Driving south through Central America and into Panama’s province of Darién, the Pan American Highway turns to dirt, narrows, and then stops in the little community of Yaviza. Beyond lie the forests and waterways of the famous Darién Gap, the only break in the highway system that runs from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
The Darién might be the end of the road, but it’s in the vanguard of a global effort to achieve economic and social development and preserve a rich natural environment.
Keel-billed toucan (above) and scarlet macaw, representatives of the Darién's famed biodiversity.
“The Darién is a laboratory of how to put it all together—sparse population, large territory, high biodiversity, little infrastructure,” says José Manuel Pérez, executive director of the Darién Sustainable Development Program. With the help of a $70.4 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, the program is showing how a series of well-chosen infrastructure and productive projects, combined with an unprecedented level of local participation, can control rapid change.
While the program is many things, its guiding principle is participation. Early on, the IDB and the government of Panama concluded that the program would succeed only to the degree that it had the support of the local people. Conversely, the local people would give it their backing only if they themselves had a hand in its design and implementation.
The program would go far beyond the traditional activities of building roads, airports, water systems, electricity distribution networks, training and strengthening institutions, natural resource management, environmental protection and land titling—although each is an essential piece in the Darién development puzzle. The program’s real challenge would be to coordinate all of these activities while maintaining a constant dialogue with community groups, nongovernmental organizations and local governments throughout the province.
Complex proving ground. As a laboratory for sustainable development, the Darién offers anything but a simplified, controlled set of conditions. The Darién is dauntingly complex and awash with problems.
Executive Director Pérez: "The Darién program puts it all together."Panama’s largest province, Darién also has the country’s highest indices of poverty and by far the highest rate of deforestation. A major contributor to these problems is a surging population—the 4.5 percent annual rate of increase, also the nation’s highest, has tripled the province’s population in the past 20 years to 60,000.
As new people move in, competition for land and resources sparks conflicts. Most of the newcomers are Latino colonists from elsewhere in the country. Their aspirations for land and a better life often run headlong into the interests of indigenous communities, themselves already well organized and vocal. On the Darién's Pacific and Caribbean coasts, Afro-Latino communities worry that their fishing-based economies are threatened by the big boats from Panama City.
Potential for trouble increases with the spillover from the civil conflict in Colombia, which borders the Darién's southern reaches. Newspaper headlines regularly carry reports of incursions over the border by both rebels and refugees. Drug traffickers also make regular use of the Darién’s forest paths and remote waterways.
Finally, there are environmental conflicts. Although most of the valuable trees were “creamed” from the forests years ago, land is still being cleared for pastures and cropland. Nevertheless, the remaining forests, mostly on indigenous lands and in the Darién National Park, hold a special status as a transition zone for plants and animals from north and south. The region’s outstanding biodiversity has won the Darién National Park a UNESCO designation as a World Heritage Site and a Man and Biosphere Reserve.
International example. Darién Program Executive Director Pérez had just returned from the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. Walking the conference halls and talking with delegates, he was surprised to find that his program has few counterparts in the rest of the world.
“The people I met were impressed with the complexity of what we are attempting to do,” he said. “I explained to them that the aspect of the program I am most proud of is what we’re doing to strengthen the ability of local people to articulate their own needs.” Even before the IDB approved its financing for the project, some 45 workshops were held throughout the province. Discussions at these workshops helped generate many specific components of the project.
Welcome to the Darién.Today, progress is monitored by a Local Advisory Committee (LAC), made up of nearly 80 representatives from grassroots organizations, indigenous groups, governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations. In addition, 29 local committees, one for each of the province’s administrative units, also monitor works in progress.
In the province itself, the program is based in the sprawling community of Metetí. There, Edwin Ramírez, coordinator of the LAC, acknowledged that the program is plagued with delays in installing water systems, bridges, rural electrification networks, health posts, and other works, partly because of difficulties in coordinating activities with many different governmental agencies. But a great deal has also been achieved. “Darién is no longer the abandoned province,” he said. “When the government and the IDB put $88 million into the Darién, this is a very important signal.”
The unprecedented level of consultation at the community level extends to the national and international levels as well. An advisory committee has met eight times, both in Panama and Washington, D.C., to review broad policies to reconcile economic and social progress with environmental conservation. The committee’s national members represent the government, the Catholic Church, nongovernmental groups and indigenous communities. International members include senior representatives from The Nature Conservancy, the Smithsonian Institution, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, and the Central American Commission for Environment and Development.
