Meaningful Change Takes Time
When I started my journey with Trees, Water & People (TWP) in Honduras in 2005, I learned about a local effort to protect ancestral forests outside the capital city in the Aldea de Suyapa.
The Ecological Committee of the Aldea de Suyapa (COEAS), was formed in 1986 to protect Suyapa’s forests and water source from developers, firewood haulers and timber harvesters. As the Capital city grew, so did the pressure on their resources, and TWP was invited to give them a hand up in 2019.
This week, after almost 40 years of struggle to draw attention to their cause, Honduras’ National Congress will hold a vote on declaring COEAS’s forest a 12,000 acre National Wildlife Refuge, based on the rich biodiversity seen and recorded there.
If passed, the National Wildlife Reserve will carry the name of COEAS’s founder and fallen leader, Luís "Mero" Hernán Baca, who was murdered for his cause just two months ago.
What’s important about this story, to TWP, is the importance that long-horizons and big picture thinking have in creating meaningful change. If we had limited our contributions to funding tree planting campaigns, or environmental education, which is where we started, we would not be here today.
COEAS asked us to support their moonshot - building public support for their call to permanently protect their forest by congressional decree. It sounded impossible at the time, but they persisted, and we believed in them… even when it pulled us outside our comfort zone.
To prepare COEAS for their role as co-managers of the protected area, in partnership with Honduras’s national forest service, TWP helped them fund full-time forest rangers, new signage for the reserve, GIS mapping, biodiversity research, tree planting campaigns, fire prevention brigades, tree nursery upgrades, marketing and public relations pushes, and a multi-year strategic planning process.
Perhaps most importantly, we hired the help of an Indigenous rights attorney in Guatemala City who helped locate and repatriate the original land titles to the forest, held in the archives of the Spanish colonial government for over 300 years, in the name of the Indigenous Laborers of the Aldea de Suyapa.
The point is - you can't dismantle centuries of inequity in a 1 year grant cycle. You can't fill a planning framework with four decades (or centuries) of projections. You can't quantify the value of an ancestral forest and water source...
...but you can believe in the struggle of those working to stop violations to their territorial sovereignty, and give them the resources they need to succeed.
At TWP we invest in creating lasting change for Indigenous communities and organizations. Sometimes this takes us down paths we didn’t expect to travel, and sitting at tables we didn’t expect to be seated at. But, if we are listening well, and trust our relationships with our partners, we can make history together.
Please have COEAS in your thoughts this week, as they secure permanent protections of their territory and natural resources, and pray for their safety in the continued defense of their lands for generations to come, in the name of their fallen founder, and our friend, Luís “Mero” Hernán Baca.
Here is a statement they published in anticipation of the vote:
“We are volunteers driven by a deep conviction, and (land) managers guided by an indomitable will. We appreciate everyone who, from their own trenches, contributes their grain of sand, or better said, a leaf to the forest we're cultivating and that is flowering in the deepest reaches of our hearts. Together we'll build a legacy of love and commitment in support of our natural resources.” - Comité Ecológico de la Aldea de Suyapa (COEAS)