The Future of Petén

We’ve been in Guatemala City for four days, running around nonstop. I slept for 45 minutes after our redeye Tuesday night and managed to motor through the following day. We spent Wednesday through Friday interviewing a variety of experts and government officials. During that time, we managed to hook up with a group of archaeologists traveling to El Mirador starting on Monday. So tomorrow we board a minibus bound for Flores, Petén, and Monday we start walking north.

Sometime in late July a group of stakeholders including President Colóm will convene in Flores to discuss the fate of the Mirador Basin and possibly make decisions about the protected status of the region. This could lead to major changes for communities in the region as tourists come in large numbers.

At issue are who gets to shape the region’s environmental and economic future, who profits, and how the forest and archaeological sites fare. Various plans for tourist development are the in air, from the creation of a small-gauge train to the Mirador archaeological site to improvements in existing infrastructure so that the 2.5-day hike there is more comfortable.

Many groups have an interest in seeing the Mirador Basin developed, including conservationists, archaeologists, and Guatemalan and American businesspeople interested in investing in tourism in Mirador. For local communities, such the towns of Carmelita and Uaxactún, the potential benefits are especially important, but complicated. It remains to be seen how ecotourism would impact their existing sustainable forestry activities and how much ownership local communities would have over ecotourism developments. Some fear that creating a large, tourist-oriented archaeological park would relegate local people to the status of cooks and chambermaids for wealthy tourists without fully benefiting the communities. At the same time, the plans for development at El Mirador also prompt the question of how well the concessions are succeeding, both for community development and as a conservation strategy.

Many of our recent contacts, ranging from Professor Edwin Castellanos, an environmental mapping expert at the Universidad del Valle, to environmental activist and government advisor Vida Amor de Paz, argue that the concessions have largely succeeded in preserving the forest. Unlike areas to the west of Mirador such as Laguna del Tigre National Park, which have been largely deforested due to settlement and drug trafficking, the concession areas have been better able to retain their forest cover.

Still, some conservationists and archaeologists maintain that any cutting in the forest will ultimately lead to deforestation. Richard Hansen, head archaeologist at El Mirador, has proposed renting trees from the concessions in exchange for their agreement not to log within their concession land. Organizations such as Conservation International have initiated carbon sequestration programs in certain concessions, trading a no-cut agreement for the ability for concessions to earn money on the carbon market.

As we walk to Mirador, we’ll get our first chance see the forest and experience what is at stake. Now I just have pack.