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 A Magnificent and Expansive Reserve
La Amistad International Park: Bocas del Toro, Costa Rica and Panama
The Amistad mountains protect a large area of highland watersheds, which provide important freshwater sources for large communities in the lowlands. Moreover, the forested highlands in and around the Amistad Biosphere Reserve are critical to many rivers that are potential providers of hydroelectric power for Costa Rica and Panama. The loss of these forests would impede future hydroelectric power generation, creating a financial loss on a national scale. Many experts believe that paying the local people to protect water and hydro-power sources may be a practical way to promote forest conservation in the highlands and middle elevations, in indigenous reserves, and buffer zones of the Amistad Park.
Among the main threats and strategies for the reserve are incompatible agricultural development, hunting, and human-induced fires. Strategies to mitigate these threats include promotion of better (and more sustainable) agricultural production technologies, creation of alternative income generating activities, environmentally friendly tourism, strengthening of community-based natural resource management capacity, payment for environmental services (especially for water) and improved fire management. Such strategies are especially important since more than one-third of the land within the reserves is not park land, i.e., is private, indigenous or communal land.
The human populations present in the buffer zone of Amistad are not well organized, and local NGO activity also has been limited. The diversity of the site (five different indigenous groups plus different campesino cultures between countries) plus the rough topographic conditions have prevented any one NGO from addressing the entire area with an integrated approach, and has limited coordination and communication among communities. Partner organizations that can have a role executing project activities in one sector are limited to certain national or regional NGO’s who work on a particular theme or area. Nearly all are small and (except Costa Rica’s National Institute for Biodiversity [INBio]) institutionally weak.
Despite these obstacles, The Nature Conservancy has identified several partner organizations that can help execute actions. Costa Rica’s National Institute for Biodiversity (INBio) is good for working in coordination with the regional government agency responsible for the Costa Rican Pacific sector; this agency has a field presence and has assumed the vacant niche of community assistance. In the Panama Pacific sector, the local non-profit organization FUNDICCEP and the Association for the Defense of the Highlands constitute important partners for action. In the Atlantic sectors, the group ANAI is playing an important role in fostering binational collaboration and has had experience in launching sustainable initiatives for coastal and marine conservation that can be extended to the highlands. The foundation Cuencas de Limon is key for actions related to watershed management in the Atlantic section.
During the first period of the Parks in Peril effort at Amistad, the working approach has had three components, guided by the different socioeconomic situations that occur around the various sub-areas within La Amistad site.
- Strengthening community-based networks present in the extensive buffer zone of the Atlantic side of Amistad, in coordination with ANAI. Efforts center on empowering local people and creating in Costa Rica and Panama alliances of local groups that have started to believe in sustainable agriculture and rural ecotourism as alternatives to existing practices.
- In the Costa Rican Pacific side of Amistad, where access to the park has been opened to tourism, PiP focuses on creating a local network with which to do co-management. Local groups are assuming an active role in patrolling, fire management and control, visitor management, and generating research information. For example, fire breaks have been created to mark reserve boundaries and help protect against wildfires. INBio is the principle NGO partner in this region.
- In the Panamanian Pacific side, PiP is helping FUNDICCEP to strengthen the Alliance for the Environmental Development of the Highlands, through which 15 community groups interested in promoting sustainable alternatives will work on policy and management actions for the entire Panamanian Pacific sector of La Amistad.
During the last three years, specific progress has been achieved by:
- Creation of protected area management plans, monitoring, and training of NGO and government employees.
- Development of a community-based ecotourism strategy: Two community-based networks have been created, one of seventeen local groups, the other of eight.
Progress toward payment for hydrological services (protection of the watershed) to local people. Local NGO partners are working with the national governments of both Costa Rican and Panama on ambitious plans to leverage conservation along with water benefits and hydro-electric power.
- Creation of a Binational Commission (made up of the four government entities legally responsible for the reserve) to help manage it.
- The challenges at Amistad remain huge: to unify, under a common management vision, several government entities responsible for the site, and at the same time to create and strengthen local partners’ capacity in very isolated and impoverished communities – so that structured co-management agreements can be reached, capacity for effective management obtained, and threats to the site diminished.
Early returns are positive, but many years of active support will be needed before Amistad can be regarded as secure. Creation of solid long-term financing will be critical, with payments for watershed management and ecotourism seen as the likeliest sources for funding conservation of the site and increased prosperity for its people. The Nature Conservancy anticipates remaining active at the site with local partners well beyond the 2007 end of Parks in Peril funding.
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