Will there be some left for future generations?

Whose resources? Whose decisions?

The threat of destructive tree harvesting galvanizes a community and leads to a sustainable road project

By Roger Hamilton, Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua

It's easy to understand why people along Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast get cynical and discouraged. In the town with the improbable name of Prinzapolka, people are still talking about the day when a helicopter landed on the grassy space beside the Moravian church. The pilot and passengers got out and started looking around. At one point, the local leader got up the nerve to ask them who they were and what they were doing. "None of your business," was the reply. The community members guessed that they must have been from the government, but they never learned for sure.

Things could have turned out even worse for the community of Lapán. Several years ago, the people asked for a road to link their isolated village to the outside world, and the government agreed. The work began, but soon the people began to have second thoughts.

"The logging trucks were already starting to line up," recalled Balbo Muller Foster, territorial delegate of Nicaragua's Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources. It quickly became obvious that big timber companies were planning to use the road to go in and strip the area of its marketable trees. In the end, Lapán would be left with nothing, not even the original road they asked for, since the heavy vehicles would tear it to pieces.

So Foster proposed the following: The government would complete the road if the community developed a plan to manage its forests. The people agreed, and the environment ministry sent technicians to help them. At the same time, the community sent some of its young people to enroll at an IDB-funded technical institute in Puerto Cabezas where they would learn woodworking.

The plan worked. "The people are getting a lot more out of their forest," said Foster. "They are not simply cutting the trees and selling them as trunks. Instead, they have set up a community enterprise, and are marketing their own locally made furniture." They showed their products at a fair in Puerto Cabezas, he added, and they sold "like johnnycakes."

People taking charge. Foster related the two stories during a lunch break at a workshop being conducted on the second floor of his ministry's regional headquarters in Puerto Cabezas. Participants–government officials, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and leaders from two towns–had been huddled all morning. Their job was to provide input for a proposed environmental action plan, a document that would put teeth into the country's environmental law. They went down checklists of environmental problems, and came up with policies and actions that they adopted by a show of hands. Their ideas would go to the environment ministry in Managua for consideration in drawing up the final draft.

The plan will be crucial to the Atlantic Coast, whose economy is based almost wholly on fisheries, forestry, and mining. Many years of exploitation–mostly for the gain of people who live somewhere else–have left these resources seriously depleted. Lobsters have disappeared where they used to be abundant, forests have been cut indiscriminately, and mining has scarred the land and left waterways polluted.

The new plan will protect natural resources as well as help to ensure that their benefits will remain on the Atlantic Coast. "People will be at the center of whatever we do," said Foster. "We can't talk about environmental protection without reducing poverty."

The idea of bringing citizens into public policy discussions is a relatively new concept in Nicaragua and in much of Latin America. In former times, authorities in distant capital cities made the decisions. Now, citizens and civil society organizations are teaming up with newly empowered local officials to set priorities, lobby for funding, and monitor results.

This is the aim of an innovative new program the IDB is financing on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast. (See the link on the right for more information.) By strengthening the region's local governments, the new program will give the authorities the ability to reach out to local communities and civil society groups. Government and citizens together are building democratic institutions that are providing a foundation for social and economic development.

Participatory decision making has already produced solid results elsewhere in Nicaragua. (See the link on the right about an IDB-funded forestry program, "A land renewed.") Foster is convinced that it will happen here as well. In fact, he says, there is no alternative. "Any project without the participation and support of the people is going to fail," he said. "The environment does not belong to the government, but to everyone."