Realizing the need to draw on the potentialities of the rural sector, Guatemala has begun a research study on the strategic Trifinio region on the border with Honduras and El Salvador. The idea is to identify the types of assets that poor people in the area have and determine what public investments are needed in order to optimize their use.

In geological terms, the Trifinio area is one of the oldest regions of the Central American isthmus. It includes a large number of municipalities in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, with a total population of around 400,000 inhabitants. Most of these people live in poverty, under difficult conditions. Given the serious deterioration of the biophysical environment, as a result of human activity, this typical semi-arid region is in danger, over the short term, of becoming a desert.

Much is still unknown about the natural, economic and social resources that also exist in the Trifinio region, whose indigenous populations represent great cultural wealth and which has the largest transnational cloud forest and undisturbed natural environment in all of Central America (the Montecristo mountains). It also has two of the largest hydrological systems in Central America, namely, the watersheds of the Lempa and Motagua rivers and part of the upper basin of the Ulua River in Honduras.

The Trifinio area in Guatemala includes 15 municipalities in the departments of Chiquimula and Jutiapa. This is where the study on the assets of the poor population will be conducted, with the participation of SEGEPLAN, MAGA, the Trifinio-Guatemala Unit and FAO, with financial support from DFID and under the supervision of RUTA and the World Bank. The study will provide the national institutions with a methodology that can be replicated for subsequent work in other territories.

Similar studies will be carried out in the parts of Trifinio that are located in Honduras and El Salvador.