Ambassador's Choice

Have you ever seen a mangrove forest?

A mangrove in the Gulf of San Miguel, Panama.

Mangroves have a cool tangle of roots that reach from above the water down into the sand below and provide a safe home for finfish and shrimp, and other vital species. I always wonder how they stay rooted given the ebb and flow of the tides. They look like they are out of movie. But they are real, they are amazing, and their health in the Gulf of San Miguel, Panama is not only crucial for the health of the ecosystem but it is also intimately tied to the health of the communities around them.

Eric Pinto, a fisherman in the Gulf of San Miguel, relies on the health of the mangroves to support his livelihood.

EcoLogic is committed to working with these communities to preserve the mangrove forests that provide a livelihood source for most of the villagers. But we can’t do it alone. Enter Ambassadors – a group of dedicated and creative EcoLogic supporters that each pledge to raise a certain amount of money within a calendar year. Now, that’s commitment.

As an Ambassador you get exclusive and intimate access to project updates through a weekly email called “The Ambassador Corner.” Since EcoLogic has such a breadth of projects spanning five countries, we let Ambassadors choose an initiative or region on which they would like to focus each year. This year, the majority of Ambassadors voted to focus on our work in the Darien Province of Panama.

I can probably guess why they chose to hear more about Panama. The Gulf of San Miguel is an extremely lush and richly diverse, yet particularly remote area (ever heard of the Darien Gap?). Because of this, many NGOs and governmental organizations choose not to work there – but not EcoLogic. We have been working with the communities of San Miguel for three years now, helping them care for their watersheds and get access to clean water, working to get the mangroves declared as a protected area, and providing educational workshops on sustainable fishing techniques for local fisherfolk associations..

In reality, all of us working for EcoLogic get to do amazing things because of the inspiring communities we work with in Central America and Mexico. But, I also get to work closely with a special group of creative, thoughtful, and impactful donors that can truly be called Ambassadors of EcoLogic’s work.

- Katie O'Gara, Program Officer for EcoLogic
Katie works with the individuals fundraising team and coordinates EcoLogic's Ambassador program. Katie will be attending the University of Michigan this fall in the graduate program, Natural Resources and Environment. 

Illustrating History

The children from 48 Cantones arrive early at the Riecken Library in Xolsacmalja. Running, sweating, pushing and shoving, they ask for the ball to get a few minutes of play in before the creativity workshop starts, three times per week.

They are punctual and responsible. And rarely ever absent. In those cases when a child doesn’t show up, someone from his or her household diligently brings me a handwritten note from the family explaining the child’s absence: “He had to plant in the cornfield today.”

The purpose of the workshop series is to publish a book that collects the stories from the oral tradition in the community, illustrated by children. The stories told are about the Maya Ki’che’ people, the Ajaw of the mountain and the water, and some old rules to save the forest, such as “Pixab”, “Pixan”, “Toj” and “Repuj”. All of these are concepts that direct us as human beings to relate to nature: the mountains, the forest, the water, and the animals.

To collect these stories, we go to the “Plxab” (Council of Elders). Every Thursday we walk down the narrow dirt paths to the house of somebody’s grandfather. The children sit and listen. Usually, they are speaking Ki’che’. So I sit with my notebook, the page blank, until Evelyn comes and translates the story into Spanish for me.

For the illustrations, we are experimenting with different techniques and visual mediums such as painting, drawing, collage, photography and photo montages. We will also go to the forest to listen to the sound of the pines, smell them, touch them, and of course, draw them.

Mr. Urbano, the teacher at the library, also taught us the kirigami technique, cutting paper to make airy and light forms, something that the children enjoy very much. We plan to paint a mural inspired by these simple forms for Reforestation Day in May.

The idea is that we can experience and appreciate the forest, and that all of its stories – which will be represented in the illustrations, can be heard in due time, enjoying the journey and along the way discovering some new perceptions that come from old stories. Because ancestral wisdom is passed down from generation to generation, and we don’t want it to stop with us.

- Special Guest Blogger and ArtCorps Fellow Isabel Carrió. Youth Leaders in Conservation listen, feel, express their thoughts through images and share the ancestral wisdom of their Mayan community, under the guidance of Isabel as part of EcoLogic's ongoing work in Totonicapán, Guatemala. The blog is reproduced from its original posting on artcorp.org.

