SHADE COFFEE & TREE COVER LOSS: LESSONS FROM EL SALVADOR

Abstract

Unlike most human dominated landscapes, this mixed agro-forestry system provides many of the same ecological services associated with natural forests, including harboring biodiversity, preventing soil erosion, sequestering carbon, and facilitating aquifer recharge-albeit at a lower level than in natural forests. Less than 10 percent of the country's natural forests survive, and a significant share of the remaining tree cover is associated with shade coffee.5 Data from satellite images, and interviews with Salvadoran stakeholders provide insight into the magnitude, characteristics, and drivers of tree cover loss in El Salvador's shade coffee areas during the 1990s.6 Coffee in El Salvador The Salvadoran coffee sector suffered a series of shocks during the 1990s, due to falling prices and bad weather.

IN CENTRAL AMERICA, shade coffee has often helped to preserve tree cover, along with the ecological services it provides, in areas that are under pressure from ranchers, farmers, loggers, and developers. Over the past two decades, however, declining international coffee prices, rapid urbanization, and other factors have undermined shade coffee's ability to play this role in some countries.

To moderate temperature, humidity, and sunlight, most Central American coffee growers plant their crop under managed or natural tree cover. Unlike most human dominated landscapes, this mixed agro-forestry system provides many of the same ecological services associated with natural forests, including harboring biodiversity, preventing soil erosion, sequestering carbon, and facilitating aquifer recharge-albeit at a lower level than in natural forests. Shade coffee's biodiversity benefits have received particular attention. The crop grows in mountain ranges at altitudes where tropical and temperate climates overlap, areas that are extremely rich in biodiversity.1

Unfortunately, Central American shade coffee farmers are facing unprecedented market pressures. In 2001, after a decade of decline interrupted by short-term spikes, inflation-adjusted world coffee prices dropped to their lowest levels in fifty years. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as the coffee crisis, and its causes include the collapse of the international coffee cartel in the late 1980s, increased world supply (mainly due to exports from Vietnam and Brazil), and an increase in the bargaining power of coffee roasters. Because these factors are structural rather than cyclical, prices are unlikely to rebound to pre-1990 levels, at least not in the near term.2 As coffee prices declined, tree cover in some Central American shade coffee areas was cleared to make way for more remunerative land uses such as urban development and conventional farming. Some of the resulting damages, including species loss and soil erosion, may be irreversible or nearly so. This problem is beginning to attract the attention of policymakers,3 but it remains poorly understood. The only previous research on the topic was a study of tree cover loss in a 250,000-hectare shade coffee growing area in southern Mexico during the late 1990s. That study found that 3 percent of the area was cleared in the late 1990s, primarily by small-scale coffee growers planting subsistence crops to mitigate the impact of declining coffee prices.4

Although tree cover loss may be a problem in shade coffee areas in a number of Central American countries, it is particularly worrisome in El Salvador, the most densely populated country in the Americas and the most severely deforested. Less than 10 percent of the country's natural forests survive, and a significant share of the remaining tree cover is associated with shade coffee.5 Data from satellite images, and interviews with Salvadoran stakeholders provide insight into the magnitude, characteristics, and drivers of tree cover loss in El Salvador's shade coffee areas during the 1990s.6

Coffee in El Salvador

The Salvadoran coffee sector suffered a series of shocks during the 1990s, due to falling prices and bad weather. After a decade of decline in the 1980s, coffee prices rebounded for three harvest years in the mid-to-late 1990s (1994-1995 through 1997-1998) but continued an overall downward slide in the 1998-1999 harvest season. Severe drought in 1997 associated with an El Niño event and Hurricane Mitch in 1998 also disrupted coffee production. The combined effects of these events were striking. Production, yields, wages, and permanent employment fell by 23-24 percent between 1991-1992 and 2000-2001, while exports and export revenue fell by approximately 20 percent. The impact of lower prices between 1991-1992 and 2003-2004 was even more dramatic. Production fell by 38 percent and yields by 36 percent. Wages and permanent employment fell by 64 percent, and exports and export revenue fell by 37 percent.7

Coffee in El Salvador grows in three main areas: the western region, located in the Apaneca-Ilamatapec mountain range; the central region, located in the El Bal-samo and Chichontepc volcano mountain ranges; and the eastern region, located in the Tecapa Chinameca and Cachuatiqe mountain ranges (see Figure 1 on this page). In the 2003-2004 harvest season, coffee was planted on a total of 161,000 hectares comprising about 9 percent of El Salvador's landmass. The western portion of the country contained just more than half of this acreage, the center portion about a third, and the east region, about a fifth.8 For more information on coffee in the Salvadoran economy, see the box on page 27.

