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Nicaragua Conservation and the Environment
Destruction of the Nicaraguan environment stopped
briefly
during the 1980s. The Ortega administration generally did
not
emulate the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala,
where a
scorched-earth policy was used to fight insurgency. In
addition
the Contras were usually based across the Honduran and
Costa
Rican borders and did not hold significant territory in
Nicaragua. The Sandinistas moved 200,000 people out of the
combat
zones, creating huge land tracts where hunting, fishing,
and
farming seldom took place. Abandoned agricultural lands
returned
to their natural states, animal life prospered, and some
forests
remained uncut. Hunting was minimal because carrying a gun
invited disaster. For a short time at least, the Contra
war had
the accidental effect of stopping the aggressive
exploitation of
Nicaragua's natural resources.
The Sandinista government established the Nicaraguan
Institute for Natural Resources and Environment (Instituto
de
Recursos Naturales--Irena) in the 1980s to direct
environmental
conservation on a national scale. Irena created Bosawas, a
1.4-
million hectare nature reserve and Central America's
largest
protected natural area. The institute also attempted
management
of watersheds, conservation of rainforests, and the
establishment
of windbreaks. In addition, Irena created a peace park on
the
border with Costa Rica. This combination of accidental and
intentional environmental conservation in the early 1980s
temporarily delayed the destruction of land associated
with
expanding export agriculture.
These conservation measures were not permanent,
however. Like
many social programs in health and education,
environmental
programs established in the early years of the Sandinista
government soon fell victim to the Contra war. As
public-sector
spending after 1985 increasingly shifted away from social
programs to defense, early environmental efforts were
mostly
ignored. Hundreds of state farms created by agrarian
reform began
to imitate their larger predecessors, expanding
agricultural
development into previously undeveloped, rain forest
areas. As
poverty increased because of the weakening economy, rural
dwellers turned more and more to forests for fuel wood and
supplemental food, thus depleting previously abundant
stocks.
Although in the 1990s Nicaragua's tropical forests were
less than
1 percent the size of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil,
Nicaraguan rain forests were disappearing at a rate ten
times
faster than that of the Amazon. If that rate continues,
the
Nicaraguan rain forest will have disappeared by 2010.
Much of the government's hopes for economic recovery
has
remained pinned on exploiting Nicaragua's abundant forest
resources, casting serious doubt on any success for the
country's
future environmental efforts. In 1991 Equipe de Nicaragua,
a
Nicaraguan branch of a large Taiwanese firm, was granted a
logging concession on 375,000 hectares in the Caribbean
lowlands.
The firm agreed to invest more than US$100 million in a
modern
plywood manufacturing facility. As part of the deal, the
Taiwanese firm offered to help the Nicaraguan government
in its
reforestation efforts in other parts of the country. In
1992 the
government signed an agreement with Equipe de Nicaragua
for a
large wood-processing plant.
Mostly as the result of environmentalist opposition to
a
Taiwanese-inspired forestry project, Irena created a new
national
forest institute to regulate and control the use of the
forests.
The institute received initial financing and support from
foreign
governments and international organizations for the
conservation
of the biological reserve named Indio-Maíz. This reserve,
encompassing 4,500 square kilometers, is located in
southeast
Nicaragua between the Río San Juan and Río Punta Gorda.
Together
with the previously existing Bosawas reserve, they are the
largest forest reserves in Central America.
Data as of December 1993
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