Hello, I am Onner de León, I live in the town of Poptún, in the department of Petén.
If we destroy our forests, we are destroying the quality of life of our children.
Deforestation in my department happens due to the high growth of the population; the extreme
poverty; the lack of productive projects; the low literacy of people; the implementation of monoculture;
the poor management of livestock production; the introduction of exotic plants such as the African palm
tree, the Gmelina Arborea, the teak; and the misusage of fossil fuels.
Other factors that affect our quality of life are the lack of family planning; the lack of good habits in the
implementation of productive projects, which leads to the destruction of our forests because we don’t
have another way of getting income; the use of monoculture which generates land degradation;
chemical products and garbage that contaminate our rivers; the infestation of our native plants has
changed the climate in Petén favoring deforestation.
In order to make a change and improve our quality of life, we must be more aware and take advantage
of the land to create a system of stabled livestock, a system of crop biodiversity and application of
organic products made of materials already existing in our environment to avoid soil degradation, which
can generate higher income.
We must preserve our existing forests and reforest the areas that have been affected by protecting our
rivers, having a biodiversity of flora and fauna, and protecting the endangered species.
"This translation has been done thanks to Daniel Gil, a translation intern from VUB university"