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Forest voices
Insights from journalists on the ground
PINPEP law offers incentives to
smallholders for sustainable forestry
Following lobbying by community forestry groups, the Guatemalan Congress passed
a much-needed law in November 2010, which formalised the Forest Smallholders
Incentives Program. This programme offers smallholders the opportunity to exploit
their land in a sustainable way, even if they do not have legal registration of ownership.
The passing of the PINPEP law (Ley del Programa de Incentivos
para Pequeños Poseedores(as) de Tierras de Vocación
Forestal o Agroforestal – PINPEP) is an exemplary story, not
only because its main goal is to offer an opportunity to obtain
extra income for people with low resources but also because
of the organisation and mobilisation of Community Forestry
Organisations (Organizaciones Forestales Comunitarias
– OFCs) which succeeded in convincing the Guatemalan
Congress to pass the law. Armindo Tomás, National
Coordinator of PINPEP, says that the process by which the
PINPEP law was achieved is a triumph for the Community
Forestry Organisations who took peaceful action to influence
the legislators to pass the bill.
The creation of the PINPEP programme
PINPEP itself dates back to 2005, when the Instituto
Nacional de Bosques (INAB) ran a programme with funding
from the Dutch government to alleviate the food crisis in
municipalities where poverty rates were too high and people
had no alternatives for extra income because of drought, low
development rates and few job opportunities. The PINPEP
law institutionalised the existing programme originally
funded by the Dutch government and assigned it a budget
from the public funds.
Newly elected members of the PINPEP Directive Council with forestry
community representatives, July 2011.­ Photo © Antonio Ordoñez
after it began. At this point, in order to find a solution, INAB
organised a series of workshops with networks of community
forestry organisations, mayors, community development
councils and individual beneficiaries.
In 2005, an agreement was signed between INAB and the
Dutch government which contributed a seed fund of 63
Quetzales (Q) million (US$ 8.1 million) with a counterpart of
Q27 million (US$ 3.47 million). A year later, PINPEP started
working in 79 municipalities according to the profile defined
by the regulations of the time.
The proposals to sustain the programme that arose from the
workshops were: more funds from the Dutch government;
funds from the Guatemalan government to sustain PINPEP;
or to try to get Congress to pass a law to institutionalise the
programme, thereby guaranteeing government funds for
the project.
The beneficiaries were landowners without property deeds,
either individuals or organised groups. The property that
candidates submitted to INAB had to be no more than 15
hectares. This property could be used for reforestation, to
install an agroforestry system, or to protect a wood with
native species.
The idea of proposing a law was agreed on by all the
stakeholders and promoted among political party members
of Congress. The workshops continued and the participating
community forestry organisations wrote a draft law proposal.
The path from programme to law
INAB paid the first incentives in 2007, explains Armindo
Tomás, with payments for six years. Due to the high demand
for PINPEP incentives, funds became insufficient a year
“We presented the accepted proposal to political parties, so
that one of them would make it theirs and advance it. The
party Gran Alianza Nacional was interested; they took it to a
plenary session, and the law was passed by a majority during
its first reading (the first stage for any law in Guatemala
before being approved by Congress), in 2008 but a year went
by without any further progress,” says Tomás.
The Congress’s executive committee made it a condition for
the advancement of the law that it was approved by both
the Currency and Finance legislative commission and the
Environment commission. The latter gave it the go-ahead in
2009, in large part due to continuous lobbying from interest
groups, community forestry organisations, and delegates
from INAB.
In 2010 the process was disrupted as other laws of national
importance were also being debated by Congress, such as
a law for the seizure of assets of organised crime. This law
had caught the attention of all political parties and the
whole nation, due to the high crime rates in the country
and the allegations of corruption against civil servants
and businessmen. Another draft law, the law for Rural
Development, which was also under discussion at the time,
remains pending to this day.
order to put pressure on Congress.
On 17 November 2010, they occupied the Congress facilities
and did not let anyone leave the premises until they were
heard. Although they received little response from the media
or government, these actions made the deputies change the
plenary session’s programme where the national budget was
being discussed and the law was approved with a budget
that same day. It became effective on 3 January 2011.
The PINPEP law stipulates that the programme can receive
between 0.5 and 1 per cent of tax revenue from the
Guatemalan estate, which is approximately between Q190
and Q380 million (US$ 24.3 and 48.6 million) per year. The
programme currently operates nationwide, having originally
served only 79 municipalities ‑‑‑_­in 13 departments of the
country, when it was first introduced.
During the process of writing the draft law and lobbying
Congress, the community forestry organisations joined
forces with the Alianza – a network created to organise and
unify the voices of communities dedicated to the protection
of forests. The Alianza was founded in 2009, one year before
the PINPEP law was approved, and one year after the proposal
for the law was drafted. Growing Forest Partnerships (GFP)
facilitated the establishment of the Alianza as a tool to
influence national forestry policies.
PINPEP and its beneficiaries
Agroforestry system of maize and cocoa in Huité, Zacapa.
Photo © Antonio Ordoñez
Reaching consensus
To deal with all of these draft laws, Congress convened
a series of discussion forums which were attended by
businessmen, mayors, community forestry organisations,
INAB and environmental organisations to reach consensus
on the texts of 12 draft laws, PINPEP among them.
