Mark Bonta says the Honduran environmental movement would not be where it is today--certainly not the protected areas movement -- if it hadn't been for Peace Corps Volunteers, but few remember them in the literature or the press because they almost never provided money. I believe this also happened in Costa Rica.
What are some of the 'lessons learned' in promoting conservation and tourism with the U.S. Peace Corps in Honduras?
What are some of the 'lessons learned' in Honduras?
MARK BONTA
We learned that it was an uphill struggle, because some of the more development-oriented people within and outside PC were never really convinced that biodiversity and nature had anything to do with development.
I would venture to say that the Honduran environmental movement would not be where it is today--certainly not the protected areas movement -- if it hadn't been for the PCVs, but few remember them in the literature or the press because they almost never provided money. I believe this also happened in Costa Rica. (Evans, The Green Republic, is a good read). Ask Mario Boza about the original role of PC in "natural resources" and the answer is surprising.
PCVs made a lot of mistakes, of course, and perhaps labored under ideas that weren't precisely correct. Most did not have an adequate grasp of landscape dynamics, culture, geograpphy, and so forth. However, they did have a better grasp than any other group of the corrupt power politics of COHDXEFOR, and PCVs were one of the few blocks of people who blew the whistle on what was going on -- for example, with the PDF project in La Union, Olancho, a USAID fiasco. I was one of the whistleblowers and talked directly to US officials.
The same thing with the Babilonia Dam. PCVs made up for with on-the-ground savvy what they lacked in academic sophistication. Patuca Dam was another one. PCVs were officially forbidden to get involved. Yet, realpolitik we did, and good things happened as a result. A lot of us were involved in environmental organizing and passed these skills on to Honduras.
