When Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador launched Sembrando Vida, his signature initiative to address rural poverty and environmental degradation through agroforestry, he described the goal as “rescuing the countryside.”

The program pays marginalized rural dwellers to plant damaged lands with trees that can be grown in combination with crops or livestock to provide an additional income stream— for instance, from timber or fruit—while supporting biodiversity and climate protection.

Sembrando Vida, or Sowing Life, certainly has not stood still since its inauguration on Feb. 1, 2019, just two months after López Obrador took office. To date, it has steered subsidies to over 442,000 people in 20 of Mexico’s 32 states at an overall cost of US$3.7 billion.

It has also inspired plans for a similar initiative in Central America. In December, the United States and Mexico announced their aim to extend the model to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, partly to give rural people there an economic alternative to northward migration.

Despite Sembrando Vida’s torrid start in Mexico and its promise as a blueprint for Central America, however, some experts warn that serious collateral damage could occur if those implementing the model do not give environmental considerations greater weight.

They point to a variety of problems, a key one being inadequate environmental expertise, weak oversight and inadequate baseline study to guide implementation. A consequence, they say, is worrisome evidence that some program enrollees have deforested standing woodlands in order to receive payments for planting trees.

“Although the intention behind the program is in essence good, the implementation has been unsatisfactory,” says Javier Warman, forest director at the Mexico unit of the World Resources Institute (WRI), a U.S.-based research nonprofit. “You cannot compare reforestation of pastureland or grasslands, where there is a benefit, to deforesting in order to reforest. It’s illogical and results in a loss of biodiversity.”

Of the 1.1 million hectares (2.7 million acres) of Sembrando Vida projects thus far, 71% are slated for timber; 20% for orchards; 7% for agroindustry such as shade-coffee production; and 2% for spice cultivation. The program pays the equivalent of US$250 monthly to farmers in marginalized areas who have at least 2.5 hectares (6.2 acres) available for tree planting.

One objection green advocates raise is that to help generate the US$3.7 billion spent so far on Sembrando Vida, Mexico’s government cut budgets for important environmental programs. There is also concern that the ranks of Sembrando Vida staff with environmental expertise is far thinner than it should be. Perhaps as a result, experts say, projects are skewed to commercially appealing tree species that are inappropriate for certain regions.

Non-native species
Pablo Chankin, an elder of Lacandon indigenous heritage, says he notices the problem in his home state of Chiapas. Though not enrolled in Sembrando Vida, Chankin is reforesting a piece of his land that was cut by illegal loggers. In accordance with Lacandon tradition, he is using native species such as mamey (Calocarpum sapota) and laurel (Lauraceae).

“In the Sembrando Vida program they are planting achiote, mango, lemon, guanabana, papaya and other non-native fruit trees that need a lot of watering,” he says. “I am deeply concerned because the jungle cannot recover with those species of non-native fruit trees.”

Experts are particularly concerned about the possibility that Sembrando Vida might have unwittingly spurred deforestation by enrolling some landowners who cleared native woodland specifically to claim reforestation subsidies. Organizers insist they are not allowing such abuses.

“Land which has been deforested or burnt is not accepted and we in no way incentivize destruction of forest or any other existing ecosystem,” says Hugo Paulín, undersecretary for productive inclusion and rural development at Mexico’s Social Affairs Ministry. “Only degraded land, pasture, grassland or abandoned land is eligible under the rules of Sembrando Vida.”

But Warman points to a WRI analysis that suggests Sembrando Vida was responsible for over 72,000 hectares (178,000 acres) of forest loss in 2019 alone.

The analysis, issued in 2021, drew on data from Global Forest Watch, a monitoring service of WRI. Overall, Mexico lost 8.4% of its tree cover in the two decades ending in 2021, Global Forest Watch says, with the heaviest deforestation occurring in 2019 and 2020, the first two years of Sembrando Vida. Recently issued 2021 figures show 189,000 hectares (467,000 acres) of forest loss during the year, a 0.36% deforestation rate compared to 0.62% in 2019 and 0.56% in 2020.

Deforestation driver?
Cautioning that it is premature to draw firm conclusions, Warman suggests deforestation might have spiked in 2019-20 due partly to the land-clearing done by would-be enrollees aiming to obtain subsidies.

The relative decline in 2021, in turn, could have been the result of a pause that year in new enrollment, which might have effectively removed the incentive for such abuses, he adds. (The government paused enrollment throughout 2021 after Sembrando Vida bumped up against budgetary limits. Enrollment resumed this year.)

“It would appear the program intensified loss of forest density because the areas with the highest numbers of beneficiaries coincide with the worst deforestation,” Warman says.

Chankin says he witnessed such abuses. “Some locals…preferred to receive [US$250] per month from the government than to protect the Lacandon jungle,” he says. “I watched how hundreds of hectares of forest were deforested and burnt so they could participate in Sembrando Vida handouts. We have a responsibility to protect Mexico’s lungs.”

Analysts agree that if Sembrando Oportunidades, the Central American version of Sembrando Vida, is to succeed, it must ensure tight monitoring and on-the-ground engagement with property owners.

Warman argues it must also involve rigorous technical groundwork such as baseline land-use and geographical mapping to ensure successful reforestation and prevent abuses.

“If done well, the program has the potential to achieve social and environmental targets simultaneously,” he says, “and this could be a win-win situation for all involved.”