Casa Pueblo

Casa Pueblo is a non-profit environmental watchdog community-based organization in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, headed by Alexis Massol-González, a civil engineer and winner of the 2002 Goldman Environmental Prize.^[3][4][5][6] His son, Arturo Massol Deyá, Professor of Microbiology and Ecology at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, is assistant executive director of Casa Pueblo^[7][8]

History

The organization was established in 1980 as a cultural center named Taller de Arte y Cultura (Art and Culture Workshop). In 1985, the organization acquired a house that was converted into a headquarters for the group and as a non-governmental, independent, self-supporting, community cultural center. The house was used as a cultural center, with a meeting and expositions hall, library, carts shop, butterfly garden and museum hall, running on solar energy. The cultural center was named Casa Pueblo, a name eventually adopted by the environmental organization itself.^[9] The organization has a radio station, with environmental and cultural programming; it opened an environmental school in August 2013.^[10]

Mission

Casa Pueblo is a community-based organization that promotes, through voluntary participation of individuals and groups, protection of the environment.^[11] Its mission is to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places in Puerto Rico; to practice and promote the responsible use of the land's ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist others to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.^[12]

Conservation policies

Casa Pueblo has official policies on many conservation issues. They group these into 17 categories: agriculture, biotechnology, energy, environmental justice, forest and wilderness management, global issues, government and political issues, land management, military issues, nuclear issues, oceans, pollution and waste management, precautionary principle, transportation, urban and land use policies, water resources, and wildlife conservation.

Casa Pueblo advocates investment in wind, solar, and other renewable energy ; and restructuring energy markets to favor innovation, creation of green jobs, and efficient energy use.

Achievements

Some of the achievements of Casa Pueblo are:

• Successfully stopped gold mining operations in the Adjuntas area in the early 1990s after a decade long opposition battle.^[13]
• In 1989, it began production of its own brand of coffee, Madre Isla Coffee via a self-sufficient coffee farm maintained by community members and outside volunteers.^[13]
• Lobbied in the Government of Puerto Rico for the creation of the community-sponsored forest in the Puerto Rican mountain region called Bosque Pueblo, the only forest in Puerto Rico managed under an agreement between the government and a community-based organization.^[14]
• In 1995, the group also purchased Bosque del Pueblo, a 737-acre nature conservation area.^[13]
• In 2003, Casa Pueblo opened the Communitarian Institute of Biodiversity and Culture, which offers high school level courses, undergraduate courses during summer, environmental workshops and alternative programs with a couple stateside universities.^[13]
• In 2012, the organization successfully lobbied against the Vía Verde project., ending the government's plan to run a gas pipeline through sensitive areas of Puerto Rico's interior.^[15]
• In 2013, it inaugurated the "Escuela Bosque", a school for training in environmental issues, problems, and solutions.^[16]
• On 31 March 2013, Casa Pueblo successfully lobbied the Government of Puerto Rico for the establishment of the "Corredor Ecológico del Bosque Modelo", a conglomerate of model virgin forests in central Puerto Rico.^[17]

Campaigns

The organization has been involved in the following campaigns:^[18]

• 1980-1995: Fight Against Mining
• 1996: Community Management
• 1999: Biological Alley Act (Ley Corredor Biológico)
• 1999: New Biological Reserves and Country-wide Community Agreements
• 2003: Law 268: Funds for the Acquisition y Preservation of Lands with High Ecological Value
• 2004: La Olimpia Forest and New Community Management Agreement
• 2004: Plan for the Preservation of Sensitive Areas for Adjuntas and Adjacent Municipalities
• 2005-06: Puerto Rican Preservation for the Biosphere of the “Tierras Adjuntas”
• 2006-2013: Via Verde project

Honors

• In 2009, the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, an agency of the Government of Puerto Rico, recognized Casa Pueblo's contribution to Puerto Rican culture with a poster that announced a weekend event dedicated to Casa Pueblo.^[13]
• On 21 April 2012, Plaza del Caribe duplicated a bonsai version of Casa Pueblo's typical Puerto Rican country house that serves as its headquarters, as well as its butterfly farm and its Radio Casa Pueblo radio station (WOQI 1020AM) during Plaza del Caribe's Week of the Environment.^[19]
• On 2013, Casa Pueblo's Bosque del Pueblo (aka, "Tierras Adjuntas") received the "Model Forest Award" from the International Model Forest Network, the only one of two such forests in Puerto Rico out of 20 forests total.^[20][21]
• On 23 May 2013, the Puerto Rico Legislature passed a joint resolution of support to Casa Pueblo for UNESCO to declare Bosque Pueblo "Patrimonio de la Humanidad" (World Heritage Site).^[22]

See also

References

External links

• Casa Pueblo at Revista Hola Puerto Rico