A forest home in Paraguay

10/11/2025

The forest here in Canindeyú, the heart of eastern Paraguay, is like a house with many rooms. Cedar trunks form the walls, leaves and branches the roofs. On the ground floor, there are herbs for remedies, and a carpet of leaves becomes mulch that holds moisture and returns nutrients to tired soils. Every part of the forest home has significance and a use.

“For us, the forest is sacred: from it we get our medicine, firewood, everything,” says Teodora Vera, a 55-year-old member of the Avá Guaraní, Indigenous Peoples’ community of Y’aka Poty. “The forest is our life.”

Before going to her forest home, Teodora sits on the doorsteps of her actual home—sipping mate, a tea-like beverage made from yerba mate leaves (Ilex Paraguariensis), and getting ready to start the day’s work. Later she will meet some of the 35 families that live in the community she leads, as they shift their farming chacras (farming plots) to agroforestry, where trees are grown amidst agricultural crops.

Elected leader of her community, Teodora learned to lead by doing: observing, seeking advice, listening.

A boost for their communities came with the PROEZA (Pobreza, Reforestación, Energía y Cambio Climático) project. Co-financed by the Government of Paraguay and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), PROEZA brings together social protection and climate action. It combines financial incentives with technical assistance to promote sustainable agroforestry practices among rural and Indigenous households.

On the financial side, PROEZA provides environmental incentives for participating families to spur further investment in their land and plots and make production more resilient and sustainable. These incentives build on the payments through the Tekoporã programme—the government’s flagship social protection initiative.

Participants of PROEZA are selected from households already enrolled in Tekoporã. This social protection programme offers regular, predictable support to poor and vulnerable rural families, even during low production seasons.

So far, PROEZA has provided financial support to almost 1 500 households, who are also enrolled in Tekoporã and receiving support to meet their food security and basic needs.

On this foundation, PROEZA complements Tekoporã with conditional payments linked to environmental outcomes. These payments reward good agroforestry management— for example, ensuring at least 60 percent plant survival, implementing species diversity and utilizing proper pruning techniques.

On the technical side, FAO provides field-based expertise to Indigenous Peoples and rural communities to adopt agroforestry practices, including land preparation, soil analysis, seeds and tools. The project provides hands-on training on plot management and pruning, and even advice on securing land tenure, training in market access and short-term wages for planting and maintenance, where needed.

Agroforestry at the heart of the approach

Paraguay, a landlocked country in Latin America, has faced decades of deforestation and land pollution in the east of the country, driven by the expansion of extensive crops and cattle ranches.

Meanwhile the country’s changing climate has scrambled habits and agricultural calendars. Late frosts burn blossoms and young citrus trees, stronger winds lash rows, and erratic rainfall and heatwaves shorten harvests, making them more and more uncertain.

“It’s hotter and storms are stronger,” Elva says.

When cassava or bean harvests fail, household budgets tighten.

Today, the communities’ daily work on the plots supported by PROEZA is reversing deforestation. Communities are reforesting pieces of landscape, bringing trees back among fields and helping restore ecological functions where they had disappeared.

“With the expansion of extensive crops, forest mass in the eastern region has been lost. PROEZA is reforesting degraded areas and recovering green spaces with agroforestry models that combine native and exotic species with local agricultural production,” explains FAO Forestry Specialist, Luis Britos.

FAO’s technical assistance for agroforestry adoption is the hinge that turns an idea into everyday practice. It reduces the obstacles that block the start-up and sustains plot management over time.

Cleaning and preparing the land is the priciest and most complicated phase for the farmers, deterring many from even starting. The project helps families overcome these barriers by bringing in equipment that prepares the plots and sows the seedlings more effectively and in less time.

“We used to clear everything by hand,” says Elva. “But with PROEZA came the tractor. Then, the plot was prepared, the orange trees were planted, and our work became much easier. Productivity has improved, and now I have more time to take care of the land, which motivates me to keep working.”

Participating families choose one of the six agroforestry models proposed by the project. Teodora, Elva and their families chose the model that combines native trees, citrus trees and fast-growing species. It starts with site visits and soil analysis.

“Then the PROEZA technicians arrived,” recalls Teodora. “The engineers showed us again how to treat, how to control, how to work.”

In the model both Teodora and Elva chose, eucalyptus works on multiple fronts. It acts as a windbreak, protecting native trees—slower to grow—and young citrus trees. Eucalyptus provides a sustainable source of firewood for cooking and heating, so native trees—culturally and ecologically valuable—aren’t cut. The eucalyptus helps create a cooler, more stable microclimate for citrus. Pruning yields firewood over time, and the remnants feed soil micro-organisms.

At the first frost, a critical moment for bees, they find nectar in citrus blossoms.

At first, families plant crops for home consumption; later, as trees grow and diversity increases, native species begin to thrive again.

In Teodora’s community, the forest remains the backbone of the landscape. With small eucalyptus patches easing pressure on native wood, citrus grows in more sheltered areas and yerba mate advances where shade is favourable.

For Elva, planting citrus is like reclaiming her community’s heritage. Their area used to be a “wild citrus zone”, until trees disappeared due to disease and abandonment. Now, rows of citrus trees return to the field; between them, cassava and beans ensure food and small earnings.

“This orange grove is help for a lifetime,” she says, looking toward the green corridor near her home. “This project helped us a great deal so that our children, as they grow, can once again see—and get used to—what our culture is: they will see the forest return, understand how precious it is and guard it with us,” says Elva.

Today, management of the plots consists of daily care: cleaning the spaces between rows, controlling vines where light is needed, regular pruning. “Now it is much easier for us to cultivate,” adds Elva. “The project gave us a lot of strength to continue working.”

Beyond the initial mechanical work, the real difference now comes from steady, shared routines. The care of forests and citrus becomes an investment that lasts over time.

