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Nicaragua is no longer a green country. The forests that cover the largest country in Central America are on the verge of extinction: the depredation permitted by the Government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, especially between 2015 and 2022, has reduced forest cover to only 24% throughout the territory. national. Although illegal mining and livestock farming have devastated the jungles, the million-dollar business of timber extraction is another of the main extractive industries guilty of this deforestation, denounces the investigation entitled Forests for Sale: corruption and the collapse of forest management in Nicaraguacarried out by the Pro Transparency and Anticorruption Observatory (OPTA).
Six years before Ortega returned to power, in 2000, Nicaragua had 42% forest cover. In 1969, it was 75%, that is, 10% of the forests of this Central American country are lost annually. This reveals that Nicaragua has always been used, by different governments, as a loot offered to extractive industries. However, it has been the current Government that has exacerbated this predation, says Amaru Ruiz, biologist and director of the River Foundation.
The environmentalist, who has been denationalized and whose assets have been confiscated by the Government for constantly denouncing this situation, is the author of this OPTA investigation. The document points out that Nicaragua’s forestry legal framework has been subjected to constant changes by the Ortega presidency. Currently there are 29 legal regulations, five laws, 10 executive decrees, three presidential decrees and 11 ministerial resolutions that have taken away the protection of forests from the National Forestry Institute (Inafor), concentrating all decision-making power in this matter in the Executive.
Although the Ortega Government is wrapped in left-wing, sometimes pro-environmentalist rhetoric, indigenous and environmental leaders like Ruiz have been denouncing the plundering of natural resources for more than a decade. Not only is there an accelerated invasion of ancestral territories, but the regime has granted concessions to transnational mining companies at least 23% of the national territory. This voracity was evident from October 2023, when three companies Chinese companies received 13 gold exploitation permits in 190 days.
At the forestry level, Ortega’s extractive vocation has been manifested since 2008, when through In-person Decree 69-2008, he lifted the ban on the extraction of pine trees in a way that until then was illegal. Only two years before, in 2006, the National Assembly had approved Law 585, Law of Ban on the Cutting, Use and Commercialization of Forest Resources. This law protected the mahogany, cedar, pochote, pine, mangrove and ceibo species. The regulations were approved “due to the alarming irrational exploitation of forest resources.”
Corruption destroys forests
Ortega continued by announcing another series of decrees that expanded the limits of wood extraction in protected forest areas, maintained indefinitely the suspension of the pine cutting ban and expanded it in the case of real cedar and pochote. A research of the environment Divergent illustrated the destruction of forests in the Dipilto-Jalapa Mountain Range, a mountainous area rich in pine forests. That forest lost 60% of its foliage in 15 years and the northern region of Las Segovias was left without water sources. Since 2009, the Sandinista Executive issued 13 decrees for this area to favor logging companies that extract pine.
At the forestry level, the OPTA report states, there are 110 industries in Nicaragua throughout the country. 30% of them are located in Nueva Segovia, 16% in the Autonomous Region of the North Caribbean Coast (RACCN), 9% in Estelí, 8% in the Autonomous Region of the South Caribbean Coast (RACCS), 6% in Chontales and 30% in the rest of the departments.
![A family climbs the dirt roads of the mountains of Nueva Segovia (Nicarahua), on the northern border with Honduras.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/CN2DO66EA5HI5PVYXKT7EGMQ3E.jpeg?auth=5382af0712fd784bfe2a07707c87bf7207e821d4a4effe6467bdf07832cc607f&width=414)
In 2022 alone, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Marena) granted 1,007 permits for wood extraction to these companies and authorized the extraction of 98,389 cubic meters of forest area. 64% of that wood came mostly from Nueva Segovia and the RACCN. “More than six logs out of every 10 logs of wood come from Nueva Segovia or the RACCN,” biologist Ruíz would invent.
This extraction meant an income of 41 million córdobas (1.11 million dollars) for companies in 2022 alone, according to the National Information Institute (Inide). Wood exports reached 15 million dollars in that period. The main destinations were India, Guatemala, the United States, El Salvador and China.
The illegality
Illegal timber extraction represents between 25% and 40% of the economic income of the forestry sector annually, indicates OPTA research. This percentage comes from the wood auctions carried out by Inafor when the confiscation of extracted wood that has failed to comply with the provisions of forestry legislation is carried out.
“Four logs of wood out of 10 come from wood auctions that were confiscated for being extracted from illegal wood,” explains Ruiz. Although this auction is part of a process to “legalize wood,” what Inafor “actually does is launder illegal forest extraction.”
“Between 2019 and 2020, there is evidence of forest products auctioned in which there is only one bidder participating in the auction processes. Although it may have an apparent legality, it has become a way to legalize forest products that come from non-compliance with the country’s forestry legislation,” says Ruiz.
Furthermore, Inafor does not take any action to prevent the illegal extraction of wood and thus avoid the auction of wood, which is supposed to be the last destination. However, it represents almost half of the income generated by the logging industry.
Ruiz warns that, if the forestry situation continues like this, Nicaragua “will not have forests in the next 20 years.” “We have the highest rate of rapid deforestation. “Nicaragua is the country that deforests its forests the fastest in Central America and the second country in Latin America.”
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