Forest Ecosystem Restoration Initiative 

Objectives

 

Guatemala's forest cover accounts accounted for 34% of the national territory in 2012. Due to strong pressure from the expanding agricultural frontier, logging and other factors, the forest cover is decreasing significantly. Over the last two decades, Guatemala has promoted policy instruments for forest conservation, management and reforestation through the Forest Incentives Programme (PINFOR) and the Forest Incentives Programme for Small Forestry and Agroforestry Landholders (PINPEP), developing regulatory, technical and planning tools to facilitate their implementation. However, despite the progress made in the administration and sustainable use of forest resources in the country, none of these policy instruments has specifically addressed the issue of forest landscape restoration through the use of one of the aforementioned tools. 

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The Forest Landscape Restoration Board has developed a Forest Restoration Map, where a total of 3,989,465 hectares has been identified as a potential area for restoration. In addition, there is a National Strategy for Forest Landscape Restoration, whose main objective is the restoration of 1.2 million hectares of forest landscape in highly vulnerable areas by the year 2045. 

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Thus, this project aims to implement forest landscape restoration actions through pilot restoration sites established in accordance with the "ITTO Guidelines for the Restoration, Management and Rehabilitation of Degraded and Secondary Tropical Forests”, focused on 4 strategic forest ecosystems - cloud forests, dry forests, pine-oak forests and mangrove forests. This project is designed to be implemented in two phases. The first phase will focus on strengthening technical capacities in the areas related to restoration, knowledge management for restoration, and establishment of pilot sites in two of the prioritized ecosystems (pine-oak forests and cloud forests). In the second phase, the experience gained from the implementation of the first phase will be used for the generation of information for dissemination at the national level as well as the implementation of trial plots in the other two ecosystems that were initially prioritized. 

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This project will be implemented by the International Timber Trade Organization (ITTO) and consists of the application of ITTO Guidelines in order to reduce degradation  and improve the restoration of forest ecosystems in Guatemala. The project is co-funded by the Government of the United States of America.

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