The president of Mexico proposed this week an unusual strategy to face the phenomenon of migration from Central America: planting trees.
At the World Leaders Summit on Climate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked Joe Biden to replicate his program Sembrando Vida in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
This is one of the central projects of the Mexican president’s management, in which inhabitants of rural areas receive an income in exchange for planting and take care of trees in their plots.
“They work 450. 000 peasants who receive a wage of 5. 000 monthly pesos es ”, about US $ 250, AMLO exposed this Thursday to the other world leaders in the virtual summit convened by Biden.
Considered that, by employing Central American inhabitants, the caravans of thousands of Central Americans seeking to reach the US can be avoided.
And he suggested to Biden that his government could offer temporary work visas, residence permits or nationality to those who work in this program for several years in their countries.
“The migratory phenomenon, as we all know, is not resolved with coercive measures, but with justice and well-being,” said AMLO.
Biden did not immediately offer a response to the proposal.
But in a talk with journalists yesterday, on Wednesday, an official considered it unlikely that the US government could take up a proposal like this: “From our point of view, is not a conversation about migration. It is a conversation about climate change “.
” It does not sound like something that has any opportunity to talk extensively between Mexico and the United States, “he said.
For experts in migration policies such as Giovanni Peri, however, it is a proposal that must be valued.
“This would generate the appropriate framework and long-term perspective time frame for a plan, rather than managing emergencies, and it can positively affect all three economies, ”said the director of the Center for Global Migration at the University of California-Davis.
What is Sembrando Vida?
After assuming the government in 2018, the Mexican president launched Sembrando Vida as one of the priority programs of his government -with US $ 1. 250 millions in 2021- to l have a dual purpose .
On the one hand, fight poverty through the employment of people disadvantaged from rural areas. On the other, combat climate change through reforestation of regions that suffer environmental damage.
The objective is that for 2024 have been planted one million hectares of timber, fruit and spice trees.
Each participant before the program receives up to US $ 248 per month for doing the sowing, care and harvesting tasks. Hundreds of technicians who guide the farmers are also employed, who must take care of an area of 2.5 hectares each.
Various Reforestation experts and organizations have pointed out that this program is one of the most important efforts in the field that have been made in Mexico in recent governments.
“The initiative is very good”, Ecologist Horacio Paz, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, tells BBC Mundo.
However, independent organizations have not been able to verify how effective it has been due to lack of program information. And experts also warn that can put at risk to the environment itself whom it seeks to help.
Has it produced results?
The government assures that they have been sown 700 million plants , managed by around 400. 000 participants of the program.
Your budget has been duplicated to add to almost 200. 000 beneficiaries more than 2019.
In Central America, Se mbrando Vida in Honduras and El Salvador, after agreements between López Obrador and his colleagues Juan Orlando Hernández and Nayib Bukele, respectively.
However, its environmental results are difficult to monitor, says the World Resources Institute (WRI) that last month presented a first independent evaluation of the program.
“Sowing Life does not have forest restoration as a priority objective and neither does reforestation”, says WRI Mexico in its report, but rather it is “a productivity strategy” in poor areas to “reactivate the local economy.”
“The analysis carried out by WRI Mexico, although it is not conclusive due to The lack of access to information and coordinates of the plots clearly shows that the program had a negative impact on the coverage ures and the fulfillment of the country’s carbon mitigation goals during its first year of implementation. ”
According to their analysis, the program“ could have encouraged a loss of forest cover of 72 . 830 hectares during the first year of operation (2019) ”.
Risks when “sowing life”
Program administration is in charge of the Ministry of Welfare, which fights poverty , and not by the Ministry of the Environment, which makes experts fear that many decisions will be taken without taking into account the specialists in environmental matters.
“The problem The most important thing not to plan is that the selection of species that is used for reforestation is not adequate “, Explains the ecologist Horacio Paz.
” A good part of the reforestation efforts fail because of this. And a very, very high percentage of planted plants die “, adds the expert from the Mexican Institute for Research on Ecosystems and Sustainability.
The Sowing Life catalog, says the government, includes 128 species.
“The varieties will be those according to the vocation of the soil, the climate, but also the culture. This program is serving to rescue native species ”, he explained to BBC Mundo in 2018 Secretary María Luisa Albores, a few months after launching the project.
López Obrador has said that his program respects technical forestry knowledge, but has highlighted the “wisdom of the people” as the basis for managing reforestation .
Another problem pointed out by specialists is that planting trees where there were previously no forests in a natural way can damage existing ecosystems.
“When trees are adults, there are effects on the ecosystem. There comes the second big problem “, explains the ecologist Horacio Paz.
” If we do not select these species well in terms of what function they have in the ecosystem, it will be difficult for us to improve the processes of the ecosystem ”
In a matter of combating climate change, well-planned reforestation with knowledge of the environment helps to reduce the burden of CO2 in the environment. But not all species capture and store carbon in the same way , and there is even a risk of a counterproductive effect.
“In a very short time you are going to have carbon back into the atmosphere, because plants die, decompose and carbon is released “, poses Paz as another challenge.
” If you want to have stores of long-term, it is better to have plants that photosynthesize slowly, but live longer, that can keep the carbon they have captured in their body ”, he adds.
And with the progress of the program, environmentalists have alerted that there are peasants who deforest their lands to enroll them in the program and receive the economic benefits.
That is, there is additional damage to the environment to l already pre-existing and that it is seeking to combat.
The immigration proposal
In his speech at the climate summit, López Obrador focused his proposal to expand Sembrando Vida so that the US government offers financing and migratory rewards.
“We assume our responsibility economic and we are committed to helping in the productive and social organization, and you, President Biden, could finance the Sembrando Vida program in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador ”, said the president.
Low your perspective, it would be possible to sow 3. 000 million trees and generate 1. 200. 000 jobs .
As these three countries are the largest generators of migrants to the United States in the region, AMLO considers that the United States “could offer” those who work the land for three consecutive years a temporary work visa.
And after “another three or four years”, that they obtain “up to residency in the US or their dual nationality”:
For Giovanni Peri, this plan it can be viable if there is a commitment from the parties.
“As an expert in migration, I would say that there is a very solid economic and human logic on the idea of creating work visas for Central Americans to work in the United States and this would clearly reduce the pressure on illegal immigration ”, he tells BBC Mundo.
“The combination of a sustainability objective and a migration objective is also interesting, since can give the appropriate incentives to the countries of origin and would promote collaboration between the receiving country and the sending country, which is necessary to solve the problem of unaccompanied minors and overcrowding at the US-Mexico border ”, he adds.
However, analyst Ariel Ruiz, from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), warns that initiatives such as Sembrando Vida have yet to prove their effectiveness.
“By themselves, these programs would not reduce migratory flows in the short term. The implementation and evaluation of Sembrando Vida in Mexico is still in progress in southern Mexico and Central America and, as a result, it is too early to quantify its impact on migratory flows, ”he says.
“In the short term, the expansion of existing US channels, such as the H-2A and H-2B programs, could provide more rapid alternatives for regular migration from Central America.”
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