Double-edged road. While the program’s heart is citizen participation, its face is a road, specifically the paving of 196 kms of the Pan American Highway that ends in Yaviza. Some 37 km have been paved so far. Members of local communities are monitoring the work.
Conceived as a simple engineering project, the road would have been a double-edged sword, benefiting some while leaving many needs unmet and causing massive indirect environmental destruction. The major goal of the program is to ensure that this does not happen.
Coordinator Ramírez: "We're no longer abandoned."In many cases, this means strictly enforcing existing regulations. For example, a construction firm building a lateral road was fined for causing environmental damage. Another way to control the road’s impact is by demarcating parks and indigenous comarcas (land holdings), and issuing titles to land owners. During the past year, 32,000 hectares of land in the region of Alto Bayano, (outside Darién Province, but included as part of the project) were demarcated and titled. Next on the agenda are an additional 400,000 hectares in the Darién itself.
Work on the road is allowed to progress only as disputes over land move toward resolution. Most of the conflicts—some of which have been violent—involve settlers encroaching on land set aside for the indigenous groups. Both the settlers and the indigenous people cite Panamanian law to support their positions.
“Should all 3,000 of us go out to confront the settlers, and fight man to man?” asks Pedro Esquivel, a leader of the Kuna indigenous community. “We should not. We’re tired of all of this. It is the job of the government to settle disputes.”
Part of this delicate job falls to a mediator contracted by the Darién program to reach a consensus among stakeholders. The work can be complex and frustrating. In one case, the Kunas and the settlers were on the verge of signing an agreement, but at the last minute the Kuna negotiators decided they had to consult with their congress. Then, after a second round of negotiations, the Kunas said they could not make a final decision without talking directly to the president of Panama.
Roads—and not just the main road—remain a constant part of the dialogue between the local communities and the program. Many members of the LAC are insisting that the program finance “production roads.” They are careful not to call them access roads or penetration roads, which would raise the hackles of environmentalists concerned about new settlement and increasing forest destruction.
The local people see these roads as essential to get their crops to market during the rainy season, when the dirt paths turn into ribbons of mud. Better roads would also help to get children to school, sick people to health centers, and supplies and materials to consumers.
“We farmers are called despoilers, because we cut, burn, plant,” said LAC secretary Horacio Gonzalez. “But we want to change the way we farm, and we need production roads to do it.” Rather than hurt the environment, he claimed that the roads would enable farmers to intensify production on small areas—raising cattle on improved pastures, for example.
With or without production roads, runaway development will be prevented—at least in principle—by land use management planning. The program is financing an overall plan for critical areas in the region, and the landowners are learning how to draw up plans for their individual properties that would leave approximately 30 percent under forest cover.
This management system is already getting a test run in Guatemala’s Petén region, in another program financed by the IDB (see link to article at right), and a group of Darién residents has already visited their Petén counterparts to learn how planning can work.
Meticulous craftsmanship in Puerto Lara.From baskets to tourism. Community participation was the main theme in a visit to Puerto Lara, an indigenous community in the Emberá-Woonaán reserve. The visitors had come to talk about basketry, for which the women are famed. Tightly woven and emblazoned with intricate designs, their wares are featured on more than 100 Internet pages and can sell for many hundreds of dollars. A consultant financed by the program has advised the women on how to diversify products and conserve the plants from which the fibers are extracted. “We’re helping to do better what they already do,” explained María Vásquez, the program’s community coordinator.
But the subject the villagers really wanted to talk about was tourism. More than 200 tourists have visited the village so far this year, they said, and 70 more are expected in October. They wanted the program’s help to train guides and to improve infrastructure. Tourism was not in the original program. “But we’re willing to consider it,” Vásquez told the community members.
The dialogue between the program and the communities continued in the isolated fishing village of Garachiné, on the Gulf of San Miguel. This rich marine ecosystem is not only home to a great number of species, but is also a magnet for commercial shrimp fishermen. An inventory of fisheries resources will provide the foundation for a scientifically based management plan.
Demetrio Olaciregui, the program’s communications expert, jumped from his small boat to shore without getting his feet wet. He explained that Garachiné will soon be getting a new dock. Docks and ports were also on the program’s agenda for the provincial capital of La Palma and two other communities.
Community Coordinator Vásquez: "Send us a proposal."Garachiné’s fishermen, who have long lived hand to mouth, dependent on their small wooden boats and dwindling fisheries stocks, are grumbling about new laws governing seine net sizes and closed seasons. “The sardines have disappeared,” said Pedro Mena, president of the local fisherman’s organization, “and the big fish have disappeared with them.”
