Mesoamerican Corridor
The Mesoamerican Corridor comprises the stretch of tropical forests spanning from Panama to central Mexico. Several areas along the corridor provide good opportunities for early investing in forest carbon activities. The best locations are in eastern Nicaragua and Honduras, as well as western Belize.
Topography and Forest Ecology
Atlantic coastal plains rise to interior mountains in Nicaragua and Honduras and low mountains in southern Belize. Extensive forests cover 15.2 percent of land area in Nicaragua, 55 percent in Belize, and 72.5 percent in Honduras. These forest ecosystems, which vary from mountain forests to lower-lying rainforests to mangrove swamps, contain thousands of native species—with 4,000 in Belize alone.Deforestation Trends
Deforestation rates from 1990 to 2005 ranged from 21 percent in Nicaragua to 37 percent in Honduras. Although Nicaragua’s rate has fallen since the close of the 1990s, deforestation in Honduras has continued to increase. Data for Belize remain scarce, but the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that it lost 2.3 percent of its forest cover each year during the 1990s, the third-highest rate in the region.
In the Mesoamerican Corridor, deforestation is closely linked to political corruption and criminal activity. In Nicaragua, a 1998 presidential decree banning logging of certain species and canceling existing logging permits failed to slow deforestation. Today illegal activity is an enormous problem, estimated to account for half of the deforestation taking place in Nicaragua and 85 percent in Honduras.
Weak land-tenure laws and unsettled property rights are also huge contributing factors to deforestation in the region. Because most private landowners do not have clear title to their land, many opportunities exist for illegal appropriation. Honduras still recognizes land titles from colonial times, giving rise to conflicting claims among loggers, timber companies, and government agencies. Poverty is a significant, additional driver of deforestation in the Mesoamerican Corridor, as poor residents cut forests for subsistence farming and fuelwood collection. Use of forestlands for open-pit mining presents yet another challenge in Nicaragua and Honduras.