SATIIM and Global Forest Watch Partner to Create the First Maya-led Forest Monitoring Network in Belize and Guatemala
Global Forest Watch, an initiative of the World Resources Institute to establish a global forest monitoring network, has chosen SATIIM as its partner to create a community-led network of forest patrols who will collect and disseminate data about deforestation and environmental damage in the Sarstoon Temash river basin and surrounding areas.
SATIIM will coordinate workshops among Q’eqchi communities in both Belize and Guatemala on how to systematically train and perform patrols, gather data and disseminate information. SATIIM will serve as the region’s primary information portal to GFW’s real-time network for the conservation of large intact forest areas around the world.
This pioneering partnership will first enable the communities in Belize to set a regular schedule of monitoring trips, to compile their data in a systematic manner, contribute to the national and global understanding of the urgent situation in the region, and inform national Forestry Department, which is unable to monitor the area.
SATIIM will also train its partners, two peer community organizations composed of Maya, Garifuna and mestizo communities in Guatemala, in how to use this technology to document forest changes.
This cooperation and data will result in a binational community-based forest monitoring network that will greatly increase forest transparency in an isolated region largely ignored by large environmental groups but targeted for exploitation.
