The narrow landmass of seven countries that connects North and South America is home to 7- 8% of the planet’s biodiversity. The forest areas that are home to this flora and fauna, together make up only 0.5% of the earth’s landmass, making Mesoamerica (Central America) an incredibly rich biodiversity hotspot. The third richest in the world, to be precise.
The forests and rivers are important to the people here. Tropical rainforests line the Caribbean side of the land throughout most of the stretch, as heedless of national borders as a mountain range would be. Nature and environment are revered assets to a majority of the people in this part of the world, especially to the numerous indigenous peoples descendent from the ancient Aztecs and Mayans. Moreover, these rainforests are one of the biggest carbon sinks in the planet, though they have been shrinking at an alarmingly rapid pace in recent years. Hence, it is in international interests to conserve and protect them. The forests are as much dependent on the diverse wildlife, as vice versa.
Each of the seven countries is battling its own set of development and environmental issues today. The rates of deforestation have skyrocketed in the past two decades, with governments opening their gates to international mining corporations and hydroelectric projects out of sheer pressure from loan sharks like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This has threatened not only their precious forest ecosystems, but also their own human rights, which is why resistance movements have sprung up across the countries, with people protesting everything from the privatisation of water (Honduras) and healthcare (Guatemala) to the mining of gold and nickel. With forest cover reducing drastically conservationists have been frantically searching for a viable method of preserving the biodiversity and making it flourish again. They finally found it in the 1990s.
When forest cover in any given area increases by 100%, the biodiversity within it increases by 300%. This wonderfully encouraging piece of fact inspired scientists and conservationists of the seven countries, Mexico and Columbia to connect their national parks and wildlife sanctuaries through “green corridors”. A green corridor is an expanse of endemic trees and wilderness, some hundreds of kilometres wide (depending on the location), that would connect a sanctuary in one country, say, Panama, to the closest one in, say, Costa Rica. This would make it possible for animals to wander from one park to the other in search of food and habitat. It would be dense and deep enough to prohibit humans and domestic animals from venturing too far inside, and ensure safety for the wild.
All in all, a total of 17,000 species of plants, 440 species of mammals, 690 species of reptiles, 550 species of amphibians, as well as numerous aquatic species have a stake in this corridor. It is explained in this article best, through the story of the monkey that Lobo couldn’t eat. The idea is to connect all the wild habitats from Southern Mexico to Northern Columbia, creating a corridor that would stretch the entire length of Central America and beyond, and reserving it solely for the animals, the birds and the vegetation. But, doing so requires great financial investment, as well as legislation. More importantly, it requires an immense effort at both the local and the governmental level from nine different countries working together. Needless to say, problems are aplenty, and more than two decades later, the corridor is still incomplete.
The biggest reason for this is that the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor is not the only plan in motion for the integration of the Americas. There are three more plans, all on developmental lines and funded either by the World Bank or the IMF, which is what has prompted many critics to shrug off the entire set of plans as an excuse to open up Central America and privatise its resources. The most controversial is Plan Puebla Panama, which looks at integrating four southern states of Mexico (including the state of Puebla), with the Central American countries right up to Panama, via transport, communication and disaster management and mitigation among other things. Many other “corridors”, roadways and highways have consequently been planned, and clash with plans for the biological corridor. Both have international funding, and have been sanctioned by governments concerned.
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