Ninety-five percent of El Salvador's coffee is shade grown.9 The type and density of shade cover that farmers use depends partly on the altitude and local microclimate. Coffee farms in lowland areas typically have 40 percent shade cover, while those in highland areas typically have 20 percent shade cover.10

In general, high quality coffee grows at higher altitudes. The Salvadoran Coffee Council assigns coffee one of three quality standards depending on the altitude at which it is grown: "central standard" for coffee grown at 600-800 meters above sea level (MSL); "high grown" for coffee grown at 800-1,200 MSL; and "strictly high grown" for coffee grown above 1,200 MSL. Almost three-quarters of Salvadoran coffee exports are either high grown or strictly high grown. Although certified coffees, including "organic," "Rainforest Alliance certified," and "fair trade," have appeared in the past several years, they make up less than 1 percent of overall exports.11 Given the drivers and characteristics of tree cover loss in El Salvador's shade coffee areas, unless combined with other policies, expanded certification alone is unlikely to stem this problem.

Tree Cover Loss During the 1990s

Satellite data on tree cover in El Salvador indicates that shade coffee's effectiveness as a bulwark against tree clearing eroded significantly during the 1990s. Table 1 below presents satellite data on tree cover in El Salvador for 1990 and 2000. A comparison of 1990 tree cover inside the coffee growing areas and outside these areas suggests that until 1990, shade coffee protected against tree cover loss. Although 51 percent of the noncoffee area had no tree cover, only 7 percent of the coffee regions had none.

Table 2 on page 26 presents satellite data on tree cover loss between 1990 and 2000, and Figure 2 on the same page represents it graphically. Fully 13 percent of land area in the three coffee regions was cleared during the 1990s. The percentage of land cleared was highest in the western region (17 percent) and lowest in the eastern region (7 percent).

Surprisingly, the conventional wisdom about where this clearing occurred was incorrect. Most stakeholders interviewed for this study believed that the lion's share of clearing in El Salvador's coffee areas during the 1990s occurred below 800 MSL, where coffee quality, and therefore the prices paid to growers, were relatively low. Table 3 on this page demonstrates that this is not true. For all three coffee regions, 46 percent of clearing occurred between 800 and 1,200 MSL, where coffee is classified as "high grown," and another 15 percent occurred above 1,200 MSL, where coffee is classified as "strictly high grown."

No hard data are available on the specific land uses that replaced shade coffee between 1990 and 2000. The satellite data are of little use in this regard because they lump all land uses that entail clearing into a single "nonforest" category. Interviews with regional managers of the Salvadoran Coffee Research Institute (Fundación Sal-vadoreña para Investigatciones del Café, or PROCAFE), El Salvador's parastatal coffee research and technical extension organization, shed light on this issue. Based on casual observation, the PROCAFE managers estimated that the majority of clearing between 1990 and 2000 in each of the 3 coffee regions was due to urbanization (see Table 4 on page 28). They reckoned that urbanization accounted for fully 90 percent of clearing in the western region and 68 percent of clearing in the central region. They thought that felling trees for lumber or firewood accounted for 20 percent of clearing in the eastern region and that row crops played a significant, albeit minor, role in clearing in each region.

Drivers of Tree Cover Loss

Although the coffee crisis was undoubtedly a key cause of tree cover loss in El Salvador's shade coffee areas during the 1990s, it was by no means the only driver of this change. Interviews with stakeholders and a review of secondary evidence suggests that a complex web of interrelated factors contributed, including a downward spiral of on-farm investment and yields, debt, poverty, urbanization, migration, and weak regulations regarding land use and land cover.

On-farm Investments and Yields

The coffee crisis led to a downward spiral of on-farm investment and yields in the coffee sector. The spiral began when growers reacted to low prices by cutting back or completely eliminating farm management activities, such as pruning and the application of fertilizers and pesticides, which together account for approximately half of coffee production costs (per hectare).12 Although such cost-cutting measures helped balance cash accounts in the short term, they also had short- and long-term negative impacts on yields. Reduced yields led to even lower profits, and lower profits led to further cutbacks in farm maintenance.13 On average, yields fell by more than 20 percent, from more than 19 quintals per hectare in the 1991-1992 growing season to about 15 quintals per hectare in the 2000- 2001 season.14

