During our last field visit to Guatemala’s Dry Corridor region, we climbed mountains in a four-wheel drive through a dry, dusty and rocky road. After an hour we arrived at the Pitahaya Community in Aldea Nearar at Camotán, Chiquimula (eastern Guatemala). We found ourselves walking in the middle of a beautiful, young, green forest, with a big group of motivated and empowered group of Chorti indigenous peoples, mostly women. We breathed positivity and empowerment in a land that is known for hunger and extreme poverty. What a moment of a lifetime!
Our MIF project in the Dry Corridor is creating change; we would say empowering people to build a new future for their families.
Mancomunidad Copan Chortí, the National Public University (
USAC-CUNORI), the
National Institute of Foresty (INAB), and the four Municipal Governments in the region have established an innovative and effective mechanism for project execution that delivers culturally appropriate technologies to the field that support the direct empowerment of communities. Besides that, the project and IDB/MIF teams have implemented a technical and strategic coordination that has allowed the validation of an integrated territorial model for climate change adaptation, based on recovering ancestral practices and native species by cultivating high-nutrition local plants, breeding native chickens, and introducing an agroforestry system through a payment for environmental services system. This new adaptation model allows the communities to strengthen their food security, increase forest coverage, and improve soil quality while recovering critical basins for water provision.
This territorial adaptation model seems to be a great substitute for the traditional emergency subsidy approach, prevalent whenever hunger crises are present. The model provides an integral solution for indigenous peoples living in degraded areas, where many approaches have been piloted without sustainable success. In addition, it allows empowered local governments and their developmental organizations in the field (Mancomunidades) to change paradigms. Moreover, social empowerment for local development is unlocked, especially for indigenous women, and economic returns are increasing. The first economic analysis shows that on average the first groups of women are generating revenues of about US$435 a year through the consumption and sale of meat and eggs, in addition to regularly including protein in their diets for the first time ever, and diversifying the foods eaten by women and children, reducing problems of food shortages and malnutrition. This has strengthened the role of women in the family and improved their self-esteem, as they become agents of change within their households and community. In addition, men have restored forestry coverage in 2,250 hectares, receiving US$590K through payments for environmental services. Both activities have improved the local economy.
The poultry farming activity is carried out directly by women who are trained and organized around productive activities. Agreements are signed to ensure a commitment to performing activities for the care and breeding of birds and also to deliver the same number of birds to another family who will be assigned through a “pass chain” methodology. The generation of income has also demonstrated greater independence of women in decision-making in the use of resources within the family and community. Thus, these activities strengthen and build leadership capabilities of indigenous Ch'orti women.
The project is currently designing an operational strategy to scale up the model. An area has been identified with similar conditions in the Dry Corridor region, where it could be expanded to reach 1.5 million hectares and nearly half a million people, mostly indigenous Chorti´s in Guatemala alone. Our belief is that this adaptation model can be scaled along the entire Central American Dry Corridor, especially in the Trifinio region. These are the kinds of innovative projects that make us proud at the MIF, the ones that not only generate income but that empower leaders and communities to set a path for a more sustainable development, assuring that once our participation is over they will continue to lead the change. Our visit to Aldea Nearar inspired the Guatemalan government to explore alternatives for expanding it in the region. We share with you a sneak peek of the project’s accomplished results after 3 years (of a planned 5) of execution.