Greenhouse Gases - REDD Solutions

One of the things I like most about working at EcoLogic and in the international conservation field is the daily learning. Of course, sometimes it feels like a fire hose is full-force spraying me with way more ideas than I can possibly absorb, but I love it.

Of all the topics that make my head spin, forest carbon ranks as one of the most challenging to understand. And using the potential of forests to capture and store carbon as a response to climate change is almost as tough a topic. It’s not just because the literature is chock full of jargon and language that few normal mortals use to communicate (ex ante, anthropogenic, jurisdictional nesting …).

So where to begin? EcoLogic develops forest carbon projects– which take advantage of the fact that standing forests and new forest growth absorb carbon dioxide, then lock up the carbon via photosynthesis. And you thought you would never need to care about photosynthesis after cramming for a high school biology exam!

La Cojolita Mountain Range in Chiapas, Mexico.

First, climate change brought on by global carbon emissions is a big deal and constant changing of land ownership is a huge part of the problem, but also a potential solution for sustainable, effective change.

It’s not just about energy and automobiles spewing those nasty gases anymore. It’s also about recognizing that good old nature can play a significant role in solving the problem and that we are part of nature.
One of the biggest solutions proposed has been – REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). So that’s where the second reason for EcoLogic’s involvement comes in. We believe REDD, which seeks to pay local people to keep forests standing – in other words not cut down trees and release the carbon from them – can achieve conservation on a landscape scale, farther than the eye can see across a sea of green!


We believe that it is vital to ensure local people can make informed decisions and understand what the heck it is they’re getting into and have their rights respected if they enter into contractual agreements to profit from the benefits of conserving their forests. Especially because the international climate policy “architecture” makes it necessary to interact with powerful state and federal governments that play a practical role in monitoring across large landscapes and national territories.

So the basic deal is that people who own or live near and care for a forest get money for agreeing not to cut stuff down, or trash the area under the forest canopy, because this keeps a ton of global warming-causing crud out of the atmosphere.

Bryan Foster, EcoLogic's CarbonPlus Director in the rainforest.

The money to pay them comes from a variety of sources such as international aid (sometimes ponying up aid money or agreeing to swap debt for nature initiatives) and markets like the one in California under its pioneering California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB-32). In the latter case, the dinero comes from a cap and trade compliance market, where companies reduce their smokestack (and other) emissions by becoming more efficient down to a certain point and then buy credits that others have to spare because of their emissions reductions or absorption awesomeness. California just happens to have gotten involved on the international scene, connecting Chiapas, Mexico, and Acre, Brazil to its AB-32 marketplace.

Sounds simple enough, right? Not exactly if it’s done right. EcoLogic works to help make it more accessible, but even our CarbonPlus director is on a steady diet of discovery and learning as he goes about his day-to-day (which today, has him deep in the jungle in Mexico, but more on that later).

To do REDD right and make it easier for local communities, we need to be legit. You can plant a tree or prevent the cutting of a forest and claim less greenhouse gases are reaching the atmosphere. Your claim would be basically true, but to be REDD certified, you have to meet three key stipulations. 1) You have to make sure the trees you protect are ones that would have been lost otherwise, in other words the trees actually need to be under threat of being cut down, and this new carbon credits incentive structure is keeping them from being cut down; 2) that there isn’t “leakage,” meaning people aren’t just moving their deforestation habits outside of the credited REDD project area; and 3) that there’s a reasonable assurance of permanence, in other words, the forest will stay standing for a long time after the official project has ended.

Xaté palm, which is frequently extracted from the rainforests to sell internationally.

Thankfully, groups like the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and the Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC, a tri-national commission between Canada, the US, and Mexico) are into what we do. We’ve helped folks in Honduras gain VCS validation, and we’re working in Chiapas, Mexico with three Mayan communities to conserve a biodiverse jewel, the Lacandón Jungle.

So that’s our carbon work in a nutshell. Intense – I know!

What do you think about our carbon work and the REDD project in Mexico?

- David Kramer, Senior Program Officer for EcoLogic
David researches and authors EcoLogic's proposals and reports to institutional funders. He also helps coordinate staff and partners in EcoLogic's participatory project design and evaluation.

Connecting the Dots

Do you remember the childhood game of connect the dots? I used to play it all the time when I was a kid. There was something satisfying about drawing a line from one dot to the next to create a picture. Now, I love helping my 2-year old son do the same. The realization dawning on his face when that picture forms is priceless! It is a simple game and in the end, reveals so much. But why am I talking about a children’s game?

