Pico Bonito National Park, Honduras

Partner

  • Pico Bonito National Park Foundation


Waterfall in the park/T. Shapera

The Pico Bonito National Park is the third largest park in Honduras. Comprising 265,000 acres, Pico Bonito includes 19 major watersheds which supply drinking water to more than 500,000 people in surrounding communities and nearby cities. The diverse landscapes of the park include tropical broadleaf and pine forests teeming with biodiversity. Over 200 communities live in poverty within the park buffer zone. The Pico Bonito National Park Foundation, as the park administrator, is committed to furthering the park’s conservation goals in ways that include and respond to the human development needs of buffer zone communities.

EcoLogic collaborates with the Foundation to expand community-led water management in the park’s buffer zone, to create sustainable livelihood opportunities, install fuel efficient stoves, and manage potable water infrastructure. The water committees we have helped establish have served as a powerful source of social empowerment, especially for women. Village water committees sustain their work through volunteer efforts and cover their costs by charging minimal user fees.

The results described below were made possible by the support EcoLogic provides in partnership.

Results

Water

  • Increased to 62 the number of communities involved in microwatershed protection work, covering 16 microwatersheds, six of which are newly delimited and pending legal recognition by the Honduran government
  • Created seven new water councils to increase community-led water management in buffer-zone communities
  • Participating communities successfully executing water enterprises which compensate them for their stewardship of watersheds
  • Constructed 134 latrines, 77 enclosed compost digesters, and 64 drain systems designed to improve water filtration and groundwater storage

Sustainable Livelihoods

  • Constructed clean burning stoves to cover 62% of all families in the southern sector of the park. These stoves use 60% less firewood and greatly reduce the amount of smoke inhaled by community members when cooking, particularly women and children, when cooking.
  • Promoted community enterprise among women who organized efforts to plant and sell vegetables and honey - earning income for the first time in their lives.

Community Self-Determination

  • Provided essential training to expand and strengthen Pico Bonito’s association of water committees that now convenes regularly, manages its own budget, and has begun providing services to individual water committees. This improvement in governance structure has given community members a political voice where they previously had none.
  • Arranged an expertise exchange program between the Foundation and Earth, Trees, Water in Guatemala to share and compare watershed management techniques and experiences.

Looking Forward

  • Provide support for agroforestry and a guama seed bank and explore possibility of downstream water users paying water councils for ecosystem services stewarded by upstream communities
  • Leverage Pico Bonito Forests activity and the growing demand for sustainably harvested tropical wood in order to promote and finance conservation and community development projects around the park and to generate revenue for shareholders
  • Begin microwatershed work in the Northern Sector of Pico Bonito National Park
  • Establish reforestation projects that produce carbon credits to sell on the voluntary carbon market

 

back to top