By: Mélisande Séguin, Campesino Committee of the Highlands cooperant

Cooperant Update: Protected Areas in Guatemala: A Conservation Project that Only Conserves Elite Economic Interests

In 1989, the Guatemalan Congress adopted the Protected Areas Law and created the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP) with the goal of guaranteeing the protection of biodiversity in Guatemala. This led to the creation of 343 protected areas, natural spaces with limited access to conserve the country’s flora and fauna. However, the adoption of the Protected Areas Law is part of a series of events that have harmed the campesino and Indigenous populations in Guatemala and contribute to the country’s structures of violence and repression. The creation of these areas led to the displacement of thousands of campesinos from the newly “protected” territories, under the pretext that human presence was the main cause of environmental destruction.

In response, communities organized in the CCDA are actively fighting for a reform to the Protected Areas Law that would protect both Guatemala’s biodiversity and the rights of Indigenous and peasant communities.

The History Behind the Protected Areas Law

The Protected Areas Law was not approved until 1989, but it is often linked to initiatives implemented since the 1960s, which are aimed at the continued colonization and control of Guatemalan territory. Several protected areas are in the Franja Transversal del Norte and in the Department of Petén, two regions that were colonized through the adoption of the Agrarian Transformation Law in 1962 and the creation of the Fomento y Desarrollo del Petén (FYDEP) company in 1960. These two initiatives opened the way for landowners and the military to appropriate lands for their businesses.

Despite its mandate to protect the environment, the Protected Areas Law consolidated a dynamic already present in these territories. While CONAP seeks to displace communities living in harmony with the protected areas’ territory, it allows for the promotion of economic activities like oil drilling, cattle ranching, and road construction, key elements of the Franja Transversal del Norte and the FYDEP project [1]. For the same reason, many organizations and communities say that CONAP defends the interests of extractive companies, the military, and landowners, instead of protecting nature.

Moreover, several protected areas are the site of famous tourist sites such as Tikal, Lake Atitlán, the Acatenango Volcano, and the Quetzal Biotope. In these places, Indigenous and peasant communities’ access to the territory of is limited, while thousands of tourists are admitted each year and infrastructure is built to accommodate them.

Given Guatemala’s history of dispossession and the interests prioritized in so-called protected areas, it is safe to assume that environmental protection is not their primary objective.

The impacts of the Protected Areas Law on communities

The impacts of colonial violence in protected areas are still present. Even though several communities had lived on these lands for years before the approval of the Protected Areas Law, the State seeks to evict them. The CONAP, which is responsible for administering these lands, has gone after the communities for living on their own lands, insisting that the communities who live and have always lived in the newly “protected” areas are invaders[2]. As a result of the confrontation between Guatemalan institutions and the communities seeking to remain in their homes, evictions have been ordered in dozens of communities, and hundreds of people have arrest warrants out against them. In most cases, the allegations are of invasion or aggravated usurpation of protected areas.

As the campesino movement frequently emphasizes, evictions represent a major threat to Indigenous and campesinos peoples’ lives, livelihoods, homes, and communities. Although several organizations work directly with communities and institutions in charge of resolving agrarian conflict, Guatemalan authorities have not failed to find permanent solutions to support the communities threatened by eviction. Instead, institutions like CONAP continues to reproduce the patterns of dispossession that have been observed since colonization.

The role of communities in safeguarding protected areas

Climate change is one of the most severe global crises of recent years. In Guatemala, the people most affected by climate change are those who have most suffered structural injustices, especially Indigenous peoples and the campesino population. Forest fires, prolonged droughts and intense rainy seasons all impact their livelihoods and food security.

Although Indigenous and campesino communities suffer the most from the climate crisis’ effects, they contribute the least to it. Unlike extractive companies or large-scale landowners, these communities do not seek to extract profit from their land. Instead, Indigenous and campesino communities have historically contributed to the protection and stewardship of forests, lands, and waters necessary for the common good. Faced with accelerated environmental degradation, institutions such as the United Nations are inspired by the practices of Indigenous peoples to establish new guidelines for protecting nature. Indigenous activists denounce that these institutions extract this knowledge in the same way that companies extract natural resources from Indigenous territories. According to them, authorities only care about Indigenous knowledge when it serves them[3].

The communities in protected areas in Guatemala are examples of how Indigenous and peasant peoples conserve and protect forests and other natural entities. As explained by community members, “As a Mayan Ixil population, they conserve ancestral practices of coexistence with nature (…) As part of their spiritual practices, the population asks permission from the trees when they are going to cut them; when they carry out agricultural work; when they use water and different kinds of plants; when a child is born, they give thanks and inform the cosmos”[4]. However, despite the severe impacts of climate change in Guatemala and the need to seek alternatives for environmental protection, institutions continue to denigrate communities’ practices of care, preferring to force them from their homes and prioritize private economic interests.

CCDA accompaniment

CCDA accompanies several Petén and Alta Verapaz communities that were displaced or criminalized for living on territories that were converted into protected areas in 1989. The violation of these communities’ rights has been an issue of utmost importance to the CCDA’s political work. Their situation was one of the main themes of the National Agrarian Congresses organized by CCDA in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Communities organized in the CCDA have also lobbied congresspeople to propose a reform to the Protected Areas Law to stop the State’s harassment.

The proposed legislative changes would allow for the recognition of communities’ legitimate presence on their lands, the recognition that communities living in settlements in protected areas contribute to the administration and stewardship of these areas, and the understanding that the people living in these areas can use the natural resources found in protected areas according to their ancestral practices and their traditional ways of life and organization[5].

The first reform was presented in Congress when Leocadio Juracan, a member of the CCDA’s political commission, was a congressman. Unfortunately, it was not passed. In April 2024, the communities presented the legislative reform again. However, Congress responded unfavourably in August of that year, once again preventing a solution to this agrarian conflict[6]. In the face of this rejection, the communities continue to fight for their rights and to defend their territories against the threats of dispossession, extractivism, and climate change. They insist that, despite defamation and charges against them, “they are not invaders,” but rather the legitimate inhabitants of protected areas.

 

 

[1] Congreso de la Republica de Guatemala, Comisión del Ambiente, Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Iniciativa que Dispone Aprobar Reforma a los Decretos 4-89 Ley  de Áreas Protegidas y Decreto 5-90 Ley que Declara Área  Protegida la “Reserva Maya” Ambos del Congreso de la  Republica de Guatemala, 6358 (4 April 2024).

[2] Consejo Nacional de Áreas Protegidas, “12 Invasiones Ilegales Amenazan al Parque Nacional Laguna Lachuá un Sitio RAMSAR en Las Verapaces.”, (10 July 2024), online: <https://conap.gob.gt/invasiones-ilegales-amenazan-al-parque-nacional-laguna-lachua/>.

[3] Naomi Klein, “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson”, online: <https://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne-simpson>.

[4] Congreso de la Republica de Guatemala, Comision del Ambiente, Ecologia y  Recursos Naturales, Iniciativa que Dispone Aprobar Reforma a los Decretos 4-89 Ley  de Áreas Protegidas y Decreto 5-90 Ley que Declara Area  Protegida la “Reserva Maya” Ambos del Congreso de la  Republica de Guatemala, 6358 (4 April 2024).

[5] Congreso de la Republica de Guatemala, Comisión del Ambiente, Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Iniciativa que Dispone Aprobar Reforma a los Decretos 4-89 Ley  de Áreas Protegidas y Decreto 5-90 Ley que Declara Área  Protegida la “Reserva Maya” Ambos del Congreso de la  Republica de Guatemala, 6358 (4 April 2024).

[6] https://fb.watch/un1bcSMvaa/