U.S. Forgives Multimillion-Dollar Debt to Aid Guatemala Forests

In a debt for nature swap, the United States has agreed to forgive about 20 percent of the 108 million dollars owed by Guatemala. In exchange, the Central American country will invest 24.4 million dollars to protect species-rich subtropical and tropical ecosystems.

The recently announced agreement is the largest of ten such deals the U.S. government has undertaken in recent years under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act of 1998.

Under the deal, the Guatemalan government is to fund conservation efforts with money it would have otherwise used to begin to pay back the tens of millions of dollars it has borrowed from the U.S.

Loggers, tour companies, farmers, developers, and hunters have battered Guatemala's wildlands, conservationists say. They hope the swap will help protect coastal mangrove swamps, high-altitude cloud forests, and rain forests in Guatemala, a country about the size of Tennessee.