World
How Mexico’s Vast Tree-Planting Program Ended Up Encouraging Deforestation
Sowing Life, AMLO’s flagship environmental project, may have resulted in the loss of forest cover nearly the size of New York City
A motorcyclist observes an intentional forest fire in the jungle along a road in Oxkutzcab region, Mexico, on Feb. 18. Flaws in President Lopez Obrador’s flagship environmental project risk undoing its good intentions.
Photographer: Jeoffrey Guillemard for Bloomberg GreenIn the hills of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, the jungle abruptly stops and dozens of saplings grow scattered around charred tree stumps.
The seedlings are a sign of the government’s vast reforestation program known as Sembrando Vida, or Sowing Life. But so too is the burned out clearing; in this part of Mexico, the project is linked to widespread destruction as well as regeneration.