CATIE leads training process for leaders in forest and forest landscape restoration in Latin America in the face of Climate Change

• The project seeks to generate opportunities for women and young people, training leaders to take on new, updated and inclusive approaches to development.

Tuesday, March 14, 2023. The "Scaling-up Nature-based LeadershipPlatforms" project was recently approved by the government institution Natural Resources Canada, ratifying its commitment to the training of human resources in Latin America to meet the fundamental needs of the region in the management of its forests and ecosystems. To this end, the Government of Canada has placed its full confidence in CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center), recognizing its capacity building capabilities to address issues of great relevance for the region. In particular, sustainable forest management, forest landscape restoration and forest fire management are critical issues for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

This project seeks to generate opportunities for women and young people, training leaders to take on new, updated and inclusive approaches to development.

In 2021, Natural Resources Canada funded 11 young Latin American men and women to study for a Master's degree in science at CATIE; In 2022 there were 16 people who received such support, while in the group that is this year starting their master's studies there are 12 people who have partial or total funding from this government for their studies, 5 of them through the "RESTAURAcción" project that promotes governance for the restoration of forest landscapes and 7 of them through the Scaling-up Nature-based Leadership Platforms project; focused on consolidating leadership and governance platforms for nature. In some cases, the Canadian resources are complementary to those of other international entities that contribute to the financing of the students. In addition, the "RESTAURAcción" project financed partial scholarships to pay for the graduation work of 11 students of the Virtual Master's Degree in Agribusiness Management and Sustainable Markets of this institution. 

In addition to the master's degree studies of young Latin American professionals, the support of the Government of Canada made it possible, in this same period 2021-2023, to finance the participation in workshops and specific CATIE courses of 744 people, who were trained in topics such as forest landscape restoration, gender and governance, forest fire management, value chains with a gender approach, sustainable business for forest landscape restoration. Many of these events were held virtually, given the trend generated by the pandemic process.

"This support from the Government of Canada has been channeled thanks to the joint collaboration between the International Network (IMFN) and the Latin American Model Forest Network (RLABM, its Spanish acronym), the latter coordinated from CATIE, which seek to promote voluntary social platforms of territorial governance for sustainability, and the confidence of Natural Resources Canada in the technical capabilities of CATIE for our region," said Róger Villalobos, Academic Coordinator of the Master in Management and Conservation of Tropical Forests and Biodiversity, and president of the RLABM.

" Due to the commitment of our institutions to inclusive territorial governance, it has been ensured that many of the people trained and all the thesis research work developed are linked to the sustainability processes promoted by the 35 Model Forests distributed in 14 Latin American countries," said Fernando Carrera, CATIE Climate Action Officer and RLABM manager.