigenous groups who feared expropriation of their ancestral lands and the expansion of protected areas onto their territory. As goals broaden to address these concerns, however, conservationists have become concerned that the MBC is taking on social and economic problems that it cannot aspire to solve, thus creating the possibility of unrealistic expectations, a cascade of disappointment, and an erosion of support.

The success of the MBC will depend on development of a shared regional vision of its goals and functions -- a vision that recognizes the divergent needs at stake, and identifies the common interest all regional actors share in achieving ecological and socioeconomic sustainability. The ability to build trust and confidence among various stakeholders of the MBC will determine its fate.

A three-year review of the progress of the initiative conducted by this author and an array of other stakeholders finds that much remains to be done before a shared vision of the MBC goals is achieved. Public awareness, local support, and public and private agency involvement remain limited. Among those who are focused on the initiative, rural and urban residents and other involved groups frequently have different opinions from the agencies involved in implementation. An attitude of mistrust and skepticism prevails because of a lack of clarity about the purposes and plans, and because of limited public access to information.

Our analysis finds that the fate of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor depends on the willingness of governments, civil society, and the private sector to be more participatory and accountable. It will also depend on the ability to resolve existing conflicts over property rights and land tenure, and a devolution of decision-making from central government agencies back to local groups. Because of its vast geographic range and the involvement of so many stakeholders, building the corridor will require a "bottom-up" approach. Local residents must be granted roles in planning and management of the various zones of the corridor to win their support and acceptance of this ambitious regional undertaking.

The MBC now stands at a critical threshold between concept and reality. Its vision will not be realized unless most of the region's people understand the MBC's purpose and commit to its goals and objectives.

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