Overview
The 600 square kilometer Río Copán watershed in western Honduras is comprised of small and mid-sized farms producing cattle, coffee, and subsistence crops, where residents face many challenges. Recent population growth has led to deforestation and water pollution, agricultural productivity is generally low and poverty levels remain high, especially among the indigenous Mayan population.
Environmental degradation is both a cause and a consequence of these problems. Following the destruction wrought by Hurricane Mitch in 1989, four municipalities in the watershed banded together to form a regional coalition aimed at finding solutions to shared problems. Their vision and plan for the watershed’s future provided an optimal context in which to apply and assess the landscape measures approach to enabling leaders in landscapes to find solutions that do not trade off one landowner’s wellbeing for another’s, or one development objective for another, but that seek to maintain and restore the landscape’s natural and human capital for the benefit of all.
The regional coalition’s experience in testing the approach, together with researchers from CATIE and a rural development specialist with knowledge of the area, revealed the value of the methodology while enabling local leaders to become familiar with using this community-engaging assessment and planning tool. They and other prospective users face the question now of how to make multi-stakeholder landscape measures activity appreciated, acceptable and affordable as a tool in landscape management throughout the watershed and beyond.
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