APAMO Retreats to Discuss Direction of Co-management

Jose Perez

Over the weekend, membership of the Association of Protected Areas Management Organizations, APAMO, participated in a working retreat to take a critical look at the role and direction necessary as co-managers of protected areas.  The two-day meeting comes on the heels of an incident between the Guatemalan military and SATIIM rangers and that incident was also discussed.  At the conclusion of forum, six organizations committed to continue building their capacity to become more effective co-managers and to voluntarily continue to work as a unified network to preserve our biodiversity in order to safeguard the social and economic value they carry.  News Five spoke by phone with Executive Director Jose Perez.

Jose Perez, Executive Director, APAMO

“While the SATIIM incident highlights the very serious bi-national issue that our borderline protected areas are facing on a daily basis, we also take this opportunity to highlight the risks and dangers that our co-managers also face throughout the protected areas. We also would want to highlight the risks and dangers that our protected areas throughout the country face on a daily basis. And internally we are strategizing and to see how best to engage the government to provide the support needed because whilst the community and the co-managers have been doing a great job in surveillance and monitoring, it takes financing. And with major donors now dwindling and withdrawing their grant supports to conservation N.G.O.s that gap is becoming more critical. And so very important in the face of recent legislation by government—in October 2015, the National Protected Areas System Act and the PACT Legislation came into force—we are asking government and we are pleased that we are sure that we are able to sit around the table to see how best we can address two key issues. The co-management agreement…we would want to revisit the co-management agreement to see how best it can be revised for us to become very effective, but practical co-managers. But also how to address that financing gap; you need more booths on the ground and definitely, we would want to look at financial sustainability of the efforts being done by co-managers.”