Among the most significant advances promoted by President Claudia Sheinbaum, the creation of the Biocultural Corridor of the Great Maya Forest transcends the borders of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. With the signing of the agreement on August 15, 2025, a territory of 5.7 million hectares of tropical forest is now under protection. This is not a cold number: it is an entire country like Croatia, it is more than 110 times the size of Mexico City, it is the vital force of 28 Yellowstone parksconcentrated in a single green lung.
The magnitude of this initiative lies not only in its figures but in its vision. It is a political act that reminds us of the essential truth: having oxygen, water, life, and biodiversity is infinitely more valuable than having oil. In a world marked by extractive voracity and climate crisis, this long-term decision places the region on a different path: that of environmental cooperation, of defending the planet as a common good, of a holistic vision that understands that the human and the natural are inseparable.
The Maya Forest is not only the habitat of thousands of species and the ancestral home of Maya communities; it is also a reservoir of fresh water and a producer of oxygen that benefits all of humanity. Protecting it means reducing greenhouse gases, keeping biological corridors alive, and offering guarantees of future for the coming generations. This is not a local action: it is a generous initiative that impacts the entire planet.
This trinational pact also sets a regional precedent. Latin America has historically been dragged into disputes over raw materials: copper, lithium, hydrocarbons. The message this corridor sends is disruptive and deeply political: true wealth does not lie underground but above it, in the capacity to preserve the air, the water, and the life that sustain the world. At a time when global powers justify wars for fossil energy, Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize dare to say that the wealth of the twenty-first century is green, communal, and shared.
The Maya Forest Corridor is, ultimately, a civilizational triumph. It ensures that, for once, politics is written with the ink of hope and not of dispossession. And it reminds us that when governments think big, it is not only their peoples who win: humanity as a whole does.
And perhaps a hundred years from now, when the children of the world breathe the oxygen of this still-living forest, someone will say that there was a day when three countries of the Global South decided to protect eternity. And that on that day, in the midst of crisis and despair, Latin America taught the planet that to sow the future is the most revolutionary act of all.