What does that have to do with EcoLogic?

Simply put what EcoLogic does is not that simple. It is complex. So in 2011 we started the campaign Connect the Dots in an effort to explain how building a fuel-efficient stove in Guatemala should matter to a lawyer in Boston, or why a composting latrine in Panama should be important to a student in San Francisco.

The message: we are all truly connected.

Last year I met Don Vicente Canales on his farm in northern Honduras. He spoke about
his recent successes incorporating agroforestry techniques into his farm land and how the
technical support provided by EcoLogic has helped.

Whether you are a farmer in remote village in Guatemala or a lobster fisherman off the shores of Cape Cod, water is the source of life— we are all connected. We all share the Earth – and we should all work as hard as we can to protect it. Our approach is holistic and the tools we use are diverse.

On the same trip as meeting Don Vincent Canales I met up with some local girls who took the hike up the hills to see their community water tank.

This campaign is about drawing lines from the tools we use to help illustrate the connections, not only between each EcoLogic project but between you, me, the villages we support, and the rest of the world.

EcoLogic wants all people in Central America and Mexico to have the motivation and the ability to protect the environment and provide for themselves in sustainable ways, so that they can improve their well-being and quality of life.

Doña Ovina Hurtado, a Community Leader in Punta Alegre smiling with her
 friend during a recent trip to the Gulf of San Miguel in Panama.

We hope that our efforts to Connect the Dots between the people and places where we work will hit home for you. So, stay tuned for our messaging about Connect the Dots. We would like you to read our words and imagine the picture that forms by connecting all the dots. And remember, you are an important "dot" that helps complete the picture.

- Gina Rindfleisch, Program Officer for EcoLogic
Gina manages EcoLogic's fundraising activities targeting individual donations. Prior to joining EcoLogic she served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua working in environmental education and holds a BA in environmental studies from Long Island University. 

Don’t call it a comeback…

Spring has sprung, flowers are blooming, and EcoLogic is blogging. This feels right.

Even though EcoBlogic has been on hiatus since July – EcoLogic certainly hasn’t.With ongoing projects from Mexico to Panama and regional staff working with hundreds of communities with reforestation projects and water source protection, we have plenty to show you.

For instance, did you all know what an inga seed looks like?

Inga, or guama in Spanish, is a plant used in agroforestry. Agroforesty is a method of farming that mixes small trees and shrubs in among crops. Why would you want to do that, you ask? Well, good question. Agroforestry farming takes advantage of the natural benefits of trees and shrubs, such as reducing soil erosion because of their root system, shading crops with their leaves, and then, when the leaves fall and decompose, acting as a natural fertilizer for the soil.

Now, the beauty of using inga is that its native to the areas where we work and when farmers use it in their fields they can, overtime, double their crop yield!

How about fuel-efficient stoves? Have you seen them in action?

This is a stove we built in Honduras and - since we use local, readily available materials - it is made from adobe. For rural communities in Honduras, families typically use open-pit fires, like you would for camping. This method is inefficient and dangerous. The fuel-efficient stoves we build are up to 60% more efficient, so that means less wood has to be collected and fewer trees are removed from the forest.

So that’s why we have created EcoBlogic – to give you a closer look at our work and perhaps see it in a different light. Also, we also want to hear from you - your questions, your comments. Tell us what you think, what you want to know more about, who you want to hear from. We welcome all comments!

Panama Latrine Team

Mangrove forests in the Gulf of San Miguel, Panama.

In December of 2008, I began working for EcoLogic in Panama’s Gulf of San Miguel where 16% of Panama’s mangroves can be found; the area is rich in biodiversity and has an impressive scenic beauty. In the coastal zone, there are many established fishing communities, which depend on these mangroves and their wildlife populations to exist. Right now, EcoLogic is working in five of these communities: Río Congo, Punta Alegre, Puento Lara, La Puntita, and Arretí.

Part of our work involves coordinating community consultations where we hear from the local people about their lives and circumstances. Based on these consultations, we help them prioritize their concerns and jointly devise solutions to address their primary challenges. In the Gulf of San Miguel main concerns include access to clean drinking water and the effects diminishing fish stock in the mangroves are having on their livelihoods.  This is why our focus in Panama is centered on water, environmental cleanup, and strengthening community-based organizations devoted to the sustainable management of natural resources.



Community members building a composting latrine.

