Text by Nick Cooke. Photos by Thomas Stargardter and Oscar Navarrete, originally published in Nica News 14 (June 1998)

Not a pretty picture

	A woman nursing child ride through the streets of Mulukú, Matagalpa on the North cental region of Nicaragua, out of control brush fires raged in the months of April and May. Photo: Oscar Navarrete.

A Burning Issue

One result of the 10-year civil war in the 1980s is that Nicaragua was left with much of its forest resource in remote areas intact. At that time, other countries in the region, such as Costa Rica, were busy converting their precious hardwood forests into wood products or simply razing them to make room for cattle pastures.

The 1990s brought relative stability and the opportunity to make use of this valuable resource. Logging concessions were granted and measures were decreed by government authorities to regulate exploitation of Nicaragua's forests. Enforcement capacity, however, is next to nil and violations of the regulations are the rule rather than the exception.

At the same time, the advance of the agricultural frontier into the hinterlands continues with literally thousands of forested areas being slashed and burned, clearing them to make room for cattle ranching. This, combined with changes to the pattern of the prevailing winds provoked by El Niņo, resulted in a severe accumulation of smoke over all of Nicaragua during the month of May. The International Airport in Managua was closed a number of times due to limited visibility and the population suffered a variety of afflictions caused by the smoke, bringing the issue of deforestation home, straight to the lungs.

There are multiple plans for reforestation along the slopes of watersheds in recognition of the need to manage these in a better fashion to ensure a supply of drinking water into the future. There are others to establish tree plantations for firewood or lumber. Few have been brought to fruition. One problem is that users of firewood are generally poor and do not have the monetary resources on hand to purchase it, thereby reducing effective demand, making such projects untenable from the point of view of market economics. And so the poor hike up to the reforested slopes to chop down the trees planted there for watershed management.

Other plans that aim at saving the country's forests include an inventory to determine the net balance between emissions into the atmosphere and the sequestering of carbon by the trees in Nicaragua. Financed by the United Nations Development Program, this is to lead towards the creation of a conservation fund by issuing what will be known as green bonds.

The idea is that money from the purchase of such bonds would be used to manage forest reserves in different parts of the country, while purchasers would be repaid with the oxygen produced and a clear conscience.

It's a novel idea, many of the details of which are still to be worked out. An obvious potential problem is that the protection of selected areas does not in any way guarantee that destructive practices will not continue in surrounding areas.

However, the May smoke screen over Nicaragua was a harbinger of what our atmosphere will be like if appropriate measures are not taken and enforced. On the other hand, if you're interested in selling bottled air at the stoplights, it could be that golden opportunity for investment you've been looking for.

Water: wasting of a valuable resource

	A young lad looks before he leaps the beach in a broken sewage main on the shores of Lake Managua. Photo: Tom Stargardter.

For years throughout Nicaragua, there have been problems with drought, wreaking havoc with farm planning systems. Many point to the El Niņo phenomenon as the culprit. Nonetheless, human economic activity shares a large part of the blame for the changes that have occurred in the country in recent years.

The clearing of slopes along drainage basins for lumber and firewood, or to open up new fields for farming has contributed to the drying up of river courses and drops in the level of the water table, making it necessary to dig wells deeper.

Some farmers with resources to do so have implemented irrigation systems for their crops: the remainder resorting to prayer in hopes of timely rainfall. Yet there is no control or logical management of the underground water resource and conflicts over water rights are imminent in some areas where the development of irrigation is increasing.

While problems of supply become critical, much of remaining resource is used as a dumping ground for wastes produced by industry and by people themselves. Most sewage in Nicaragua is untreated, being discharged directly into the nearest body of water. In the case of the capital, that is Lake Managua into which raw sewage and untreated industrial waste has been dumped since the mid-1920s, making the celebrated crystal lake of the song "Barrio de Pescadores" by Erwin Krüger Sr. a giant cesspool, unfit for human activity.

Of the other major towns and cities in Nicaragua, less than 20 have primary sewage facilities, generally a sewage lagoon allowing for the settling and decomposition of some of the organic waste before final discharge.

One of these is the port of San Juan del Sur. Five years ago, the city began directing its sewage to a lagoon on the plain fronting the nearby bay of Nacascolo. Many unsuspecting passers-by wonder whether it is a shrimp farm.

The system has been plagued with problems, with the pipeline crossing over the estuary on the north shore of San Juan Bay having broken countless times during storms. The Canadian government has put forward funds for studies of how to resolve this problem and arrangements are being made to reinforce the pipeline with a structure, a pedestrian walkway or possibly a bridge.

This will resolve the problem in part, but the wastewater from the sewage lagoon will still be pumped over the rise to the north and discharged into the still-clear waters of Nacascolo Bay. Today, the mouth of the discharge pipe is can be seen oozing its contents onto the beach at low tide, and that beach is one of zone's the major sources of baby clams. For the authorities of San Juan and the water institute INAA, perhaps out of sight is out of mind when it comes to sewage. But as the tourism boom and development continue with its concomitant increase in wastewater, unless something is done, the problem will come back to haunt them.

An opportunity is presented with the Nacascolo sewage lagoon. Much of the land surrounding it is within a now-inactive naval base, the land only being used to graze a few dozen scrawny cows owned by a navy colonel. The water exiting from the lagoon after this primary treatment could be redirected to irrigate crops such as papaya, coconut, or citrus fruits, fodder for cattle, or even trees for firewood or lumber.

Other countries in Europe like Holland and Denmark have begun this practice, converting the wastewater into a productive resource. Human-produced sewage is extremely rich in nutrients and crops grow rapidly.

The Nicaraguan Army, together with the National Agrarian University, for example, could establish an experimental farm, one that almost certainly would be producer of revenue and some jobs for the local campesinos. It would be an example that could be repeated in other cities like Granada and Rivas with such lagoons, thereby alleviating some of the pollution currently entering Lake Nicaragua from those cities.

Problems of water supply will continue as demand increases and the uncertainties of climatic change produce even more irregularity in rainfall. But the opportunity is there to begin taking steps to reduce our impact on the bodies of water on our doorstep.