The Rainforest Alliance is delighted to announce the appointment of Oscar Rojas as our first Guatemala country director. Rojas will head up a dynamic team to implement the Rainforest Alliance’s innovative national strategy in Guatemala.
As part of his role, Rojas directs the Rainforest Alliance’s Climate, Nature and Communities in Guatemala (CNCG) initiative. After only 15 months in this position, Rojas secured five new projects for CNCG—and a sixth, separate project—while continuing to execute the ongoing aims of the massive, complex CNCG initiative. Under Rojas’s leadership, CNCG has already exceeded most life-of-project targets, including surpassing community forestry sales goals of US $75,000,000.
Photo credit: Danilo Valladares
Rojas has more than 30 years of professional experience in conservation and rural development in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Under the auspices of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Rojas designed a national reforestation strategy for Guatemala. He also served as the development director for the Guatemalan NGO Defensores de la Naturaleza, leading initiatives on sustainable development, conservation, and community and municipal capacity-building in protected areas.
Prior to his position with Defensores de la Naturaleza, Rojas worked with development organizations such as CATIE, World Vision, and GIZ on the protection of natural resources in Guatemala, the REDD+ mitigation process, environmental and risks management, resilience, landscape restoration, and climate change.
Rojas graduated from San Carlos University of Guatemala with a degree in agronomy, with an emphasis in renewable natural resources, and he earned a masters’ degree in local environmental management from San Carlos University of Guatemala.