Montetik: The wooded crown that protects San Cristobal de Las Casas, a magical city
Place: San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
Learn more: http://www.pronatura-sur.org/web/
The community of San Cristóbal faces interrelated challenges at the intersection of water and population growth. Water has historically infiltrated through the surrounding mountains and flowed downstream to the San Cristóbal community, but more than 50 percent of the mountains’ historic ecosystem has been lost to urban growth, illegal logging, and stone material extraction for construction. Coupled with regional climate change—particularly severe drought and flood events—this human-driven activity threatens groundwater wells, and San Cristóbal is facing a significant decrease in the quantity and quality of available water. To combat this problem, Pronatura Sur is partnering with the El Aguaje Indigenous community, the municipal government of San Cristóbal, and a network of natural reserves in Valle de Jovel to better conserve the local mountain ecosystem. The El Aguaje are long-term stewards of the local forests and have been working for decades to conserve water and forest resources to the benefit of all people who live downstream in San Cristóbal. This team’s proposed project will formalize the El Aguaje’s conservation efforts by instituting legal protections for these local forests, including the Montetik Ecotourism Park. In addition to providing protection for more than 800 hectares (nearly 2,000 acres) that connect several private reservations and are highly important for water capture and weather regulation, the project will restore altered areas of the forest, train community guides and monitors, and implement a public awareness campaign to increase understanding of the community’s role in supporting resilient water resources and ecosystem services in the city. The El Aguaje Indigenous community will also benefit from the formal protections, which will improve infrastructure and expand ecotourism services in the Montetik park, and in the longer term, the project team hopes to secure payments to the El Aguaje from the city for the ecosystem services their lands provide.