Farmer Debt

Coffee growers in El Salvador depend on annual infusions of working capital from large private banks, mainly channeled through cooperatives and coffee mills. On average, growers require approximately $40-$45 of credit per quintal of coffee produced to hire farm labor.15 During the 1990s, the coffee growers borrowed an average of more than $200 million per year, far more than any other agricultural sector.16 After the onset of the coffee crisis, growers' profits were so low that they were unable to repay their loans. Nevertheless, banks continued to extend credit for several years, knowing that farmers needed to produce enough coffee to repay their debts. As a result, debts mounted. Today, the total outstanding debt in the coffee sector is estimated at $200-$400 million, an average of $100-$210 per quintal or $1,200-$2,500 per hectare.

Debt contributed to tree cover loss during the 1990s in a number of ways. Indebted growers sometimes sold their land, in part or whole, to developers, conventional farmers, or ranchers to liquidate debt. In some cases, banks foreclosed on farms that had been used as collateral and also sold the land. In addition, as discussed below, indebted growers sometimes sold trees on their land for cash.17

Rural Poverty

During the 1990s, poverty was pervasive in rural areas of El Salvador, including coffee-growing areas. At the beginning of the 1990s, two-thirds of all rural households in El Salvador were classified as poor, and a third were classified as extremely poor. Although national poverty rates fell during the 1990s, most of the reductions were in urban, not rural areas.18

Rural poverty contributed to tree cover loss in coffee-growing areas in several ways. First, after the onset of the coffee crisis, poor, small-scale growers unable to meet their basic subsistence needs from coffee alone cleared portions of their farms to grow corn, beans, and other basic food crops. This phenomenon has been a common response to poverty and income variability among all types of rural households in El Salvador, and it is a leading cause of tree cover loss in other Central American shade coffee-growing regions.19 In addition, poor rural households sold trees for lumber and firewood, both of which command a significant per unit price in El Salvador. Finally, in some cases, rural entrepreneurs harvested trees on abandoned or poorly supervised farms without obtaining permission.

Urbanization

With a 2000 population of 6.3 million inhabiting an area of just 21,000 square kilometers, El Salvador has more than 315 persons per square kilometer, making it the most densely populated country on the American continent. By comparison, Guatemala and Honduras have 104 and 58 persons per square kilometer.20 Not surprisingly, given this density, El Salvador is an increasingly urban country. In 2000, 55 percent of El Salvador's population lived in urban areas, up from 39 percent in 1970.21 Land under urban uses grew from 0.8 percent of the national territory in 1965 to 5 percent in 1995.22

In less densely populated countries, urbanization in theory could help stem tree clearing by reducing population pressure in rural areas. In general, this is not what is occurring in El Salvador's shade coffee areas, however. Here, urban land uses are displacing shade coffee. Demand for land for housing has grown steadily over the past two decades, particularly since the signing of peace accords in El Salvador in 1992, and particularly in highland areas, including those used to grow coffee, which have a more hospitable climate than lowland areas. Over the past decade, many different types of farms, including coffee farms, have been divided into small lots and sold to construction companies or directly to homesteaders. This process is known as "lotification." Middle- and upper-class homesteaders are not the only beneficiaries of the lotification process. Rather, small lots averaging 250 square meters, with no preexisting buildings, infrastructure, or services, are sold at modest prices to low-income households.23

Strong demand for housing land has driven up land prices. In many areas, the price of agricultural land has risen well above the net present value of its lifetime productive value, making continued agricultural use unprofitable and creating powerful incentives for coffee growers to sell their farms.24

Migration and Remittances

Civil unrest and chronic poverty in rural areas have spurred massive internal and external migration in El Salvador over the past 20 years. Much of the internal migration has been from the eastern and northern parts of the country to the southwestern parts, including the greater metropolitan area of San Salvador. This phenomenon, along with population growth, has caused a dramatic shift in the geographic distribution of El Salvador's population. Between 1971 and 2000, the share of El Salvador's population living in the southwest rose from 53 percent to 67 percent. By comparison, the share of the country's population living in the southeast fell from 28 percent to 20 percent, and the share of the population living in the north fell from 19 percent to 13 percent.25 To the extent internal migration has exacerbated population pressures in the southwest, it has contributed to clearing of coffee farms in this area for urban and agricultural uses.

