The following is an interview with Wellkind’s Executive Director Shad Qudsi. The questions are asked by Michael Collins of Teravana.
How Long have you and Wellkind been in Guatemala? And any other background?
Wellkind Guatemala was founded by Teravana and is a daughter organization of Teravana. We just turned five years old, after starting in 2019, operating around the village of Tzununá on Lake Atitlán. Teravana and Wellkind are passionate about indigenous cultures and felt called to support environmental and social projects in Guatemala, which has the highest percentage of indigenous population in any Central American country. Wellkind employs a grassroots team of six Indigenous local leaders of communities, working for the long-term accessibility of natural resources and environmental resiliency, leading the change in their communities to value these resources and do more for the environment.Â
How did Wellkind first get the idea of reforesting around the Western Highlands of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala?
Our team has had expertise in environment and ecology since the beginning when we were just a team of three people. All three of us were passionate about agriculture, trees, indigenous knowledge of natural ecosystems, water, long-term access to natural resources, and considerations around climate change. So it was sort of an obvious thing for us to think where our passion was. The other piece of it is the community needs and pollution at the lake. There are growing challenges with water availability so we focused on the combination of our team’s passion and the needs of the community.
Teravana’s climate in Northern California is different than Lake Atitlán, but how would you describe this idea of food forest systems and reforesting for more ecological benefits going hand in hand?
The more of a connection people have with the landscape, the better. That’s obviously super important for us—to give a lot of ecosystemic services: water, clean air, healthy soil, habitat, a lot of things like that. But the idea of a managed forest to also meet more direct human needs is a super, super powerful idea, and really important. So this idea of a food forest is a simple example of that, but anywhere where you can work with the landscape to integrate plants that are useful to humans as well, that feed us or provide other Immediate meeting needs, for sure, is a useful thing, and part of Wellkind’s strategy. We plant forestry trees, and a lot of fruit trees, and then we do useful shrubs and understory plants as well, and that’s something we’re hopefully growing more into in the future. So, yeah, it definitely shouldn’t be a monoculture forest, and it doesn’t have to just be a forest that you go to to look at or observe, but it should be one that you can interact with.
What are the most noticeable benefits of planting trees you have seen so far? Among the people and in nature?
Let’s put it this way, the increased awareness, especially in the younger people, is a real obvious impact from involving children and youth in our tree planting endeavors, and that really helps raise awareness of the importance of trees and the importance of water. Also, I’d say, another is the increased moisture. Wherever we reforest, you see increased water, you see cleaner air quality.
Can you explain the benefits of planting native trees and how forests benefit from native trees?
Native trees fit most directly into the greater ecosystem. So they’re going to have what they need to thrive there, assuming the ecosystem hasn’t been too modified, so they probably have the correct environmental factors to contribute to their growing well. Whereas if you plant a non-native, the demands of these non-natives can be a challenge, right? So, natives are less resource-intensive. Let’s put it that way. They also, on the other side, contribute to the needs of the ecosystem. So they’re going to provide food, habitat, pollination, pollination attractants, things like that. That’s how I would look at this: on one side, you know that they’re not going to need a lot of inputs to establish, so part of your goal is to get tree cover, to enhance water, and things like that. Then planting natives is going to make sure that you don’t have to fertilize and irrigate. And then, similarly, if you want other ecosystem elements to thrive, having the native plants there encourages these things because their needs will be met.
What excites you about the long-term effects of reforestation around Lake Atitlan?Â
The long-term vision is secured long-term access to natural resources. No matter how you slice it, a community can’t thrive if you don’t have good water, right? If you don’t have water and the place becomes a desert or polluted, people are going to leave. They’re going to have to go somewhere else, and likely end up in some city, somewhere, right? If you don’t have healthy soil, then you can’t grow healthy food. So if you have all kinds of pollutants in the soil or just lots of erosion, then you won’t be able to grow food, and similarly, you’ll be forced to migrate. So I think first and foremost, trees ensure that there will be water in the future, and a lot of NGOs work in water. A lot of NGOs work in water distribution or water filtration, but fewer of them work on ensuring that the water is there in the future. So if some NGO comes in and builds a system that’s supposed to last 50 years to distribute water to the community, and then the water dries up in 20 years. Well, then that system is useless anyway, right? So we want to make sure that the long-term resource access is there.Â
And then beyond that, I just think you know whether it’s climate change, climate global warming, global weirding, whatever you want to call it, and it doesn’t matter what the cause is, per se, the climate’s always changing, the climate’s in flux, trees and reforestation build resiliency into the landscape. So they protect against climate disaster. They allow moderation of temperatures. So whatever extremes, the trees will moderate that, ensuring there’s more resilience in the face of changing climate.