Wildfires, the biggest cause of environment degradation in Central American isthmus, fought with mixed results

Wlfran Murillo
National Commission on Forest Fires

Wildfires are the single biggest cause of environmental degradation in Central America. They seriously affect the quality of the air, the soil, water, and even biological diversity through loss of habitat or the sheer number of casualties. Yet efforts to reduce their occurrence and impact continue to meet with mixed results.

According to the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD), Costa Rica did the best job in 2002, significantly reducing the surface affected by wildfires by 82% in protected areas, and by 70% in the province of Guanacaste, the driest in the country and the most prone to such emergencies. Other countries in the subregion actually experienced an increase in the impact of forest fires.

The main cause of such fires in the isthmus, from Belize to Panama, is human activity. Fire is widely used to change land-use with minimal labour costs and extend the agricultural frontier, including cattle-raising activities, or simply clear the land of stubble after a harvest. Since this is frequently carried out without any previous planning concerning containment or other preventive measures, the result is often devastating forest fires that affect other resources of incalculable environmental value.

Forest fire control, like forestry regulations in general, remains embryonic in Belize—in spite of the fact that the total land surface affected by fires in has been increasing year by year, largely as a result of migrations from neighbouring countries in search of fertile, non-titled land.

Guatemala established its National Forest Fire Prevention and Control System over a year ago. The body is directly answerable to the President of the Republic and strives to find interinstitutional solutions to a problem made more complex by virtue of the country’s diverse ethnic mix. The Petén region, one of the most vulnerable to wildfires, has also been the one that has responded most actively and in the most organized fashion.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Honduras was the regional leader in forest fire protection. This is not surprising, given the significance of forestry for the economy of a country with a significant cover of native pine forests. At present, however, the problem of forest fires is getting worse, not better. Some experts attribute this to the fact that wildfire response remains centralized within the Corporación Hondureña de Desarrollo Forestal or Honduran Forestry Development Authority (COHDEFOR), neglecting the knowledge and enthusiasm of countless environmental organizations and community groups that could do much more at the local level, particularly with a certain degree of national coordination.

The situation in El Salvador is significantly different from that of the other countries in Central America. In the most densely populated nation in the area, deforestation is widespread, which means that most wildfires take place in pastures and stubble fields. It is ordinary firefighters, then, who fight wildfires, and mainly to protect human lives and assets, not the environment. The sugarcane industry launched an aggressive controlled-fires program two years ago, including legislation to force all producers to implement prevention and control measures, in the hope of reducing the economic costs associated with the loss through incineration of a valuable commodity.

Nicaragua has managed to move forward in its wildfire prevention and response efforts, in spite of the switch in stewardship in recent years from the Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and, currently, the National Forestry Institute, the centralized body in charge of managing and protecting forests. Nicaragua’s Armed Forces have joined in the fight against forest fires, and currently boast over 600 officials who have been trained to respond to such disasters. Due to its geographic position, Panama’s dry season is shorter than in the rest of Central America. Efforts to combat forest fires, however, have fallen off in the past two years, even as the deliberate setting of fires to clear forests and gain cropland has increased in the Darien gap, the narrow and fragile biological corridor uniting South America with the rest of the hemisphere. What has made Costa Rica the biggest success story in the isthmus? The key words are interagency cooperation in the development of strategies and policies, the establishment of permanent programmes in the most vulnerable areas and, above all, community organization. In 1994, the country set up what is now known as the National Forest Fire Commission (CONIFOR). Under the supervision of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy (MINAE), CONIFOR coordinates the activities of various government agencies responsible for environmental protection in the specific field of wildfire prevention and response. Institutional stability at the national level has made it possible to implement continuing measures based on four key principles: • Strategic alliances across sectors; • The participation of civil society in the decision-making process; • Training aimed at attitudinal change; and • Environmental services: i.e, the financial recognition of the benefits to society of protecting the environment through reforestation, the protection of wildlife and other means. CONIFOR’s strongest human resource is its brigades of volunteer forest firefighters, who are organized at the local level. In fact, Costa Rica is the only country to date in Latin America to have implemented wildfire control at the community level—something perhaps worth pondering.

For more information contact:
Wlfran Murillo
CONIFOR
wmurillo@minae.go.cr