Law to Promote the Establishment, Recovery, Restoration, Management,
Production, and Protection of Forests in Guatemala
- PROBOSQUE - (Decree 2-2015)
Features
The purpose of this Law is to increase the forest cover of the country with the creation and application of the Incentives Program for the Establishment, Recovery, Restoration, Management, Production and Protection of Forests, through which the incentives contemplated in this Law will be granted. This program, for the purposes of this Law, is called PROBOSQUE.
The State, for a period of 30 years from the effective date of this Law, shall grant incentives to the persons engaged in the execution of the projects referred to in the modalities expressed in Article 10 of this Law.
The amount per hectare to be incentivized in each of the project modalities contemplated by this Law shall be determined by the Board of Directors of the National Forest Institute -INAB-. The Board of Directors of INAB may update the amounts annually, which shall be published in the Official Gazette during the month of September.
Modalities
The types of projects to be encouraged by this Law shall be the following:
a. Establishment and maintenance of forest plantations for industrial purposes. It includes the management of voluntary forest plantations registered as seed sources;
b. Establishment and maintenance of forest plantations for energy purposes;
c. Establishment and maintenance of agroforestry systems;
d. Management of natural forests for production purposes. Includes natural forests for forest seed production purposes;
e. Management of natural forests for protection and provision of environmental services. This modality includes projects for the protection of forests for water sources, conservation of biological diversity, ecotourism, germplasm conservation, protection of sacred sites and others that are qualified as protection forests by the Board of Directors of the National Forest Institute -INAB-; and,
f. Restoration of degraded forest lands.
INCENTIVES FOR OTHER SECTORS
The holder of each Project will receive incentives, only once, for each area unit, in the following cases:
a. Plantation establishment and maintenance projects: they will receive incentives for a defined period of time depending on the purpose of the project: industrial or energy, comprising one (1) year of establishment and up to five (5) years of maintenance;
b. Projects for the establishment and maintenance of agroforestry systems will receive incentives for one (1) year of establishment and up to five (5) years of maintenance;
c. Projects for the management of natural forests for production purposes, for up to ten (10) years;
d. Natural forest management projects for protection purposes, for up to ten (10) years; e. Projects for the restoration of degraded forest vocation lands; will receive incentives defined according to the specific purpose of the project, for up to ten (10) years.