Although internal migration during the 1990s was significant, it paled in comparison with external migration. In 2000, for example, three-quarters of rural migration was external and virtually all of it was to North America.26 The Salvadoran ministry of foreign relations estimates that 2.5 million Salvadorans-roughly a fifth of the total population-now live abroad, and that 90 percent of these migrants live in the United States.27

Given this massive external migration, remittances have become a critical feature of El Salvador's economy. In 1999, Salvadoran migrants sent home more than $1.5 billion, an amount that represented 13 percent of El Salvador's gross domestic product, 64 percent of its export earnings, and almost 700 percent of its foreign investment.28 Nationally, between 1992- 1993 and 2000, the percentage of households receiving remittances rose 6 percentage points, from 14 to 20 percent. The increase was larger in rural areas (from 13 to 20 percent) than in urban areas (16 to 19 percent). The average amount of remittances per household also increased, from $76 to $121, the equivalent of the monthly minimum wage.29

External migration and associated remittances are likely to have had beneficial and detrimental effects on tree cover in shade coffee regions during the 1990s. On the one hand, external migration may have dampened urbanization. Also, remittances may have enabled coffee-growing households to continue producing (despite low prices and scarce credit) and avoid clearing trees altogether. On the other hand, however, according to stakeholder interviewees, remittances have fueled the demand for urban land uses and have financed the conversion of coffee farms to alternative land uses. In addition, stakeholders report that migration-external and internal- has created a scarcity of coffee labor in the eastern part of El Salvador, making coffee production much less profitable in the region.30

Land Use and Land Cover Management

Management of land use and land cover in El Salvador were weak during the 1990s. Prior to 1998, the main laws governing land use and land cover were the Forestry Law of 1973 and land use permitting laws. The forestry laws required those wishing to clear forest to obtain permits from the Ministry of Agriculture (Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganaderia, or MAG). In addition, land use planning laws required those wishing to construct buildings to obtain permits from city mayors or the Ministry of Housing and Public Works.31 In practice, these requirements were frequently ignored. Even when they were heeded, the criteria for obtaining permits were rarely enforced and environmental impact assessments were not required. Prior to the passage of a new forestry law in 2002, MAG almost never rejected a request for a permit to clear forest.32

Environmental management in El Salvador took a major step forward in 1998 with the passage of the Environmental Law and the creation of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, or MARN). By law, MARN is required to issue permits for any changes in land use. According to government interviewees, however, MARN does not have the resources to conduct a detailed review of permit applications and approves the vast majority submitted.33

Conclusion

The case study of tree cover loss in El Salvador's shade coffee areas has several policy implications. First, a rapid policy response is needed. During the 1990s, tree cover in shade coffee areas was lost at a rapid rate, and there is ample reason to suspect that this trend has continued apace, given that coffee prices reached a 50-year low in 2001 and have remained well below pre-1990 levels since then. In heavily deforested El Salvador, shade coffee provides important ecological services. To prevent soil erosion, flooding, biodiversity loss, and other types of environmental degradation that would result from further tree cover loss, action must be taken quickly.34

Second, command-and-control land cover and land use restrictions are needed to stem tree cover loss. In the central and western regions, where more than three-quarters of El Salvador's coffee is grown, urbanization and an inflow of financial capital from remittances have pushed land prices well above the net present value of future returns to coffee, thereby creating strong incentives for growers to sell their land to developers. In these areas, market based conservation approaches, such as payments for environmental services and organic, fair trade, bird friendly, and other types of coffee certification, are not likely to be effective-at least not unless combined with other policies-because the financial incentives they provide for continuing to grow coffee are significantly smaller than those offered by the land market. Unfortunately, however, commandand control regulation is not likely to be effective in the near term. To date, by all accounts, land use and land cover regulation in El Salvador has proven toothless. It will undoubtedly take some time to build the political will and institutional capacity to enforce these policies. An interim solution may be to create incentives for land developers to clear and build in a manner that minimizes environmental degradation by, for example, retaining as much tree cover as possible, avoiding ecologically sensitive areas, and retaining corridors between forested areas.

Finally, efforts to improve coffee quality and marketing can help stem further tree cover loss. Because they have a comparative advantage in producing high-quality coffee, many highland growers in El Salvador have responded to the coffee crisis by boosting quality and marketing to obtain higher prices. These efforts to improve coffee quality and marketing are targeting areas where most deforestation is occurring.

From an environmental standpoint, tree cover loss in El Salvador's shade coffee areas is cause for concern, if not alarm. Further research will determine whether it has abated or accelerated over the past seven years and whether similar clearing is occurring in other Central American countries.

