Consejo Nacional de Areas Protegidas
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 1989 |
| Jurisdiction | Government of Guatemala |
| Headquarters | 5 Avernida 6-06, Zona 1, Edificio IPM 5to., 6to. y 7mo. nivel, Guatemala City |
| Parent agency | Presidency of Guatemala |
| Website | www.conap.gob.gt |
The National Council for Protected Areas (in Spanish: Consejo Nacional de Areas Protegidas, CONAP) is the government agency of that has as its mission the conservation and the sustainable use of the biological diversity and protected areas of Guatemala. CONAP was created by Decree 4-89, or the Law of Protected Areas (in Spanish: Ley de Areas Protegidas, LAP) gave jurisdiction to over the System of Protected Areas of Guatemala (in Spanish: Sistema Guatemalteco de Áreas Protegidas, SIGAP), which is the conglomeration of all protected areas, and those under special protection in the country.
Up until the 1950s, the northern Peten had been largely disconnected from the State despite being the largest department in the country. Economic activity was mostly restrained to ranching and the harvest of chicle and xate with almost complete absence of regulatory agencies. Ranchers and indigenous communities, like the Maya Q’echi that had migrated from the Alta Verapaz region in the 19th century, composed most of the scattered population in the region. However, after the coup of 1954 that ended the Arbenz administration, the region became the “escape valve to the agrarian problems of Guatemala” by becoming the source of land grants offered to the landless, indigenous and peasant populations disenfranchised by the overturning of the land reform. This was the onset of the colonization process that would later be formalized by the creation of a government agency with the mission to develop and integrate the Peten region with the rest of the country . In 1959, Congress created the National Enterprise for the Economic Development of Petén(Spanish: Empresa de Fomento y Desarrollo de Petén, FYDEP) through the passing of Decree 1286. According to Michael Painter, FYDEP had the following objectives: 1) To manage and build infrastructure to foment agricultural, industrial, and touristic development in Peten 2) To exploit the region's natural resources, except oil, for domestic and foreign markets 3) To sell land to landless countrymen for the production of basic grains and as a way to help reduce the political demands for land reform in the south 4) To place settlers in cooperatives along the western borders with Mexico to bar Mexican colonists from entering Peten and prevent Mexican construction of hydroelectric facilities near the border 5) To promote medium scale capitalized cattle ranching in central and south Peten.
The result was the expansion of agriculture, ranching, logging, extraction of forest products and the construction of unsophisticated infrastructure, schools and health facilities (Painter). Many of these activities grew with minimal oversight from the government and FYDEP. By 1990, satellite imagery showed that 40% of Peten had been deforested and another 10% degraded. Some attribute the neglect of sustainable development by the Guatemalan government to be a result of the close involvement of the military in State affairs, whose concerns in regards to the jungle were insurrections and lacked the know-how and interest in environmental protection. By 2000, FYDEP had estimated a population in Peten of about 50, 000; although, there were already 64,000 people living in the region by 1973. FYDEP was disintegrated by the government in 1986 due to criticisms of its inability to control both the process of colonization and the growth of illegal logging practices, albeit, the damage to the region had already been done with the agricultural frontier quickly growing deeper north into the forest.
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