Guatemala's National Forestry Institute and CATIE promote strengthening cooperation

• The visit seeks to strengthen ties through master's degrees and training programs in services or courses.

June 8, 2023. Rony Granados Mérida, manager of INAB, its Spanish acronym (Instituto Nacional de Bosques, National Institute of Forests) of Guatemala, visited CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) in order to exchange experiences, strengthen relations and promote training for his institution's personnel in that Central American country.

"Within our institutional staff we have many CATIE graduates and very good professionals, but we have also received courses here in Turrialba and we want to resume these activities, we want to promote the issue of master's degrees so that our employees can opt for this education and also for the issue of scholarships," said Granados.

The delegation that visited the campus was composed of the INAB manager, together with Mario Salazar, in charge of Incentives and Research projects, and Luis Reyes, from the Climate Change Institute, who met on Wednesday with Muhammad Ibrahim, director general of CATIE.

On Thursday they were received by Guillermo Detlefsen, coordinator of the Master's program in Agroforestry and Sustainable Agriculture, and then visited the units of Forests and Biodiversity in Productive Landscapes, Climate Action, the Seed Bank and finally the Graduate School, where they were received by its dean, Roberto Quiroz, accompanied by Fernando Casanoves, Researcher of the Biostatistics Unit.

The dean mentioned that INAB has been a partner institution of CATIE for more than 20 years. "Since last year we have been talking about a rapprochement to strengthen the capacities of its collaborators. We are talking about the possibilities of having students coming from INAB, seeking funding for scholarships, mainly for students of virtual master's degrees. But also for training, specific courses such as statistics, forest management, agro-forestry and others," said Quiroz.

During the meeting, the conversation revolved around the possibility of some of these people starting the master's degree in September, which is when they begin virtually.

The final idea of the visit is to strengthen the already existing ties with INAB through training, either formally in master's degree programs or in training programs in services or courses. In addition, INAB's ongoing collaboration with the CATIE office in Guatemala is recognized throughout the region.