Sidebar

EL SALVADOR'S COFFEE ECONOMY

In the 2003-2004 harvest season, El Salvador produced almost 2 million quintals (each quintal is a 100-pound or 46-kilogram sack of green cof-fee). This production represented about 1 percent of the world's total that season and 11 percent of Central America's total. Ninety percent of the crop was exported, generating more than $120 million in revenue. In the 2003-2004 season, the coffee sector employed more than 57,000 people permanently and paid some $14 million in wages.1

1. International Coffee Organization (ICO), 2006 coffee statistics, available at http://www.ico.org; and PROCAFE (Fundación Salvadoreña para Investiga-ciones del Café), Boletín Estadístico de la Caficultura Salvadoreña (San Salvador, El Salvador: PROCAFE, 1998).

Sidebar

El Salvador is the most densely populated and heavily deforested country on the American continent.

Footnote

NOTES

1. R. Rice, "Coffee Production in a Time of Crisis: Social and Environmental Connections," SAIS Review 23 no. 1 (2003): 221-45; and I. Perfecto, R. Rice, R. Greenberg, and M. E. Van der Voort, "Shade Coffee: A Disappearing Refuge for Biodiversity," Bioscience 46 no. 8 (1996): 98-608.

2. P. Varangis, P. Siegel, D. Giovannucci, and B. Lewin, Dealing with the Coffee Crisis in Central Amer-ica: Impacts and Strategies, Policy Research Working Paper 2993 (Washington, DC: World Bank Development Research Group, March 2003).

3. Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and World Bank, "Managing the Competitive Transition of the Coffee Sector in Central America," paper prepared for the Workshop on the Coffee Crisis and its Impact in Central America: Situation and Lines of Action, Antigua, Guatemala, 3-5 April 2002; Varangis, Siegel, Giovannucci, and Lewin, note 2 above; and International Coffee Organization (ICO), "Impact of Low Prices on Sustainability Indicators in the Coffee Economy," paper presented at 255th meeting of ICO Executive Board, London, England, 18-21 May 2004.

4. A. Blackman, H. Albers, B. Ávalos-Sartorio, and L. Crooks Murphy, Deforestation and Shade Coffee in Oaxaca, Mexico: Key Research Findings, RFF Discussion Paper 05-39 (Washington, DC, 2005), http://www.rff.org.

5. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Forestry Department, El Salvador: The Forests and the Forestry Sector, http://www.fao.org/forestry/site/23747/en/slv.

6. This article is drawn from a longer, more technical report: A. Blackman, B. Ávalos-Sartorio, and J. Chow, Tree Cover Loss in El Salvador's Shade Coffee Areas, RFF Report, http://www.rff.org. The extent to which the study period coincides with-or predates-the "coffee crisis" is open to question; a precise definition of this term does not exist. Recent studies frequently use it to refer to the precipitous decline of prices between 1997 and 2001. See, for example, Varangis, Siegel, Giovan-nucci, and Lewin, note 2 above; and World Bank, Shocks and Social Protection: Lessons from the Central American Coffee Crisis, Report No. 31857-CA (Washington, DC, 2005). However, the overall downward trend in coffee prices that culminated in this steep five-year slide began decades earlier and many researchers use the 1989 collapse of the International Coffee Agreements (ICA) quota system to mark the start of the coffee crisis. See, for example, S. Ponte, The Coffee Crisis, Issue Paper (Copenhagen: Center for Development Research, 2002); and C. Gresser and S. Tickell, Mugged: Poverty in Your Coffee Cup (London: Oxfam, 2002). Hence, using the first definition, the study period overlaps with the last three years of the coffee crisis. Using the second definition, it covers a 10-year period in the middle of the crisis. In both cases, however, the study period misses the trough in prices that occurred in 2001.

7. PROCAFE (Fundación Salvadoreña para Inves-tigaciones del Café), Boletín Estadístico de la Caficul-tura Salvadoreña, (San Salvador, El Salvador: PRO-CAFE, 1998); Varangis, Siegel, Giovannucci, and Lewin, note 2 above; and World Bank, El Salvador: Coffee Price Risk Management, Phase 2 Report (Washington, DC, 2001).

8. PROCAFE, ibid.

9. Global Environmental Facility (GEF), El Sal-vador: Promotion of Biodiversity Conservation Within Coffee Landscapes, (Washington, DC: GEF, 1998).

