Minister on Barranco Logging: Concessions Are Shared Out Fairly

Last week some residents of Barranco Village had protested logging concessions given out for logging activity in their village to people from other areas of Toledo. Minister of the Environment, Orlando Habet has been out of the country, but today we asked for his perspective on their concerns.

Orlando Habet, Minister of the Environment

Orlando Habet

“When the applications come in, they go to the Forestry Department and the personnel look at the application, look at the area that they are applying for, and normally they would go to L.I.C. office at Lands Department to get a map of the area. It doesn’t necessarily mean that that map will really indicate where they can get because it can be a map of a portion of land that was already logged maybe the year before, or to years before. So, there will be no more logs there. So, in addition to that, they would also have to check to see if that map doesn’t correspond to another application that was already in before this lat one comes in. So there is a decision-making process. In terms of consultation, there’s no established process for consultation because they don’t really fall under the ethnic protocols that it does for the forty-two Maya communities which took this issue to court and got their voice heard and a decision done by the C.C.J. So what happened on this occasion was, we were approached by the village leaders, namely the chairman and I think another councilor and we granted some logging licenses to two members from the village council. I think one of two more from the community and yes, one of the questions being asked was whether we gave a license to Minister Espat’s daughter. The reality is that we gave out a license to Miss Melanie Nah. I didn’t know she was Minister Espat’s (chuckling) but apparently she is Minister Espat’s daughter, but she also got a license together with another villager, and one Mr. Mahler who also got a license together with one or other villagers. So the community did get, but perhaps what has happened is – and I saw some videos from people who were interviewed and there was one individual who I think was making the comments that they didn’t get anything from the community. That individual got a license in 2020 and 2021 but they didn’t get any this time. So in a way, it has been shared to other people. So what we can do from the Ministry’s standpoint is to communicate with them to see what is the process that they would want to see for the consultation.”