Near the border with Guatemala, a two-hour drive from the capital of El Salvador, lies a tropical coastline of mangrove forests where crocodiles, corals and fisheries thrive. La Barra De Santiago is a habitat for numerous threatened and endangered species, including four species of sea turtles: the hawksbill turtle, the golfin turtle, the leatherback turtle and the green turtle, and the yellow-necked parrot, which is seriously threatened due to its commercial value in the pet trade.
Mangroves act as a barrier against tropical storms, and prevent sea level rise caused by climate change in El Salvador, a country that is at high risk of natural disasters. Despite the damage that Hurricane Julia caused across the country in 2022, heavy rains around the Barra de Santiago mangrove forest caused only limited flooding.
But for 30 years, unrestricted urbanization and livestock farming, the expansion of the sugar cane industry and the growing demand for wood, have caused deforestation and alterations in the hydrology of the area. Although designated as a Ramsar site, a wetland whose conservation and sustainable use are governed by an international treaty, mangrove forest has been reduced by 50% according to 2018 estimates.
Since 2012, several local women's and fishermen's organizations, some with international support, have begun to restore the mangrove ecosystem, creating new livelihoods for residents, such as crab farming, while protecting the area's biodiversity.
Crocodile sighting in the Zapatero Canal inside the Barra de Santiago mangrove. Image: Julián Reingold.
Results have so far been limited, but the success of local organizations provides a model for how this type of ecosystem can be restored globally.
Mangroves are important carbon sinks, as they can sequester four times more carbon than rainforests. Therefore, there is great interest in its use as a way to mitigate global warming. But some government policies in El Salvador, particularly in the development of agribusiness, are not aligned with conservation efforts and pose a threat to the continuation of this work.
The Socio-Economic Benefits of Mangrove Restoration
The degradation of this mangrove forest began with Hurricane Fifi in 1974, which destroyed much of the ecosystem and the main street of the town of Barra de Santiago. Heavy rains in deforested areas in the upper reaches of the Paz River basin caused rivers to overflow downstream. Despite the dredging of the mangrove channels, it could not absorb all the water and was flooded.
The Barra de Santiago Women's Community Development Association (AMBAS) and other local NGOs set out to sensitize communities to the importance of the mangrove ecosystem in the Paz River estuary in 2004. They rolled up their sleeves, put on rubber boots and made their way around the swamp to dredge new water channels and thus improve the hydrology of the site, planting mangrove seedlings in the fertile mud. Its goal is to restore 42 hectares of forest by 2024.
María Magdalena del Cid Torres, one of the leaders of the Barra de Santiago community (Image: Julián Reingold)
These organizations have so far managed to restore nine hectares of mangroves with the support of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global environmental network that executes field projects and produces the Red List of Threatened Species.
“Men in this region don't want women to go to the field alone,” says Luis Quintanilla, a technician at AMBAS. “However, women are at the forefront of mangrove restoration, as they manage a nursery of 10,000 plants.”
A worker in a sugar cane field in the municipality of Tonacatepeque, northwest of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.
But the restoration of exhausted mangrove areas alone does not solve environmental degradation in Barra de Santiago Bay. According to several local sources with whom Dialogo Chino spoke for this piece, sugar cane plantations have been spewing agrochemicals into the Paz River for the past few years, affecting numerous basins and reducing the flow of water that reaches the mangrove, causing it to partially dry out. Plastic waste from factories and homes has added to the pollution.
Community members say that despite their concern that these chemicals are having a negative impact on their health, the government has ignored their demands to clean the river.
“There is no project or intervention to remedy pollution, and there is no regulatory legal framework,” says Fátima Romero, biologist and environmental technician at the Salvadoran Ecological Unit (UNES), a local IUCN partner NGO. Romero stated that the country's new water law also gives large industries the green light to extract water from aquifers.
Economic growth could reduce emigration
Salvadorans constitute the second largest group of migrants moving from Central America to North America, mainly due to lack of job opportunities and gang violence, the vestiges of a 12-year civil war that ended in 1992. There is an urgent need for vulnerable communities to find sustainable economic opportunities that allow them to remain in the country.
The Regional Coastal Biodiversity Project (RCBP) is a general scheme that aims to strengthen local economies through aquaculture, support existing efforts to reduce water pollution and protect the mangrove ecosystem while addressing the lack of opportunities for local people to earn a living. Planned to run from 2017 to 2024, this project is also being implemented at other coastal sites in Guatemala and Honduras, and is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
A man holds blue crabs collected in the mangroves of the Paz River basin. Image: Julián Reingold.
According to Wilfredo López, a biologist at the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) in El Salvador, over four years, the RCBP has managed to reduce pressure on the marine-coastal resources of this region in two ways. Socioeconomically, it has provided guidelines for the management of crab populations and mangrove restoration, as well as improving biotrade (commercial goods and services based on the sustainable exploitation of biodiversity) and the establishment of successful beekeeping businesses.
In terms of biology, it has contributed to research through studies carried out on species in the bay, such as commercial fish stocks, corals and seahorses.
Resilience for the Future
Back at the IUCN office in San Salvador, Zulma de Mendoza, biologist and regional coordinator of the RCBP, reflects on conservation efforts. For De Mendoza, the resilience needed to regenerate this ecosystem is like walking on mud and mangrove roots.
“The passion for conservation clashes with the idea of profitability, and that is difficult for both environment ministers and fishermen to understand. You can slide, sink or learn to walk,” he says. He refers to the Pacific parakeet (Psittacara strenuus) that is thriving in this environment as an example of how important it is to be adaptable.
For De Mendoza, one of the RCBP's greatest achievements is that it has been able to verify and demonstrate threats to biodiversity in vital coastal mangrove and reef ecosystems.
Even so, “the key to the success of these actions is that they are based on constant coordination with local communities,” says De Mendoza. “We have been forming biocommerce initiatives, an alternative way to strengthen the life options of these communities, to regain their self-esteem and help them to be more resilient.”
Zulma de Mendoza, regional coordinator of the IUCN's RCBP, points out a map of priority areas for forest restoration in Central America. Image: Julián Reingold.
UNES hopes that all the smaller NGOs involved will continue to thrive once the project concludes in 2024. They hope to leave these organizations stronger so that they can thrive on their own. There is still a lot of work to be done, and for communities without local and national government support, the challenges will be great.
*This story was produced with a grant for articles from the Coastal Resilience project from Internews' Earth Journalism Network.
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