But when the fishing improves, local fishermen will be able to use the new skills they learned in a series of program-sponsored workshops. For example, simple navigational techniques will enable them to venture out further, use less gas, and return more quickly. Instruction in outboard motor maintenance means that they can clean the gas filter themselves, and not have to wait stranded in open water for help.
They also learned how to be better businessmen. “Before we never calculated how much we were spending in time and gas,” said Mena. “Now we will know if we are losing money, or if we’re making a profit.”
But big problems remained, said Mena. First, the fishermen need more workshops, he said, to “give continuity.” They also need a fish storage facility to hold their catch for the buyers.
Handsome grouper and happy fisherman in Garachiné.Olaciregui later met with Gabriela Córdoba, president of a women’s group whose members had participated in courses on preparing new food products from fish. The women had learned a good deal about making croquettes and fish cakes, Córdoba said, but they needed a commercial-sized blender and grinder and a freezer to actually go into production. Could the program help them?
Problem park. While much of the Darién is changing fast, about one third of the province’s area is still largely virgin, and will remain that way. This is the Darién National Park, an expanse of 559,000 hectares that lies along the border with Colombia.
The biggest national park in Central America, it is also one of the least developed and rarely visited. Reaching the nearest guard post and dormitory takes several hours by motorized dugout canoe (if the gravel bars are not too shallow or no fallen trees block the way), followed by a two-hour hike along muddy mountain paths.
The park could be an extraordinary asset for the province and the country. Its rich diversity of plants and animals—and especially birds—could attract tourists from around the world, create opportunities for ecotourism entrepreneurs, and generate jobs as guides, service staff, boatmen, and cooks.
But under the present conditions—difficult access, nearly non-existent facilities, potential violence from the civil unrest across the border with Colombia—the park offers more adventure than most tourists would prefer.
The most urgent need is for an up-to-date management plan, a project which is already underway as part of the IDB-financed program. The plan will include input from indigenous people who live in eight communities inside or near the park.
“They discussed how they would coexist with the park,” Park Director Francisco Arturo Tang said in reference to workshops where the community members were asked for comments. “They were enthusiastic about the new plan,” he said, adding that this is not normally the case in such circumstances. But he explained that any restrictions would have minimal impact on the local people because they do not clear forests to raise cattle, and subsistence hunting can be continued without threatening the animal populations. Moreover, he said, the people themselves will have a voice in setting hunting and fishing regulations. “The people will say, ‘If this is mine, I have to take care of it’,” said Tang.
Park Director Tang: "Local people should co-manage park."He even hopes that community members will help with the surveillance. “My dream is that the local people will co-manage the park,” he said.
Although the park now has 18 guards in four guard posts—up from five guards last year—they can’t even begin to oversee such a vast area. Nevertheless, their efforts are occasionally rewarded, particularly when they go on night patrols. Occasionally they also receive tourists, who sleep in a dormitory at the guard post. But for the most part, the guards say that their major challenge is just getting by. Limited communications, along with shortfalls in basic supplies such as boots and uniforms, make it difficult to work effectively.
Politics and progress. Although the Darién program is a model, it is far from perfect. The problems are too great. “Sustainable development is still a theoretical concept that has to be worked out in the field,” says Executive Director Pérez. Although Panamanian Finance Minister Norberto Delgado's personal leadership in the program has played a large role in moving things forward, getting cooperation from all of the players involved remains a headache.
For example, a recurrent problem in the Darién is road damage caused by overloaded trucks. A weigh station was built to regulate the trucks, but the transportation ministry does not have the funds to hire and train the three people needed to man it. The program offered to pay the salaries, but the ministry still must provide the training.
Another problem is managing relations with local communities. Many technicians lack the communications skills needed to deal with local people. Moreover, even under the best circumstances, they are in a difficult position. “The ministry is pressuring them from above to get the work done and the communities are making demands from below that would slow things down,” says María Vásquez, “They are caught in the middle.”
Trailside attractions.The local people must also share responsibility for many of the problems in their province. For example, they must protect watersheds and repair leaks in potable water systems to conserve resources.
Ideally, said Pérez, the program would have solved land use management and conservation plans before it tackled roads and other infrastructure. But he explained that politics made this impossible. “People wanted to see results,” he said. “Despite the normal growing pains, we are producing results, and one of the most visible results is the road. But our message is that this is not a project about a road. It's a whole new way of bringing progress to a region."