- Honduras will hold elections Nov. 30 for president and all 128 seats in Congress.
- The winners will hold office for the next four years, shaping the country’s environmental policies at a time when its many forests and ocean ecosystems are rapidly disappearing.
- Leading candidates include Rixi Moncada of the progressive LIBRE party, Salvador Nasralla of the centrist Liberal party and Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura of the conservative National party.
Honduras will hold elections Nov. 30 for president and all 128 seats in Congress. The winners will hold office for the next four years, shaping the country’s environmental policies at a time when its many forests and ocean ecosystems are rapidly disappearing.
More than half of Honduran territory is covered in rainforest, with another 10% covered by coastal wetlands. La Mosquitia, one of the most important forests in Central America, connects protected areas in Nicaragua and acts a biological corridor for wildlife throughout the region.
But the country also loses about 23,000 hectares (56,800 acres) of forest every year to fires, agribusiness and infrastructure development, as well as logging and illegal activities by criminal groups operating in remote border areas.
Despite having relatively low carbon emission rates, the government says these factors could eventually lead to a rise in emissions, complicating its long-term climate goal to cut them by 16% by 2030. It’s also committed to restoring approximately 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of forest by the same year.
The candidates who win this election will leave office in 2029, giving the country just one year to meet these climate targets, making this a crucial moment to elect candidates with clear plans for the environment.
Nevertheless, voters are more concerned about high crime rates and government corruption, including whether the outcomes of this election will be fair and honest. And while the Honduran economy has grown at a steady pace — with new investments in road networks and the energy grid — they’re also primarily worried about unemployment, inflation and poverty.
President Xiomara Castro, of the Liberty and Refoundation (LIBRE) party, is not seeking a second term, despite a 2015 Supreme Court decision removing the single-term limit for presidents. Her presidency was the first by a progressive candidate since her husband, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted in a 2009 coup, ushering in years of conservative governance marked by corruption.
Instead, a different LIBRE candidate is running as her successor, with the centrist Liberal party and conservative National party running candidates as well. The elections are one round, with the winner needing the most votes, not a majority.
Rixi Moncada
Rixi Moncada briefly served as the secretary of finance and then as secretary of national defense under Castro and is LIBRE’s chosen successor to her presidency. Her platform mentions climate change and biodiversity loss more than any other major candidate but also omits a lot of detail about how her government might accomplish those goals.
As climate change worsens, extreme weather events like mudslides, droughts and flooding have become a consistent problem in Honduras. Moncada promised to update the government’s climate risk models and national assessment technology while improving infrastructure resilience. In the long term, she wants the country to combat climate change by investing in biodiversity and ecosystem services and expanding solar, wind and hydroelectric energy.
Clean cooking at home and methane capture in landfills and wastewater will also help reduce emissions, her government plan says.
Moncada identified land use change and logging as the main pressures to the country’s forests and criticized the National System of Protected Areas and Wildlife for being too fragmented and weak to address the problems.
“Co-managers lack capacities and stable financing, and communities, including Indigenous and coastal peoples, are not always integrated into decision-making,” her government plan says.
She proposed strengthening surveillance and the land titling process and cleaning and cross-checking databases of agencies that oversee conservation and property rights, such as the National Institute of Forest Conservation and Development, the National Agrarian Institute and the Property Institute. She also wants to simplify forestry regulations, including streamlining permits and reducing bureaucratic inefficiency.
On Honduras’ coastline, she wants to restore mangroves and involve coastal communities in pollution control.
Salvador Nasralla
Salvador Nasralla, a centrist with the Liberal Party, served as vice president under Castro until resigning in 2024 to launch his presidential campaign. During his time as vice president, there were reportedly tensions with Castro involving his performance and their ability to collaborate. The two parties had agreed to govern as a coalition, but Castro allegedly didn’t follow through.
Like Moncada, he wants to improve the country’s resilience against extreme climate events, most notably at the local level. His plan includes developing risk maps for every municipality and adaptation works like drainage and landslide mitigation. It also includes “24-72-90 protocols,” in which a census is conducted within 24 hours of a climate disaster, aid is provided with 72 hours and reconstruction begins after 90 days.
His government plan includes strengthening protected areas and biodiversity, restoring forests and promoting forest production “with sustainability and inclusion.” This includes developing traceability, reporting and verification for the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), a trade rule overseeing high-risk commodities like cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soy and wood.
However, besides EUDR implementation, Nasralla hasn’t mentioned strategies, budgets or other details to explain how he plans to improve forest and biodiversity protection.
Similarly, he hasn’t provided details about marine protected areas or mangroves or gone in depth about Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples.
Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura
The former mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura is running with the National Party for the second time, having lost to Castro in 2021.
He positions his climate goals in the context of Honduras’ food insecurity crisis, which he attributes to low productivity in the agricultural sector, dependence on imports and the vulnerability of crops to extreme climate events. At the same time, his plan noted the economic importance of agriculture, including 12% of the GDP and 70% of total exports.
Addressing climate change will involve implementing sustainable and climate-resilient agricultural practices like soil management and efficient water use, his government plan says. He also wants to develop early warning systems and rapid response mechanisms for extreme weather events and to promote climate-related research.
His platform doesn’t mention greenhouse gas emissions, protected areas or Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. It also makes no mention of mining or oil and gas.
Banner image: A view of the mountains in La Mosquitia. Image by Laurie Hedges/WCS.
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Deforestation and disease spread as Nicaragua ignores illegal cattle ranching
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