Nicaragua, home to the Western Hemisphere’s second biggest rainforest and one of the world’s largest lakes, isn’t the first place one would expect anguish about water shortages and vanishing woodlands. Yet ongoing deforestation and worsening pollution of the country’s lakes have prompted growing concern here about the country’s future forest resources and water supplies. The most immediate focus of that concern in recent months has been the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, Central America’s biggest tropical forest and the hemisphere’s second largest rainforest after the Amazon. “If the government doesn’t act now, in ten years there will be no forest left to protect,” says Taymond Robins, an indigenous leader representing nine Mayangna communities inside the reserve, which is located in northeast Nicaragua. Robins has been leading efforts... [Log in to read more]