- A major watershed in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador has been so polluted, industrialized and interfered with that 20% of it could dry up in the next few decades, according to a U.N. report.
- The Trifinio Fraternidad Transboundary Biosphere Reserve, which covers the triborder region of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, suffers from a free-for-all of deforestation, chemical runoff and mining that threatens the existence of the watershed.
- If it dries up, millions of people could be left without water for drinking, bathing and farming.
- While conservation groups continue to lobby for funding, residents frustrated with government inaction have started to organize themselves to fight everything from mining and runoff to illegal building development.
ESQUIPULAS, Guatemala — An estimated 8 million migrants have entered the U.S. during the Biden administration, the highest number in centuries. Many still come from the so-called Northern Triangle, made up of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, as they seek to escape gang violence and a lack of employment. But there’s another driver of migration that officials sometimes overlook: climate change.
Dry seasons in Central America are getting longer and hotter all the time, and rural families can’t grow enough crops to feed their families. More than 3 million people were expected to face crisis-level food insecurity earlier this year, potentially driving them out of the region. They also lack access to clean drinking water.
“The problems of extreme poverty, low access to services, a highly aggravated and vulnerable population — all of that is made worse by the consequences of climate change,” said Berta Medrano, head of the Gaia Association, a conservation group that works in all three countries.
Governments in the region are still working to develop policies that address crop failure and climate change-resilient jobs in hopes of slowing migration. The international community, whether in the form of NGOs or government agencies like USAID, are also very present in the region. But some parts of the problem may not be receiving enough attention.
One major watershed running through Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador has been so polluted and industrialized that 20% of it could dry up by 2050, according to a U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. It could also decrease the area’s hydropower capacity by more than 50% by the end of the century.
The watershed includes some of the countries’ largest rivers and lakes, including the Lempa River, Motagua River and Ulúa River. If the watershed dries up, or becomes too polluted from industry, millions of people could be left without water for drinking, bathing and farming. Several dams wouldn’t be able to run properly, jeopardizing the energy grid.
It’s a migration and climate change issue, observers say. But it’s also a conservation issue. In addition to pollution, the watershed is under threat from the destruction of forests that act as aquifers, maintaining the groundwater.
Cross-border red tape
Much of this vital watershed sits within a protected area, created in 2011, called the Trifinio Fraternidad Transboundary Biosphere Reserve, a mosaic of parks covering the 148,482-hectare (366,907-acre) triborder region of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Even more of the watershed extends to a larger, international jurisdiction known as the Trifinio, a mix of small towns, farmland, subtropical forests, wetlands and cloud forests nestled in mountains and hills. It was established in the Trifinio Plan signed in 1997 by the three countries to better coordinate on security, development and the environment, among other issues.
Yet much of the plan exists only on paper, critics say. Trinational governing bodies established in the plan are virtually nonfunctional, critics say, and there’s a free-for-all of deforestation, chemical runoff and mining that threatens the existence of the watershed.
“The problem we have is a serious one,” said Josefina Serna Aguirre, a member of the Trifinio Fraternidad Transboundary Biosphere Reserve Women’s Network fighting to protect El Salvador’s part of the reserve. “This massive deforestation is sad because we’re going to be left without natural resources, especially the most important resource: water.”
One of the main challenges is coordinating the oversight of such a large and complex area. The Trifinio region is made up of 45 border municipalities across the three countries and is home to around 700,000 residents. Lakes empty into other lakes that converge with a network of rivers and secondary channels, all monitored by different municipal offices but also by a regional managing committee, country-level managing committees, and the protected areas agencies and ministries of environment of the three countries. It amounts to a chaos of bureaucracy with too many voices and ideas and not enough focused direction, some people working in the area said.
“One of the things that we have to improve is governance,” said Nelson Rivera, coordinator of natural resources in Guisayote, a local-level jurisdiction in Honduras and part of the Trifinio region. “A governance that goes both ways, both top-down and bottom-up. These problems are not just for one municipality.”
