Brent Sohngen, Professor of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at Ohio State University (sohngen.1@osu.edu).

I was intrigued by a recent story from WRI about forests coming back in Latin America. The authors report on data provided by the University of Maryland which looks at tree losses and gains in the region from 2015 to 2023. Out of 18 countries examined, the authors find that three countries gained tree cover, 10 remained neutral, and five experienced forest losses. The gains occurred in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Uruguay. Losses in Honduras, Belize, Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay.

We shouldn’t be surprised anymore to find that deforestation in many places is slowing while reforestation is gaining steam. My colleague Douglas Southgate and I recently wrote a book (Reversing Deforestation) arguing that trends in demography, technology of food and wood production, and local ownership were setting the stage for forest transition across Latin America. When climate policies, efforts to protect habitat, and private carbon markets are added to mix, the signals are strong and forest gains are picking up steam.

I got to see these changes in person in February, when I traveled to northern Guatemala and participated in a series of meetings and field visits hosted by colleagues from The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The main topic of discussion at the meeting was forest restoration and re-greening of grazing lands in key ecosystems of Central America. Because of the location in Flores, Guatemala, much of the conversation centered around activities in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

For the field trip, we headed up the route to Carmelita (Figure 1), an historic community about 85 km north of Flores in the heart of the Maya Biosphere Reserve (https://maps.app.goo.gl/xCXXNYFWC6iusDNE6). Communities and ranches dot the route. Many people in these communities have been integral to successes and failures of the Reserve since its establishment in the early 2000s. The objectives of the Maya Biosphere Reserve were to protect forests and culture, while at the same time providing for livelihoods. A tall order anywhere in the world.

Figure 1: Google Maps satellite image of the “Route to Carmelita”, seen as the road leading north from San Andres towards Carmelita.

In this part of the Reserve, protection has not always been easy to accomplish. The GIF in Figure 2 illustrates how deforestation has crept up the route to Carmelita since 2000.
There are many explanations for this deforestation. Fortmann et al. (2017) break the concessions in the Reserve into three groups: long-established residential concessions, recently established residential concessions, and non-residential concessions. By far, most deforestation has happened in the recently established residential concessions – the ones along the route to Carmelita.

Figure 2: GIF of deforestation along the Route to Carmelita between 2000 and 2023, obtained from the Global Forest Watch website (https://www.globalforestwatch.org/)

Many of the folks who were recruited to join these recently established concessions were migrants to the region, often with farming backgrounds. The forest concessions along the road to Carmelita had also been harvested for decades prior by industrial timber companies, leaving the areas with comparatively low stocks of valuable timber. As a result, the income generated in this area was lower than elsewhere in the Reserve.

Becoming a concession member provided an opportunity to secure some land. Forestry provided a less certain approach to obtaining the food and income necessary for the survival of their families. And some large ranchers moved in, frequently offering large sums of money to locals, allowing them to take advantage of communities that did not have the resources to fight back.

Yet today, there is hope. Data from the University of Maryland (Figure 3) shows forest cover increasing in many places along this route. Not everywhere, and deforestation still happens, but reforestation is a growing feature of the landscape.

Figure 3: Woody Vegetation Canopy Cover data from Global Land Analysis and Discovery data set (https://zenodo.org/records/14231362). Blue illustrates areas where canopy cover increased from 2015-2023 while red indicates a decrease in canopy cover.

People who know say there are good reasons for this change. Bigger trends in demography and technology help, but the government has also worked to root out the excesses of illegal deforestation and cattle ranching, especially by larger operations. Ownership of forests, current or future, is becoming more secure through the concession model as many have now been renewed for an additional 25 years.

Some land is coming back on its own as cows have been removed and crops eschewed. Some land is being re-greened by human efforts, using funding from international aid agencies (the UK and the EU have been essential as was USAID before it was disbanded), or private donations. This is work WCS, the Association of Forest Communities of Petén (ACOFOP), and their many other local partners are doing.

The problem of regreening, however, is not at all trivial. One option of course is to leave the land alone and see what happens. Trees will come back if the land is left alone and fire abated. But under what conditions will the land be left alone and not converted back to grazing or cropland?

WCS reckons one way to make regreening durable is to address food production and forest productivity. Some land that could be reforested will instead be devoted to food production for some time. Even if 25% of a concessions landscape remains cropped for local subsistence, while the rest returns to forests, estimates suggest that benefits could be large enough to compete with local ranching wages.

On our excursion to the area, we picked up a local fellow who had been working in his field and transported him home. It was his birthday — he said his 100th — but rather than celebrating, he was tending to his crop of maize. It’s humbling to see someone who should be retired and playing with his grandkids working like that. It’s problematic to think that regreening could worsen outcomes for him and his extended family if some land is not available for food production.

For the long term, WCS is trying to elevate two goals. First, their emerging model of re-greening ensures land is available to local inhabitants to generate income and food, improving livelihoods, and competing with wages on nearby ranches. Second, their model attempts to increase forest productivity by speeding the time to mature forests with nursery operations and replanting focused on valuable species like Mahogany and Spanish Cedar. Standing forests in the area have already been high-graded, so it’s going to be a while until mature, high-value forests return, but WCS is doing everything it can to make this happen as quickly as possible over as much landscape as it can.

Already, one can see signs of success. In areas formerly infested with exotic and highly invasive pasture grasses, Mahogany trees 10-15 feet high planted several years ago are emerging at the top of the canopy. Data from bird studies suggest that reforesting areas now attract forest dependent species that have avoided the area for years. Wildlife cameras are capturing animals more comfortable in forests than grazed and cropped lands.

As it has been for the last 25-30 years, the people living and working in the Maya Biosphere Reserve continue to lead by example. Regreening efforts along the “Route to Carmelita” respond to both “failures” from the past and opportunities for the future. Efforts by WCS and its partners to promote livelihoods by supporting some crop production while trying to bring back a productive forest for the future represents a model that can be used in many places.

** Many thanks to Roan McNab for commenting on an earlier version of this document, as well as inviting me to the meeting and excursion in Guatemala, and Gabriela Ponce along with the incredible WCS team in Guatemala for their hospitality and clear explanations of how they are going about their work!