10. O. Gómez, extension agent, PROCAFE, in discussion with the authors, San Salvador, 24-25 October 2005.

11. PROCAFE, note 7 above.

12. World Bank, note 7 above.

13. M. Batz, H. Albers, B. Ávalos-Sartorio, and A. Blackman, Shade-Grown Coffee: Simulation and Policy Analysis for Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico, RFF Discussion Paper 05-61 (Washington, DC, 2005), http://www.rff.org.

14. PROCAFE, note 7 above.

15. World Bank, note 7 above.

16. PROCAFE, note 7 above.

17. Three of the five cooperatives interviewed reported that they were heavily in debt and that all of their profits are allocated to servicing their loans, leaving no funds for investment. For example, managers of a small (85 hectare) reform cooperative in the west region stated that they pay $64,000 per year to service their debt and that their creditor has threatened to foreclose unless they are able to repay the outstanding principal. Similarly, a large (945 hectare) reform cooperative in the west region reported that they owe $1.8 million and pay $225,000 each year to service the debt.

18. N. Cuéllar, I. Gómez, S. Kandel, and H. Rosa, Rural Poverty and the Environment in El Salvador: Lessons for Sustainable Livelihoods (San Salvador: Programa Salvadoreño de Investigación Sobre Desarollo y Medio Ambiente (PRISMA), 2002).

19. J. Rodríguez-Meza, D. Southgate, and C. González-Vega, "Rural Poverty, Households' Responses to Shocks, and Agricultural Land Use: Panel Results for El Salvador," Environment and Development Economics 9, no. 2 (2004): 225-39; A. Blackman, H. J. Albers, B. Ávalos, and L. Crooks Murphy, Land Cover in a Managed Forest Ecosystem: Mexican Shade Coffee, RFF Discussion Paper 07-30 (Washington, DC, 2007), http:// www.rff.org.

20. M. Cerrutti and R. Bertoncello, Urbanization and Internal Migration Patterns in Latin America (Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios de Población, 2003).

21. Cerrutti and Bertoncello, ibid.

22. World Bank, El Salvador Rural Development Study, Main Report, Volume I, Report No. 16253-ES (Washington, DC, 1997).

23. World Bank, ibid.

24. World Bank, note 22 above.

25. Cuéllar, Gómez, Kandel, and Rosa, note 18 above.

26. Cuéllar, Gómez, Kandel, and Rosa, note 18 above.

27. Cuéllar, Gómez, Kandel, and Rosa, note 18 above.

28. K. Andrade-Eckhoff, "Intercambios Transnacio-nales a Través de las Migración en Centroamérica: Dimámicas, Impactos y Potencial (Transnational Migration and Exchange in Central America: Origins, Impacts, and Potential)," PowerPoint presentation, (San Salvador: Facultad LatinoAmericana de Ciencias Sociales, 2003).

29. Cuéllar, Gómez, Kandel, and Rosa, note 18 above.

30 Gómez, note 10 above; S. Nuenninghoff, sec-toral specialist, IADB, in discussion with authors, San Salvador, 25 October 2005; L. A. Celis, co-country director, Proyector Fortalecimiento de la Gestión Ambiental en El Salvador (the Strengthening of Environmental Management in El Salvador Project), in discussion with authors, San Salvador, 28 October 2005; F. Barillas, President, Unión de Cooperativas de Cafetaleros de El Salvador (Union of El Salvador Coffee Farmer Coop-eratives), in discussion with authors, San Salvador, 31 October 2005.

31. A key environmental regulatory gap in El Salvador is a system of comprehensive land use planning. Although a law has been drafted, it has yet to be passed. During the 1990s, no such law existed. As a result, there was a great deal of confusion about which regulatory authority-local mayors' offices or national ministries- had jurisdiction over permitting in land use planning. Celis, note 30 above.

32. Celis, note 30 above; Gómez, note 10 above; and J. A. Olano, director, Dirección General de Orde-namiento Forestal, Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganade-ria (Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock) in discussion with the authors 3 November 2005.

33. Celis, note 31 above; and Olano, ibid.

34. A recent study that also used satellite data concluded that in the country as a whole including both shade coffee areas and non-shade coffee areas, "woody cover" actually increased during the 1990s, albeit from a relatively low level. See S. B. Hecht, S. Kandel, I. Gomes, N. Cuéllar, and H. Rosa "Globalization, Forest Resurgence, and Environmental Politics in El Salvador," World Development 34 no. 2 (2006): 308-323. If robust, this trend is encouraging. Nevertheless, tree cover in shade coffee areas still provides important ecological services and its loss is likely to have significant adverse local impacts.