Where we work

Some of the richest natural areas in the New World lie in the Toledo District of southern Belize. The rugged Maya Mountains shelter a wilderness area that supports one of the largest and most diverse forests in Central America. Healthy populations of many endangered species, including jaguar and scarlet macaw, still roam here and move through the skies. Rivers are fed by rainforests in the mountains, flat pine savannas in the coastal plains, and lush lowland rainforests, ultimately to deliver fresh water, sediment, and debris to the estuaries.

The estuaries, in turn, feed and are fed by the Belize Barrier Reef. Twenty-two thousand people of the Toledo District, and even more people from neighboring Guatemala and Honduras, rely on these natural areas (directly and indirectly) for their livelihoods today, and will continue to rely on them into the future. Whether Kekchi, Maya, Garifuna, Creole, East Indian, or foreigner, all of the residents of the Toledo District are bound to the district's natural environment for their quality of life, and in many cases, for their basic survival. Yet, while virtually every major subsistence and economic activity in the district relies upon access to goods and services provided by nature (e.g., water, forest, soil, and sea), across the board, Toledo's resources are growing increasingly scarce and compromised.

Though in most cases this scarcity has not reached a crisis state, it is clear that resource extractive development (current threats are logging, hunting, gill net fishing, shrimp aquaculture, and cattle raising), infrastructure building projects, and pressures from growing human populations are accelerating the demand for resources. Unless future development can proceed with careful consideration of environmental quality (in practice not just in word), then the residents of Toledo will increasingly suffer from resource depletion and pollution. Indeed, unless the current path of development can be altered in southern Belize, Toledo will eventually resemble neighboring Guatemala and Honduras with highly degraded forests, heavily polluted and fishless waterways, and plummeting coastal fisheries.

A few years ago the drive from Belize City to Punta Gorda Town took nearly 12 hours and even longer in the rainy season. Today because of the improvements on the highway, we can reach Punta Gorda in only five hours. This increased access to formerly remote areas in southern Belize has both positive and negative outcomes; although it allows more tourism and exchange of goods, it also means easier access to Toledo's natural resources that were once so hard to reach. It is very challenging to imagine alternatives to the current development track and envision exactly how environmentally friendly development might occur in Toledo. Indeed, it will take the commitment of Toledo's citizenry and creative and visionary leadership to make it happen. But exactly how can we reduce or eliminate the current threats?