This collaborative activity will promote the conservation of biological diversity, sustainable forest management, and community agroforestry in the Uwalcox River micro-watershed, to promote adaptation to climate change and improve living standards for indigenous communities in Guatemala, implementing integrated management practices in the micro-watershed area.

The collaborative activity will implement a participatory approach to plan sustainable forest management and conservation of biological diversity in tropical forest ecosystems (pine-oak and cloud forests) in the Uwalcox River micro-watershed, as a strategy for climate variability and change adaptation and mitigation.

Furthermore, it will promote the development of socio-ecological production landscapes through the restoration of forest and agroforestry cover in forestlands now denuded of forests and/or under agricultural use, as a strategy to promote ecologic connectivity between forest stands and to strengthen food self-sufficiency among indigenous communities in Uwalcox micro-watershed area.

The collaborative activity will increase the valuation of conservation of biological diversity and tropical forest ecosystem services, implement actions together with local indigenous communities, municipal authorities, civil society and public institutions to promote conservation, sustainable forest management and ecological connectivity of forest stands in the Western volcanic range of Guatemala with a view to enhancing living standards and livelihoods of indigenous communities in Guatemala’s Altiplano.

Activities will be implemented in predominantly indigenous lands of the K’iche ethnic group, in the Western rural area of Guatemala; therefore it will take into consideration their local culture, common law rights and vision of the world at all times.

This collaborative activity is consistent with objectives 1, 2 and 3 of the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative, IPSI, Plan of Action which point to the need for increased knowledge and understanding of socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SELPS) by making scientific information and traditional knowledge widely available, addressing the direct and underlying causes responsible for the decline or loss of biological and cultural diversity as well as ecological and socio-economic services from SELPS so as to restore and/or recover them and increasing the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services for human well-being.