Support for the Monitoring of Biodiversity
and Climate Change

The Project

The environmental governance of the Selva Maya region is weak, which is closely related to its transboundary situation. To develop efficient mechanisms for conservation and climate change adaptation in the region, and to foster support at the political level, reliable monitoring data is required on a regular basis and in comparable fashion at regional scale.
There is already a wealth of monitoring data collected by a variety of organizations, yet these tend to have a limited geographic focus, lack continuity and leave many gaps. In addition, few results are freely available and widely communicated to decision-makers and the public. Exchange, coordination and collaboration at the regional level are scarce.

In order to contribute to the strengthening of regional governance, since August 2016 the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ, German Cooperation for Sustainable Development), commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), jointly with the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD), implements the regional project Support for monitoring of biodiversity and climate change in the Selva Maya. The project works closely with the NGO Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which has been spearheading the monitoring of biodiversity in Guatemala since 1992.

The overarching goal of the project is that results of regionally coordinated biodiversity and climate change monitoring in the Selva Maya region are channelled into policy-making to a greater extent.

Some of the impacts achieved through the Project are:

• Following the implementation of the SMART tool, capacities for control, surveillance and monitoring of biodiversity have been strengthened in five Protected Areas in Belize, thirteen in Mexico and one in Guatemala.

• In the framework of monitoring of water bodies and associated fauna, data accessibility and management has been increased in one Protected Area in Belize, four in Mexico and five in Guatemala; this has been done through institutional alliances and joint monitoring platforms of 20 public and private organizations in the three countries.

• Citizen participation and political advocacy by local institutions has been strengthened about water quality monitoring in the basins of the Peten-Itza Lake in Guatemala and the Bacalar’ Lagoon in Mexico.

• There is scientific information from 52 permanent monitoring plots (PPMs), which supports the sustainable management and administration that forest concessions carry out in the forests of Petén, Guatemala. In addition, one PPM has been re-sampled in Belize.

• With air quality monitoring data, in Belize it has been possible to put pressure on the municipalities to prohibit fires near the communities; in Guatemala a partnership has been established between the municipality of San Benito and the citizens to make more informed decisions about waste and solid waste management.

• Technical capacities have been improved for the detection and monitoring of threats such as forest fires and changes in vegetation cover, allowing for their timely attention in Belize; Petén, Guatemala and four Natural Protected Areas in Mexico.