Ten Rural Communities in Quintana Roo Form Community Conservation Territories

Cancún, Quintana Roo — Ten rural communities in Quintana Roo have joined a federal Sembrando Vida program that has created an ecological corridor between the Calakmul nature reserve in Campeche and the Sian Ka’an reserve in Quintana Roo, aimed at preserving the territory.

Speaking at the government’s Wednesday press conference, Agriculture and Rural Development Secretary Columba López presented the results of the sustainable communities program, which operates in highly marginalized regions across Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz, Durango and the Yucatan Peninsula.

“Since last May we began working very hard across Semarnat, Bienestar and now Sader to make this connection between Calakmul and Sian Ka’an,” López said. “We are already recovering 80 percent of the vegetation cover, and that means a productive system, a conservation system and ecological connectivity.”

The ten Quintana Roo communities cover 141,815 hectares of the vast Maya jungle. Residents themselves decided to conserve their land and work in coordination with the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (Conanp).

Between 2019 and 2023, the Sembrando Vida agreements have mitigated 8.91 million tons of CO2 as part of the program’s climate action, an amount equivalent to capturing the annual emissions of 1.9 million automobiles.