Academy for Educational Development

ENVIRONMENT: Helping Farmers and the Watershed in Panama

An AED GreenCom advisor and a local farmer discuss how better methods for livestock farming can help farmers and the environment.

Soil erosion and deforestation from livestock production have long been major environmental concerns throughout the Panama Canal Watershed. For nearly eight years, AED’s GreenCOM project worked with local communities around the watershed to strike a balance between their needs, and the needs of the environment.

“GreenCOM helped local stakeholders move away from destructive cattle ranching and other detrimental land-use practices to more environmentally benign uses,” said Richard P. Bossi, vice president and director of the AED Center for Environmental Strategies.

Among 25 pilot farms, milk production increased 50%; time needed for animals to attain market weight was cut by two months (saving $120 per animal); and 15% of pastures were reforested.

Nationally, the project helped develop a sustainable livestock production policy and an innovative financial mechanism to help ranchers adopt environmentally sound practices.

  “We are seeing changes: improved production, improved cattle, better distribution, a decrease in the cost of maintenance, and true diversification of our farming activities,” said   Daniel Valdéz O., Jr., a rancher from Cerro Cama, Panama. “We can assure economic stability. We don’t have to worry about what we will eat tomorrow.”

‘NATURAL TREASURE’

Over the life of the project, GreenCOM also used a variety of research-based practices to increase national pride in the watershed.

The slogan “The Panama Canal Watershed is a natural treasure. Take care of it!,” was a core part of mass media campaign that included radio and television announcements, billboards, and posters.

In addition to working nationally to build awareness about the watershed, the GreenCOM team worked with local school-based environmental clubs. One such club was called Guardianes de la Cuenca del Canal, or Guardians of the Panama Canal Watershed.

The club’s leaders and teachers were trained by GreenCOM to lead environmental education activities. More than 700 middle school youth from 26 schools participated in “missions” to learn more about the watershed’s resources. The students received certificates at the end verifying that they accomplished their tasks.

One of the missions the Guardians conducted was to evaluate GreenCOM’s mass media campaign. The youth interviewed more than 800 watershed residents to measure how much they knew about campaign and how well they remembered the messages. The vast majority of the respondents—90 percent—said they had seen or heard the campaign messages. And 49 percent could repeat the campaign slogan perfectly. The results of the Guardians’ evaluation were confirmed by a similar survey conducted by a private research firm.