Faced with a devastating loss of wilderness, Colombia has unveiled a landmark “Green Plan” to involve poor rural communities in the restoration of 395,000 acres (160,000 hectares) of forests and mangrove swamps in strategic areas of the Andes and Caribbean.

Analysts describe the four-year, $230 million effort as one of Latin America’s most environmentally focused reforestation efforts ever. They say it will create 39,000 jobs, and they laud it for seeking to transform slash-and-burn farmers into forest protectors.

“This is a unique program in its mix of commercial and environmental goals,” says Manuel Guariguata, a forest ecologist at Catie, a Costa Rican think tank. “While other countries, like Venezuela, have reforested larger areas to produce pulp or paper, the ‘Green Plan’ breaks new ground in environmental protection and the recovery of biodiversity.”

In the mountains above Cali, farmers are replanting forests lost to ranching and drug crops. Environmental planners hope that by providing jobs to plant native acacias and cedros, they can wean the local population from cocaine production. They also hope the revitalized forest will check soil erosion and flooding that has made the Cali River a hazard.

And in the Gran Macizo range in southern Colombia, more than 5,000 laborers will trek up some of the country’s tallest mountains to recuperate a biological corridor between the eastern and central cordilleras of the Andes. Recovery of the region—declared a World Biosphere Reserve in 1980—would guarantee the survival of hundreds of threatened species of plants and animals, including the mountain tapir and the spectacled bear.

At the same time, locals in the Gran Macizo have been planting vegetable and fruit crops that can be sold at market or used to feed livestock—and attract small mammals that carry seeds useful for forest regeneration.

“We hope to replant 22,000 hectares (54,000 acres) of forest and protect another 51,000 hectares (126,000 acres) of forest in this part of southern Huila alone,” says Luís Eduardo Quintero, director of Cormagdalena, the local environmental agency. “We want to halt the radical loss of our natural resources and provide the local population with a long-term, ecologically sound income.”

Species selected carefully

Colombia’s environment ministry is overseeing the program, and state-funded, semi-autonomous environmental corporations throughout the country are carrying it out.

Tree species are being selected to further a variety of community-development and conservation goals ranging from timber production to biodiversity protection. Though native species are emphasized, some exotics are being used, too. In the cool Andean Altiplano near Medellín, workers are planting native alisos (Alnus jorullensis) and guayacanes de Manizales (Lafoencia speciosa), whose deep roots aid watershed protection. But in the hot, low-lying regions of the state of Cauca, they are mixing fast-growing exotic eucalyptus with native species to rapidly provide forest cover for recovering plant and animal populations.

Many scientists consider the tropical Andes—including part of Venezuela, northern Peru, and Colombia—the world’s most biodiverse region. But ill-conceived agrarian reforms in the 1960s and 1970s opened vast forests to farmers. Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups stripped the wilderness in the 1980s and 1990s for cocaine and heroin production, and deforestation soared to today’s rate of 490,000 acres (200,000 hectares) a year.

The results: Some 70% of the Andean Cloud Forest and 96% of the Tropical Dry Forest of the Caribbean have been lost. Nearly one-third of the nation’s mammals are on the endangered species list. And erosion clogs rivers, causing water shortages in up to 30% of the nation’s counties, according to the state-run Research Institute of the Environment (Ideam).

The Green Plan’s goal is largely economic. The program’s supporters believe that once rural inhabitants can make a living in a “forest economy,” they will stop engaging in unsustainable timbering or in slash-and-burn farming.

In the central Andes, ranchers are being trained to use leafy tree species such as native leucaenas (Leucauena leucocephala) and exotic acacia (Acacia melanoxilum) to provide fodder for cattle. This woodland-pasture strategy is intended to make ranching and forest-retention compatible. Elsewhere, the program will help locals grow ornamentals such as the bejuca cafetera, a kind of philodendron whose roots are used to weave baskets. Even basic changes, such as the use of more efficient wood-burning stoves, are being implemented so settlers don’t damage local ecosystems.

On the Atlantic Coast, the reforestation program aims to restore mangrove stands destroyed due to a variety of causes, among them infrastructure projects that have blocked natural water flows and altered salinity.

Locals decide how the program should be designed to ensure it takes into account their economic and social needs. “The important thing is getting the local communities involved in defining and implementing the project for their own benefit,” says Cristian Samper, director of the Von Humboldt Institute, an environmental think tank here. “It simply won’t work unless they feel that sense of ownership.”

Potential pitfalls abound

There is no shortage of dangers. The program might antagonize Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups protecting drug cultivation, which they rely on for funding. There also are technical difficulties. Colombia lacks research to identify all the appropriate tree species, Von Humboldt’s Samper says. It also needs seed banks and greenhouses to produce the selected species in quantity. And with research money still tied up in bureaucracy, the program still could stumble in the early stages.

Much is at stake. Forest regeneration in the Colombian Macizo alone—for which the nation is seeking an extra $100 million from the European Community—would fix more than 6.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.

That could bring financial gain for Colombia if a world market of carbon bonds ever develops, and if species-rich nations persuade the world community to boost financing for biodiversity protection.

If the Green Plan succeeds, sustainable forest economies finally may take root among peasant communities that once pursued unrestricted clear cutting as the road to prosperity.