South Korea wraps up three-year forest restoration training program for Guatemala

Korea Rural Community Corporation has wrapped up a three-year training program that shared South Korea's forest restoration experience and policies with civil servants from Guatemala's national forestry authority.

The corporation announced Friday that it had concluded the "Guatemala Climate Change Response Capacity Building" program — which began in 2024 — with a third training session for 15 civil servants from Guatemala's National Forest Institute (INAB), held July 12 through July 25.

The program was carried out as part of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) global training initiative. Over three years, the corporation invited 48 senior and working-level INAB civil servants to South Korea for education aimed at strengthening their capacity to plan and implement forest policy.

Forests cover 33 percent of Guatemala's territory, but deforestation has continued due to agricultural land expansion and wildfires. According to Global Forest Watch, approximately 1.6 million hectares of forest were lost to agricultural clearing and about 140,000 hectares to wildfires between 2001 and 2025.

The corporation designed the program so that South Korea's forest restoration experience could feed directly into Guatemalan policy and on-the-ground projects. During the first and second sessions, participants visited institutions including the National Institute of Forest Science and the Highland Agriculture Research Institute to study forest restoration policy and technology, and toured sites such as the Daegwallyeong sheep farm and the Yeongyang mountain farm to examine agroforestry models that integrate agriculture and forestry.

The third session focused on drafting project concept papers (PCPs) so that Guatemalan civil servants could design local policies and projects themselves. Participants received training on climate-adaptive forest policy, food security through agroforestry, biodiversity conservation and nursery system management. They also visited the wildfire recovery site in Goseong, Gangwon Province, the Yongmun nursery station and the Daegwallyeong special afforestation site to learn ecological restoration and tree-planting techniques.

At the Anbandeogi highland vegetable complex and Samyang Ranch, participants studied integrated agro-forestry models linking agriculture and forestry. The project proposals they developed are expected to serve as foundational material for establishing new forest policies in Guatemala and identifying future official development assistance (ODA) projects.

Lee Young-hun, head of the corporation's Human Resources Development Institute, said it was meaningful to share South Korea's experience and technology with Guatemala through bilateral forest cooperation. "We will continue to provide tailored training that reflects the needs of partner countries, so that local civil servants can design and advance their own policies and projects," he said.