From harvest to income

Selling the cassava and beans from her plot, Elva comes back from the market with the essentials paid: this month’s university fee and a few household expenses. After land preparation and planting supervised by technicians from FAO and the government, she says she has already used the plot three times, growing cassava, beans, maize and, increasingly, citrus for income.

“I bought what was missing and, at the same time, paid for my studies,” says Elva, who arranges her days between caring for her daughter, tending the plot and studying, even at night when needed.

For Teodora, sales of watermelons, maize and cassava pay for fuel to drive her grandchildren to school, buy uniforms and, when possible, afford meat.

Agriculture has become a source of stability for Teodora and Elva, while environmental conservation supports their agriculture. They have moved from subsistence to self-resilience, improving opportunities to sell their products and increasing household income.

Season after season

Since the start of implementation, the landscape is getting greener. Windbreaking trees and bushes are growing where there was degraded land; mixed rows of crops are replacing monocultures; useful shade is increasingly protecting gardens and hives.

“Here we breathe cleaner, healthier air,” says Teodora.

Young lines of orange trees intermingle with strips of maize. Carpets of leaves are building new soil. Daily reforestation means patience, and care, setbacks and new beginnings.

It’s not a finish line, but a direction, as trees grow at the pace of their roots. It is a quiet but measurable shift: less bare soil, more roots holding the ground, more carbon captured in trunks.

Rooted in inclusion

Over half of PROEZA’s participants are Indigenous Peoples, but the choice of whether—and how—to participate in PROEZA is theirs. Before anything is finalized, FAO ensures that Indigenous Peoples’ families are fully informed about the project and consulted, through the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) which is enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Objectives, timelines, intervention areas, commitments and benefits are discussed in local languages and drawings, with concrete examples that make the project tangible and understandable.

PROEZA also has a strong focus on women — 80 percent of participants are female. As part of this, the Indigenous Women Leaders Network was created, bringing together participants from the eight departments where the project is implemented. Since 2022, the network has met twice a year, offering Indigenous Women a space to share experiences, strengthen skills and turn needs into collective proposals.

For Teodora, joining this network was transformative. She recalls how, at the first meetings, she learned that women are often the first to identify what is missing in their communities — whether food, medicine or safe water. Motivated by this exchange, she initiated the process to address one of the biggest needs in the Indigenous Peoples’ community of Y’aka Poty: access to safe drinking water. Until then, families relied on a stream contaminated by runoff from soy plantations and located two kilometres away, which meant long, risky walks for children.

Encouraged by the Network and supported by her community, Teodora made repeated trips to Asunción to negotiate with public institutions. Her persistence paid off: in 2023, the Paraguayan Indigenous Affairs Institute, an institution that is part of the project's governance, provided a 10 000-litre water tank to the community. The impact was immediate: fewer hours lost fetching water, greater safety for children and more time for women and men to dedicate to cultivation and community life.

Inspired by results

In total, PROEZA is aiming to reach approximately 8 300 families across eight departments in Paraguay’s eastern region.

Regular field accompaniment, including technical visits, on-plot trials, progress checks, turns guidance into competence and skills for the participating families, allowing communities to take ownership of the project.

When social protection is connected with land stewardship and agroforestry, benefits add up: less deforestation, greater climate resilience and more stable incomes. Through PROEZA’s activities, an estimated 2.2 million tons of CO₂ are expected to be captured over the course, contributing to climate change mitigation.

The combined effect is food security and environmental and forest protection rooted in the cultural values of Indigenous Peoples, and economic inclusion that begins in the community and reaches the market.

Home-consumption crops free up resources for other expenses; citrus, honey and surpluses generate income. For many women, that means investing in schooling, tools and transport.

This is social protection in action, a key ingredient in policies and programmes that enables families to shift their horizon, from survival to planning and investing for their future. It helps small-scale farmers to invest in small agribusinesses or environmental protection that generate benefits in the long term.

For Elva and Teodora, all this translates into time freed up and new options: studying without interrupting the harvest season; going to a medical appointment without missing the planting; postponing an expense out of choice, not necessity.

As FAO Representative in Paraguay Iván Felipe León Ayala observes, “PROEZA has proven to be an effective tool for overcoming poverty. […] PROEZA must grow and expand its reach, not just in Paraguay. It's a model worthy of replication in Latin America, as it integrates social protection, environmental protection, climate action and specialized technical assistance.”

Inter-institutional coordination, often challenging, is one of PROEZA’s major innovations. It brings together nine governmental bodies, strengthening collaboration and bridging the gaps between them.

“FAO’s technical support has been key in helping us communicate between institutions, each contributing its own expertise and competencies,” notes Liz Coronel, Economic Development Manager at Paraguay’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. “This makes it easier to operate in the field in a simpler and more appropriate way, so that the local populations can better understand and make the process their own.”

Growing generations

For Teodora and Elva, the forest is not just a group of trees, nor is agroforestry merely an economic strategy, it is a home. It is a living inheritance that safeguards identity, dignity and hope.

Teodora looks to her grandchildren and imagines a future in which they will harvest from the very plants she tends today with effort: “In a few years it will be more advantageous.”

Elva credits her citrus grove with allowing her to follow her dream of becoming a nurse: “When my oranges are ready, I’ll be able to sell them.”

In the end, the true measure of change is the legacy these women are building for future generations.

Here in Canindeyú, the forest is a common good that weaves together culture, health, food and dignity. PROEZA shows that combating poverty through social protection and fighting climate change can work together, serving as a model that can be replicated elsewhere.

The women’s dreams hold fast. “That the situation of Indigenous Peoples improves,” says Teodora. “To become a nurse and serve the community,” says Elva. With the daily work of care, a forest grows back, and the community with it.