Successful completion of a
new project in Honduras

The technical assistance of the project “EARLY ALERT SYSTEM FOR THE PINE GORGOJO PITTLEBURST IN HONDURAS (SAT)”, financed by the Ibero-American Development Bank (IDB) within the Sustainable Forest Management programme, has recently been successfully completed. The implementation has been carried out by Euro-funding, thanks to the Multilateral Projects team, which has led the consortium and the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Centre (CATIE), with a duration of 12 months.

The project has worked with the Conservation Institute of Honduras (ICF) with the ambitious objective of designing a dynamic and adaptable Early Warning and Prevention System (SPAT) for the country’s main pests and diseases, which includes the diagnosis of causal agents of forest pests and diseases, methodologies to define baselines, phytosanitary diagnostic manuals, monitoring systems, operating protocol for the ICF’s phytosanitary diagnostic laboratory and, above all, a reliable mechanism for timely decision-making.

A TAS is a set of procedures and instruments grouped into four main elements, through which a pest or disease of a foreseeable nature is monitored and data and information are collected and processed, thus obtaining temporary forecasts or predictions of its action and possible effects. If the EWS forecasts indicate the need for emergency sanitary action, other elements of the EWS guide the competent authority to take action at inter-institutional level to deal with the emergency situation. For this purpose, EWS makes use of an Incident Command System (ICS), which is an internationally standardised management system designed to enable the efficient management of a contingency. The ICS organises and integrates institutions, facilities, equipment, personnel, procedures and communications to operate within a common organisational structure, which in this case is the coordination and implementation of damage monitoring and control methods for pine bark beetles under emergency conditions.

The area of the activity is of utmost importance given the situation of the pine bark beetle pest in Honduras and as defined in the III International Conference on Early Warning (UN 2006): Early warning is one of the main elements of disaster risk reduction. It prevents loss of life and reduces the economic and material impacts of disasters. To be effective, early warning systems must actively involve communities at risk, facilitate public education and awareness of such risks, effectively disseminate messages and warnings, and ensure ongoing preparedness (UN 2006).