Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

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The Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) is currently one of the most
advanced of several major international conservation corridor projects that are in the
implementation and planning stages. The MBC is designed to connect the protected
areas of eight countries from southern Mexico to southern Panama. Its origins and
the current support demonstrate that both land use and strict preservation are central
goals of the MBC. This corridor project evolved through an early planning stage
at the start of the 1990s propelled largely by conservation biologists who recognized
the importance of connecting the fragmented protected areas of Central America and
southern Mexico. A report of the 1992 IVth World Congress on National Parks and
Protected Areas (“The Caracas Congress”) had summed up this priority: “One of the
region’s characteristics is that 68% of its protected areas are small (under 10,000 ha)
and, taken together, scarcely cover 350,144 has of the total land user protection ...just
five large areas cover a total of 2.7 million hectares, or 50% of the regional system”
(Barzetti 1993: 102). Global funding agencies and initiative partners that are central to
the MBC are stalwarts of sustainability-based conservation: the World Bank, the
United Nations, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), The Nature Conservancy
(TNC), World Resources Institute (WRI), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and
Conservation International (CI).
Analysis of the MBC data and maps demonstrates that substantial overall areas, a
total of 344,553 km 2 in the eight countries, are planned for incorporation into the corridor-style
complex of protected areas (Zimmerer et al. 2004). Also substantial is the
overall scope of the new conservation corridors within the MBC. Estimated areal coverage
of the proposed corridor areas (118,584 km 2 ) accounts for nearly one-third of
the combined territory of parks and reserves that are in existence (155, 857 km 2 ) and
those that are planned (70,112 km 2 ). The design of these corridor areas is planned as
a mix of more strictly protected cores with extensive areas of agriculture and resource
use.
A preliminary observation is contained in the comparison of the 1993 and 1996
maps that illustrate the complex nature of the changes of the MBC over time (Figure
1). First, the 1996 map is more detailed and designed for more accurate representation
than is the 1993 map. As a result, the evolution of the MBC is illustrated in the sideby-side
comparison of these maps. Notably, both the 1993 and 1996 maps show a similar
balance of corridor areas (approximately one third) relative to the park and
reserve areas. Clearly these corridor areas, with the planned mix of conservation and
sustainable agriculture and resource use, are key to the design of the MBC and its successful
appeal to donors and the support of several main global, international, and
national organizations.
Increased emphasis on sustainable utilization is evident in the evolution of the
MBC. In particular, elements of agriculture and resource use exert a growing influence
from 1993 to 1996. While growth of the area for agriculture and land use in the
MBC should have tended toward increased cohesion of protected areas, corridor
areas, and infrastructure corridors, in fact the opposite tendency has held. Though
the plan for contiguous spatial integration reflected the corridor principles of conservation
biology and ecological science, as well as the spatial cohesiveness that is
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