“The draft law we presented [for PINPEP] had been widely
debated during the workshops [in 2008], which facilitated
the setting up of the framework for this discussion forum.
Ninety-three interested groups registered for the PINPEP
discussion. If we had taken into account all of their concerns,
we would still be there, so instead we opted for trying to
reach consensus outside Congress with 12 stakeholders
representing the 93 registered groups, which included
businessmen, mayors, associations of municipalities, the
University of San Carlos, the guild of Agronomists and
environmental organisations”, explains the national director
of PINPEP.
PINPEP provides incentives to landowners to take care of
protected forests, which are areas with species native to the
region, by avoiding logging and by containing forest fires
during the dry season.
The incentives paid directly to the beneficiaries also promote
agroforestry systems, which consist of planting timber trees
or producing biomass in the traditional farmlands. In the
case of Guatemala, trees share a space with crops of corn,
beans and coffee, among others.
The members of the organisation Acafesan, in Chimaltenango,
receive an income of at least Q2,660 (US$ 338) per hectare
for family and community beneficiaries, which should be
fully re-invested in order to protect the forestry resources.
Due to the speed at which consensus was achieved, the law
went through to the second stage of the Congress’s plenary
sessions. However, at the final stage, the draft became caught
in political negotiations between the parties.
Smallholders occupy Congress
Political debate of the law also competed with approval of
the nation’s budget for 2011, so PINPEP once again shifted
to the background. Faced with this situation, the leaders of
community forestry organisations, beneficiaries of PINPEP
and several mayors travelled to the capital from far away
departments such as Petén, Zacapa and Alta Verapaz, in
PINPEP beneficiary in Chimaltenango and his coffee agroforestry system.
Photo © Antonio Ordoñez
“We cannot ignore the precarious situation of many of the
beneficiaries. They tell us that the payment of the incentive
means an extra income that they use to buy basic grain for
food”, says Liliana Samayoa, a forestry technician working in
San Martín de Jilotepeque, Chimaltenango.
Although it is true that municipalities have also benefited
from the programme earmarked for small producers who
sometimes have difficulty proving they legally own the land,
not everyone is pleased to have to pay Real Estate Tax, which
is directly collected by the local authorities.
Emilio Ruiz, a PINPEP beneficiary, complains that he did not
pay taxes before, and now, in order to access the programme,
part of his income goes to paying the town hall of San Martín
Jilotepeque. “One does not know what they are going to use
the money for”, says Ruiz, whose land is in a remote area of
the department and accessed through a badly-kept dirt road.
In another part of the country is Edwin Guevara, mayor of
Huité, Zacapa, an active promoter of PINPEP among his
neighbours. “We established a model plot so that people
could see the benefits of agroforestry systems, and they
have realised their crops are better this way. Some have
implemented them even without the incentive” affirms
Guevara. These agroforestry systems have helped people
obtain a better crop of corn and beans in this area, one of the
driest in the country.
All persons interviewed have felt the benefits of PINPEP.
Many of them are going to renew the incentive for another
three years, but some are starting to ask themselves what
will happen after the programme stops funding them once it
reaches its deadline. Even though they have had an income
for at least 6 or 10 years, the social environment they face is
not very different to what it was when they started receiving
the incentives.
- Antonio Ordoñez, September 2011
For more information:
GFP newsletter Feb 2011 ‘A GFP Guatemala success story’
http://www.growingforestpartnerships.org/resourcesdownloads
Alianza calls on Guatemala government to fulfil budget
pledges – July 2011, http://www.growingforestpartnerships.
org/alianza-calls-guatemalan-government-fulfil-budgetpledges-forestry-programmes-4-july-2011
PINPEP’s figures so far
- Q 14.95 million have been paid in forestry
incentives
- 2,069 projects have benefited
- 45,000 people have benefited, since many of
the projects are for groups
- 35% of direct beneficiaries are women
- 40% of them are illiterate
- 50% of beneficiaries are over 50 years old
- 76% of projects are for less than 5 hectares
Forestry technician showing a protected forest in Chimaltenango, which
receives funding from PINPEP. Photo © Antonio Ordoñez.
Further information
Growing Forest Partnerships (GFP) is an initiative that helps develop and support networks of people and organisations at local,
national and international levels towards an equitable and sustainable management of forestry resources. It brings together
actors who may not have worked together before, to ensure that global discussions about forests include the real and current
challenges that forest-dependent people and local forest managers are facing and to develop and test new and innovative ways
of tackling those challenges.
‘Forest voices’ and the GFP in-country journalist programme
In 2011 GFP established a journalist programme in Ghana, Guatemala, Liberia and Nepal. In each country, a local journalist has
been recruited to report on relevant issues in the forest sector, as well as providing updates on the work of GFP. The journalists
work in close coordination with the in-country GFP teams, however, they also look beyond GFP to report on some of the other
issues that affect forest-dependent people. The articles and features produced by the journalists are a result of interviews with a
wide-range of stakeholders, including: local communities, regional and local government authorities, civil society organisations
and private sector workers and business owners.
The ‘Forest voices’ series aims, through the work of local journalists, to provide insight into the forestry context in each of these
countries and illustrate how locally controlled forestry and partnerships are working in practice on the ground.
For more information on GFP and for more updates on the in-country projects, please visit the GFP website:
www.growingforestpartnerships.org