Meet the Social Enterprise Transforming One Guatemalan Community
Around 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods, yet 45 million acres of forest are destroyed every year — the equivalent of 50 soccer fields per minute.
The rural inhabitants of these at-risk forests often live on less than $1.25 a day and have no claims or rights to the ancestral lands they call home. Economic desperation drives many of these communities to clear forests for subsistence agriculture, cut down trees for firewood, and sell illegally-harvested timber at prices far below market value, warn NGOs such as the Rainforest Alliance.