Nelson cited the example of road projects for Guisayote, which lack proper environmental permits that could have been addressed by several local agencies. But none of them have taken responsibility.
In Citalá, El Salvador, an hour up the road from Guisayote, the Trifinio Fraternidad Transboundary Biosphere Reserve Defense and Management Committee, made up of multiple environmental groups and cooperatives, has formally asked the local government why it isn’t patrolling forest fires and the intentional sabotage of Mexican cypress trees (Hesperocyparis lusitanica). Residents drive nails and barbed wire into the trees to kill them, which makes them eligible to cut down and sell for timber.
The problem could be addressed by the local government itself, national environmental agencies, or different bodies established in the Trifinio Plan. Instead, it persists virtually unchecked, critics say.
A representative of the Trifinio Plan didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
In a similar situation, the mayor’s office in nearby Metapán, El Salvador, has dumped herbicides onto beaches and into flood zones and intentionally distributed agrochemicals along some waterbodies to prevent the natural growth of vegetation, according to the defense and management committee.
The committee has sent letters to the Metapán mayor’s office asking for an explanation about these activities, but hasn’t received a response. Mongabay was unable to reach the mayor’s office for comment.
“They don’t see any opportunity in agroforestry models, agroecology or sustainable agriculture,” the Gaia Association’s Medrano said. “Institutionality is completely absent in this Trifinio region in general. There is no stewardship of the environment.”
Cooperation across the watershed
The Trifinio region covers 754,100 hectares (1.86 million acres), but the biosphere reserve within it accounts for around 20% of this. One of the only biodiversity surveys conducted in the area counted around 1,500 species, including 87 species of birds, like woodpeckers, hummingbirds, owls and the emblematic quetzal (genus Pharomachrus). Notable plants in the area include the manglillo (Hedyosmum mexicanum) and Spanish cedar (Cedrela odorata), while mammals include the Mexican hairy dwarf porcupine (Coendou mexicanus), Central American agouti (Dasyprocta punctata) and jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi).
There are also many reptile and amphibian species, such as the holy-mountain salamander (Bolitoglossa heiroreias), the Monte Cristo arboreal alligator lizard (Abronia montecristoi) and Monte Cristi graceful brown snake (Rhadinella montecristi), the latter two endemic to the region.
Almost every day, smoke from distant fires hangs over the foothills of the triborder area, where farmers slash and burn to get the most out of their land. Bags of agrochemicals pile up in sheds and on the sides of farmhouses, waiting to be used later in the season despite bans implemented by El Salvador and Honduras. According to local laws and trinational coordination agreements, officials should be regulating slash-and-burn activity and agrochemical use, and communicating about regional impacts to the watershed. Yet several farmers and NGOs told Mongabay that these practices go virtually unmonitored.
“[Officials] are more interested in the salary they’re earning than in the service they are providing,” said Adelmo Chacón, president of El Buen Sembrador, an agricultural cooperative in El Salvador.
The Trifinio reserve’s defense and management committee said in a letter that El Salvador’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) isn’t complying with its basic functions as established by law, and that the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, as well as the Directorate of Watersheds and Irrigation, have failed to respond to complaints and demands delivered to them directly.
None of the agencies responded to a request for comment or could be reached.
“We have visited these institutions’ offices in San Salvador looking for answers and concrete solutions and we haven’t found them,” the committee wrote in a 2016 letter to El Salvador’s Ombudsman for the Defense of Human Rights. “We’re very tired of fighting so officials and institutions … will help resolve what they are required to do by law.”
In many parts of the watershed, residents frustrated with government inaction have started to organize themselves to fight everything from mining and runoff to illegal building development. Given the size of the area and diversity of communities, that fight can take many forms. In some towns, church leaders have taken up the mantle. In others, fishermen concerned about their lakes and rivers have started volunteering with conservation groups. But all of them, in some way or another, say they feel dwarfed by the size of the task at hand. One conservation project might be successful on a small scale, they say, but it only has a lasting impact if similar efforts are carried out across the entire watershed.
