Newsletter Stories


Saturday, 01 January 2005
Carmelita's Past to Present

How FSC Certification Has Helped One Guatemalan Community


For the past ten years, the Forest Stewardship Council and the certification of tropical forests throughout Central and South America have had extremely positive social, environmental, and economic impacts on communities and regions spanning from Mexico to Chile.

EarthSource Forest Products, based in Oakland, CA, an FSC certificate holder since 1997, has had the incredible opportunity to see, first hand, changes due to forest certification in many Latin American countries. EarthSource was one of the first companies to purchase FSC-certified wood from Central America and market it in the United States.

As Jeff Hunt, President of EarthSource Forest Products, describes it, “my wife Marion and I first visited Guatemala in 1998 during a visit to Belize.” At that time, EarthSource was working with “Program for Belize,” a program designed to import and market FSC-certified products from Belize. In that first year, EarthSource imported roughly 150,000 board feet of FSC-certified tropical hardwood. The following year, Jeff and EarthSource focused on working with Guatemala. In the next two years, EarthSource imported more than 600,000 board feet of FSC-certified tropical hardwood from Guatemala and Belize.

“The early years were very tough and exciting at the same time,” said Larry Percivalle, Director of EarthSource. The communities had small or even at times no mills, so cutting the lumber to specific thickness and grading was a large obstacle to overcome. Also, transporting the lumber from the dense, remote forests, to a port for shipping usually meant waiting up to four times as long as expected.

This past September, after recently graduating from The Monterey Institute of Inter-national Studies, with a MA in International Environmental Policy, I found myself traveling to the remote region of Peten, ready to meet new communities and begin planning contracts for the upcoming year. One of the main goals was to return to many of the same communities that EarthSource worked with in the past and document the change that has occurred over the years. For all the Mayan communities in the Peten region of Guatemala, the sale of genuine Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla), “Caoba”, and a small number of unknown secondary species is the region’s main source of income. But it also goes a lot deeper than that. For many Mayan communities, the forest, and its products are the primary means of feeding their children, building their homes, and even healing the sick.

When talking about sustainability, whether it’s forestry or agriculture, the three key aspects are: social, environmental, and economic. The most notable improvements among all the communities I visited this past year were in the economic and social sectors. Carmelita, a small community deep in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve in Peten, is one example of how FSC certification has helped them in many positive ways. A lot had changed since Jeff and Marion first visited the small community of Carmelita. In 1999, Jeff, Marion, and the late Harry Page traveled the long, meandering, dirt road to Carmelita to begin working out a plan with community leaders for the purchase of their trees. Jeff and Marion talk about the trip and all the memories as if it happened yesterday.

They were given the tour around the community and then to the small two-room schoolhouse. Being a retired teacher, Marion was interested in visiting the school in Carmelita. She noted, “… I could intuit a lot about the learning environment from the decorations on the walls. The rooms were sparse but wall décor displayed a learning environment that in ways resembled the classrooms I was familiar with in the United States.” The community and the schoolteachers had hopes of constructing a new school for all the young children.

Fast forward a few years and now I am the one making the same trip on the same bumpy and curvy dirt road. After only seeing pictures of what the Carmelita community looked like three years ago, I was amazed to see the huge social and economic changes that had taken place. As we arrive, I first stop and take as many pictures as I can of the whole community. After seeing the new school, a health center, a new office, and the soccer field, we then make our way to the mill.

By far, the most improvements over the past three years were seen in the general mill and landing area. Just three years ago, all the logs extracted from the community were hauled to a large mill in Flores, Guatemala. Now, they have new tractors, new saws, and two new structures to keep the wood out of the rain and mill the logs to specific dimensions.

After speaking with the president of the community for a good part of the afternoon, he explained in detail how they have benefited from FSC certification and what he hopes the future holds. He also kept reiterating how much he appreciates and remembers everything EarthSource did for the whole community when they first made the switch to FSC certification. He was happy to see EarthSource back in his community and ready to show me everything that has changed. One of the most notable accomplishments was the fact that Carmelita now has a financial plan. All the money that is earned each year from sustainable harvesting is divided into four major areas: education, community improvement, health care, and savings. I was amazed to see how quickly these changes had taken place. It felt good knowing that EarthSource was able to make such a positive impact on the community.

Jason Benford is Environmental Marketing Coordinator for EarthSource Forest Products.

He can be contacted at Jason@ earthsourcewood.com