Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

Claudia Menendez writes on behalf of Trees, Water & People, recipient of the prestigious
Alcan Prize for Sustainability in 2008. TWP has been establishing reforestation projects
throughout Central America, educating rural populations on the necessity of maintaining
intact arboreal ecosystems, as well as providing these populations with efficient cookstoves
to reduce the demand for fuel wood. Claudia describes the disastrous conundrum whereby
rural populations are absolutely dependent on forest resources for their very survival yet
the combination of economic and population pressures have forced them to denude
these very same resources. There are valuable lessons here about the inescapable
interpenetration of the social, economic, cultural, and ecological dimensions of sustainability.
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Rebuilding Family and
Environmental Health in Central
America & the Caribbean
Claudia Menendez – Trees, Water & People, Colorado, USA
In the Central American country of Honduras, the capital city Tegucigalpa
is located in a valley surrounded by bare, rolling hills. Decades ago these
hillsides were covered with diverse vegetation including splendid oak and
pine trees. Since then, the majority of trees have been cut down to make
room for new communities, build homes, or simply for cooking fuel. Some
of these peri-urban communities are located on the highest hilltops making
them difficult to access. They often exist without running water, sewage,
electricity, or telephone lines. Aside from lacking these basic services these
communities are also threatened by landslides during the rainy season, as
the slopes are denuded of all vegetation.
In the early morning, smoke filters from between the boards of Dona
Gabriela’s small kitchen. Inside and out, the walls are blackened from
years of soot build-up. The kitchen is filled with smoke and the thick smell
of burning wood as she lights the stove to prepare for a day’s work, making
tortillas. Doña Gabriela is a single mother of four girls ages 25, 22, 13,
and one, and also has three grandchildren. The family of eight lives on the
hillside community of Buena Vista (Spanish for ‘nice view’), in a simple
two-room wooden house covered by a tin roof held down by rocks. To
make a living, Doña Gabriela and her oldest daughter devote their time to
making tortillas, a regional flatbread made from corn flour, a staple of the
Honduran diet.
In the morning, one of the youngest daughters balances a large pail of
boiled corn kernels on her head as she walks to the mill, where it will be
ground into dough. The other daughter pushes a cart to buy bark stripped