Five great forests of Mesoamerica

The Transformational Potential: to foster coordination and visibility to provide a coherent framework that highlights EU and its Member States’ global contribution to the protection of the region’s last remaining large forests.

The Team Europe Proposal:

1. Data for transparency and decision-making, including:

• build multi-actor multi-country partnerships to provide periodic, standardised, and strategic sectoral data on the state of the large forests.
• capitalise on the regional Copernicus data centre in Panama, and the EU Space Programme (Copernicus, Galileo and EGNOS services), academia and investigation networks.

2. Forest governance and biodiversity, including favour transboundary governance processes and promote exchange of experiences and cross-learning among local, national, and regional stakeholders.

3. Deforestation-free and low carbon production and sustainable trade, support to traceability systems for cattle-ranching, deforestation-free value chains and territories and bi-regional dialogue around sustainable production and development of new market opportunities.

4.Environmental rights and defenders, support the implementation of the Escazú Agreement pillars related to Access to Environmental Information and Environmental Defenders, to ensure a safe and supportive environment.

Geographical coverage: the Five Great Forests of Mesoamerica (covering south-east of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama) and other relevant forest areas such as Trifinio.