Professional forestry education and forestry
development in Central America

F. Rojas Rodríguez

Freddy Rojas Rodríguez is Professor in the School of Forestry Engineering, Costa Rican Institute of Technology, Cartago, Costa Rica and a member of FAO's Advisory Committee on Forestry Education (ACFE).

A link is seen between the development of forestry education and the level of forest development in Central American countries, but opportunities for forestry education have been growing while opportunities for forestry employment have not.

Opportunities for academic training in forestry are proliferating in Central America, but the demand
for professional foresters is not - indicating a need for adjustments in education, including changes in curricula

Forestry schools in Central America have proliferated over the past 30 years, and a number of new public and private universities are planning to consolidate programmes for training human resources in the forestry sector. However, the proliferation of schools is not evidence of any clear strategy; indeed it is paralleled by a drop in the job market for foresters.

This article briefly reviews the current professional training situation in Central American forestry schools and explores possible ties between the state of forest resources and the training of professional foresters. Asserting the strategic value of economic investment in forestry and in forestry education, it presents several recommendations for enhancing professional training in the subregion.

CENTRAL AMERICA: THE CURRENT SUBREGIONAL CONTEXT

Central America is still a poor subregion, where it is hard to find sustainable options for supplying food, housing, work, education, clean drinking-water and health care to a population of nearly 30 million. With the exception of Belize, the countries of the subregion (particularly El Salvador and Guatemala) have relatively high population density, on average almost 89 inhabitants per square kilometre (surpassed only by Asia) (FAO, 2001).

Overpopulation, poverty and illiteracy provide the basic explanation for pressures on economic and environmental resources. Where there are many mouths to feed, little money and a low level of education, development options are few; finding enough money to feed the family is the primary concern. Slash-and-burn agriculture, subsistence farming and overexploitation of forest resources will not recede if basic needs cannot be met. Thus the countries of the subregion have high rates of deforestation resulting from clearing of forests for permanent and shifting agriculture and grazing, and severe forest degradation caused by overharvesting of wood and non-wood forest products.

Forest management has not been an economically advantageous activity in any of the countries of the subregion. External economic interests have tended to concentrate on only one of forests' economically valuable assets: wood. Yet the Central American forestry sector is now emerging as an attractive field for economic investment in local and international terms. The subregion has a number of advantages: a strategic location close to markets, access to two oceans, growing signs of political stability, basic infrastructure, and the availability of natural and human resources at relatively low cost.

Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize and Panama are attractive for investment in forest management, possessing natural forest in amounts and concentrations to justify the investment. In El Salvador and Costa Rica, on the other hand, the population density, fragmentation of landholdings and forests, pressure to meet agro-alimentary needs and the scarce attention given to forest utilization in national policies complicate forest management. Costa Rica, however, has been able to stimulate forest development through successful conservation policies launched in the 1970s. Innovative strategies and mechanisms for financing the protection and management of forest resources have already led to significant recuperation of the country's forest cover. Costa Rica also has a strong institutional system with sufficient professional foresters to achieve sustainable forest development, and is now a reference for many other countries.

Reforestation can be an attractive investment possibility in countries with extensive land, experience in silviculture, relevant legislation and relatively well developed socio-economic conditions. There may be abundant opportunities for development based on goods and services from tropical forests, such as bioprospecting, ecotourism and CO2 fixation; yet growing trees is a long-term economic investment, financially unrealistic for property owners struggling to survive with short-term subsistence measures.

DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER FORESTRY EDUCATION IN THE SUBREGION

Technical forestry education in Central America began in Guatemala with the Escuela Forestal Centroamericana, founded in 1960. Initially supported by the government, it trained 125 professional foresters but was later closed permanently.

The post-graduate school of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) in Costa Rica, now called the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), has been in continuous operation since 1942. Apart from that institution, however, university-level education in forestry in the subregion originated with the foundation of several schools in the late 1960s and 1970s. Nicaragua began to train its own technical staff domestically in the 1980s. Most educational centres for forestry in the subregion have no more than 20 years of experience. Three schools have been established recently and have not yet turned out a graduating class (see Table).