In Puerto Lara and Punta Alegre, we are developing a plan for watershed management and outlining steps to strengthen local water councils. In Puerto Lara, we are also establishing a tree nursery which will have the capacity to produce 10,000 seedlings a year for enriching and repopulating the nearby microwatershed. In Río Congo, we are building composting latrines which will reduce runoff and contamination of the mangroves. In Punta Alegre, all of the community stakeholders are coming together to identify a location where they can build a water aqueduct to provide safe, reliable drinking water to the community. The community has existed for more than 100 years without reliable access to clean drinking water.

In these two and a half years I’ve worked in Darién, I’ve been a part of these communities and their daily lives, and witnessed their joys and their sorrows. Their commitment to our collaborative projects and their desire to succeed is quite obvious because of all the effort and energy they put into all of the projects we’ve undertaken. I was honored that recently, in a community meeting in Punta Alegre, when all the various project partners were present, the water council president, Isidoro Zúñiga, specifically mentioned EcoLogic while thanking everyone for their interest and support. EcoLogic is having a significant and positive impact on the quality of peoples' lives in this area, and I feel proud to be a part of this important work we are doing.



- Yaira Allois Pino, Program Officer for Panama
Yaira is from Santiago de Veraguas, Panama. She works on EcoLogic's projects with our partner organizations in that country. 

Eco-Family in the Field

The entire Eco-Family spent a week together in sunny --, no wait rainy -- no wait- sunny again Honduras at the end of June for EcoLogic’s biennial retreat. We bonded, we learned, and we exchanged ideas. But this was no kumbaya-fest. Our daily meetings consisted of intense sessions on strategic planning, science-based impact assessments, and theories of change. It was intense, it was real, and it was done EcoLogic-style. There is really too much to tell, so I’ll just highlight my favorite moments.

After arriving absurdly late to a quiet hotel in San Pedro Sula, I was ready for bed. Three hours later I find myself in a minibus driving to our projects in the region of Atlántida to see our work in agroforestry, fuel-efficient stoves, watershed management, and tree nurseries. Let me tell you about two of the project sites we visited, which we are implementing with our local partner, the Alliance of Municipalities of Central Atlántida, otherwise known as MAMUCA.

Fuel efficient stoves; hey what can I say? I love these things. We saw several stoves and heard from three different women who own and use them. I was extremely impressed with the maintenance of all the stoves we saw. I asked at one point, “Are these new?” I thought at MOST they might be a few weeks old but nay, I was told that all of the stoves we saw were a year or older. The women have to sand the stoves down every couple of days to keep them in tip top shape. And boy do they shine – I never knew adobe could sparkle. The women form groups of eight and together THEY make a stove for each person in the group. They are trained on how to construct, care for, and use them. The stoves use less fuel-wood, are more sanitary and keep the smoke out of the home. We all know the benefits of a smokeless house but it was NEVER as apparent as when I walked into one of the homes, stove to the right and a teeny tiny infant asleep in an itty bitty hammock not even 3 feet away. The babe was swinging lightly in the breeze and thankfully its little lungs were breathing clean air. It made me feel really good to see the positive difference we are making.

The argoforestry parcel we visited was also pretty impressive. With 40,000 seeds in the ground, the year-old trees (cue music) stood majestically along the hill-side. The trees are there to improve crop yield (here it’s corn), prevent erosion, and decrease the work of the farmers all while attracting wildlife, preventing disease and diminishing the need to encroach upon the surrounding forest. Don Faustino, owner of the land, was enthusiastic about the results and the benefits of guama. The full benefits will not be seen for another 2 years -- but, so far, so good and Don Faustino is happy to tell others about his success so they can replicate this work.

Oh, and we had an all-staff soccer game. There is not a lot to say about this except it was DEADLY (in a good way). It was fun, it was a time for bonding, and the temperature was freaking HOT. My team made it to the finals (yaay) but alas, the elusive EcoLogic world cup escaped my team’s grasp.

Let me just end this with an enormous shout out to EcoLogic field staff and tecnicos who work on a day to day basis directly with the people and places we strive to support on the ground. In getting to know the regional staff better I was awed by their passion and dedication. Their expertise is astounding and I’m so proud to be working with them.


- Gina Rindfleisch, Program Officer for EcoLogic
Gina manages EcoLogic's fundraising activities targeting individual donations. Prior to joining EcoLogic she served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua working in environmental education and holds a BA in environmental studies from Long Island University.