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Alba Verónica Vicenta Yacabalquiej Salanic es una defensora de la juventud, la igualdad de género y la gobernanza comunitaria de Xecam, un pueblo del altiplano occidental de Guatemala.

Alba Verónica Vicenta Yacabalquiej Salanic is a youth, gender equality, and community governance advocate from Xecam, a village in Guatemala’s western highlands. In an interview, she reflected on how her Mayan K'iche' identity has informed her approach to environmental issues and shared lessons from her work as an Indigenous Peoples Fellow with the UNDP-managed GEF Small Grants Programme. What does being an Indigenous Peoples Fellow entail?

Under the seventh GEF replenishment, GEF-7, Impact Programs (IPs) on Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR); Sustainable Forest Management (SFM); and Sustainable Cities are being developed to address the drivers of environmental degradation, and to support transformational change in these key systems.

This year’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples offers a moment to reflect on how difficult the COVID-19 pandemic has been for indigenous peoples around the world and how much promise there is from ongoing initiatives to support and engage these communities who have much to teach the world about resilience, traditional medicine, and protection of both land and sea.

Elodia Castillo Vásquez is the Mayor of the Mayan town of Ch'orti, in Guatemala, where the community is working with support from the GEF Small Grants Programme to safeguard water sources, plant trees, improve soil quality, and help natural ecosystems regenerate. In an interview, she reflected on the links between social justice and environmental stewardship, and shared how the sustainable management of natural resources is helping bolster livelihoods in her community.

At the Our Ocean conference in Oslo, the head of the Global Environment Facility announced a $6.8 million contribution from the GEF Trust Fund to help seven countries across Central America jointly assess opportunities and challenges from the blue economy along their Pacific coasts.