In Central America the historical picture seems to indicate a direct and positive link between the presence of forestry schools and forest development. Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua are considered the most highly developed countries in forestry in the subregion and have one or more forestry schools. El Salvador, Panama and Belize are less developed in this field and offer few academic opportunities in forestry. Panama has only recently set up a forestry school with a professional course of studies for forestry engineering. El Salvador and Belize have no forestry school. Belize is scantily populated and has abundant forest resources, so deforestation is not yet a prominent issue there. El Salvador, where most of the forest has been cleared and demographic pressure is strong, would require an approach different from the traditional one in the subregion, to focus more on ecosystem restoration.

Today's foresters must consider the forest ecosystem (natural or planted)
in a holistic manner - and wood is only one of its components

TRAINED PROFESSIONALS IN THE FORESTRY SECTOR IN CENTRAL AMERICA

Some 2 785 professional foresters and technicians have been trained in the subregion (see Table). Of this number half are technicians and the remainder professionals, of whom some 13 percent hold degrees equivalent to or higher than the M.Sc. Most have been trained in forest management and plantation silviculture. The number of professionals is less important than the fact that these people have been trained in the actual socio-economic and environmental context in which they are expected to work.

This group of foresters is augmented by a number of professionals trained outside the subregion, bringing the total number to perhaps 3 000 (excluding professionals from related areas such as agronomy and biology), which would mean one forester for every 10 000 inhabitants or for every 17 000 ha (a very high ratio). However, the distribution of professional foresters around the subregion is uneven.

Yet despite the magnitude of the challenges to Central American forestry - in forest management, reforestation, rehabilitation of degraded land and ecosystem restoration, forest extension and research - Costa Rica, Guatemala and Nicaragua are already showing signs of saturation in the market for professional foresters.

This is not a sign that there is no need for educated foresters. The simple explanation is that the owners of forests and woodlands cannot afford to take on the cost of professional advice. In addition, in some countries (e.g. Costa Rica) there is a disproportionate number of professionals with higher degrees who are costly to hire and reluctant to work in rural areas, and fewer technicians prepared to work in the forest. In other countries (e.g. Honduras) the proportions are more balanced. However, in most cases the fundamental problem is that the work of the professional forester is characterized by unattractive working conditions and very low salaries.

Governments have other priorities, and the reduction of public expenditure has seen the State go from top employer to a low position in the marketplace for professional foresters. This could also be due to the fact that forestry schools are not offering the type of curriculum that the new generation of forestry students needs. Meanwhile, traditional foresters, i.e. those who have not adapted to the changes of today's world, are taking decisions as they see fit, with too little recourse to technical assistance.

Unfortunately, the presence of professional foresters and technicians is not in itself a sufficient response to the forestry challenge in the subregion. The professional forester, in the absence of clear and stable forestry policies, proper funding and forward-looking, investment-minded forest landowners, works in isolation.

Supply of professionally trained foresters and forestry technicians in Central America

Country	Professionals educated	Founded	Total professionals reported
Belize	No forestry school		9
Guatemala	Escuela Nacional Central de Agricultura (ENCA): 167 foresters	1987	544
	Centro Universitario del Petén (CUDEP): 27 forest technicians	1987
	Centro Universitario del Nor-Occidente (CUNOROC): 112 forest technicians, 38 forestry engineers	1977
	Facultad de Agronomía de la Universidad de San Carlos (FAUSAC): 200 forestry engineers	1982
Honduras	Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Forestales (ESNACIFOR): 800 foresters, forest experts and forestry engineers	1969	931
	Centro Universitario Regional de Litoral Atlántico (CURLA): 256 forestry engineers	1967
	Universidad del Valle: no graduates as yet	1999
Nicaragua	Universidad Nacional Agraria (UNAA): 195 agronomists/foresters	1980	325
	Instituto Técnico Forestal (INTECFOR): 130 forest technicians	1985
	Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaragüense (URACCAN):
	no forestry graduates as yet	1995
El Salvador	No forestry school		15
Costa Rica	Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (ITCR): 276 forestry engineers (B.Sc.),
	75 wood engineers (B.Sc.), 11 forestry engineers (M.Sc.); 1 accredited master’s degree	1976	811
	Universidad Nacional (UNA): 277 forestry engineers (B.Sc.), 44 forestry engineers (M.Sc.)	1976
	Fundacion Escuela de Reforestación de Costa Rica (FERCO): 150 forest technicians	1995
	Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje (INA): 30 forest workers	1990
Panama	University of Panama, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences: no graduates as yet	2000	150
Totala			2 785