“There aren’t any detailed studies that establish a plan for the three river basins,” Medrano said. “There is so much evidence about the surface and groundwater that’s shared by this transboundary of the three large river basins, which are so complex, and which downstream territories depend on — especially El Salvador.”
On Lake Güija, which straddles Guatemala and El Salvador, activists battle unregulated cage fishing of tilapia that introduces antibiotics and fish waste into the ecosystem. The activists also carefully monitor development around the lake and file complaints when farmers — many of whom have illegally built right up to the water’s edge — use unregulated agrochemicals.
With the help of the Gaia Association, residents have filed numerous complaints about pollution from improper waste disposal, agrochemical use and sewage discharge in the lake. They’ve also recorded illegal land seizures on islands in the lake as well as illegal deforestation and grass extraction in flood zones.
Since 2016, they’ve filed at least three complaints related to the illegal construction of walls, streets and recreational infrastructure on the banks of the lake. The Gaia Association has documented illegal construction on the Igualtepeque archaeological site, located next to the lake, as well as people squatting on an island in the middle.
Lake Güija also sits downstream from the Ostua River, where the Gaia Association has documented illegal deforestation, unregulated sewage flowing into the river, as well as pesticide runoff from the cultivation of avocados, peaches, lettuce and onions, among other crops. But efforts to protect Lake Güija will only work if the Ostua River is protected, activists said. And none of that will work if the Lempa River isn’t protected, too.
“The Lempa River is the backbone of El Salvador, which is why it’s such a national security issue,” Medrano said.
New efforts to protect the Trifinio
Conservation groups say they sometimes struggle to get outside donors interested in the Trifinio region when there are so many other important protected areas also vying for attention. Guatemala’s emblematic Maya Biosphere Reserve, for example, is over 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of rainforest and has the world’s second-largest population of jaguars. In Honduras, Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve is home to some of the highest rates of biodiversity in Central America.
By comparison, the Trifinio doesn’t always look as attractive, said Horacio Estrada, representative of the Green Development Association of Guatemala. It’s simply not as big or biodiverse.
“The Trifinio holds relatively little weight. In terms of forests, in terms of water and biodiversity, it’s of relatively low interest,” he told Mongabay. “[Donors] are interested in the number of hectares. They’re interested in the number of families. They’re interested in coverage.”
For years, the Trifinio Fraternidad Transboundary Biosphere Reserve was left off Guatemala’s official maps of protected areas, he said. The maps were used by Guatemala’s National Council for Protected Areas and other agencies for internal use and publicity, effectively leaving the area out of the conversation about environmental priorities in the country.
After years of lobbying from the Green Development Association and other groups, the biosphere reserve has started to appear on most maps.
Residents say they hope an increasing amount of attention will be put on the area in years to come, which is why they continue to develop new ways of raising awareness about the watershed and strategies for protecting it. In El Salvador, the Trifinio reserve’s women’s network has begun using its fight for conservation to empower women who have been silenced at home. The group said they’ve started addressing improper waste disposal by holding meetings in their communities, participating in lawsuits, and writing letters to officials to lobby for stronger penalties against pollution.
They also keep track of trees that have been cut down.
Members of the Gaia Association travel between Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador holding workshops and establishing stronger connections between distant communities all striving for the same conservation goals. It’s also been working to improve relationships between officials at different levels of government so they can collaborate more easily.
“The children should have a good future, a healthy future, a healthy environment,” said Evangelina Villanueva, a member of the women’s group. “When I talk to my fellow community members, my brothers and sisters, I tell them maybe we’re not going to see the fruits of our labor. But these children are going to thank us tomorrow for what we’re doing now.”
Banner image: Waters around Lake Güija in El Salvador. Photo by Maxwell Radwin.
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