Protecting watersheds in Latin America
Upstream conservation paid by downstream actors
The eastern slopes of the Andes support some of the world’s most biodiverse forests. Amboró National Park is
home to 10% of all the bird species on earth, while the 260 km2 Los Negros valley that meanders out of
Amboró supports 235 bird species. These forests provide drinking water to the 1.5 million residents of Santa
Cruz, and supply irrigation water and flood protection to the fertile lowlands that drive Bolivia’s agricultural
export economy. Upland forests are increasingly threatened by illegal land incursions, and the clearing of
“water producing” cloud forests for agriculture. The 57, 000 km2 Río Grande catchment is one of Bolivia’s most
important watersheds. However, the hydrology of the area is being drastically disturbed by increasing
deforestation rates. Forest owners have been mining their timber resources and increasingly converted their
forests into cropland. Through the development of innovative financing mechanisms for upstream
conservation and watershed management, IUCN NL partner Fundación Natura Bolivia has successfully
stimulated sustainable downstream agricultural production and climate change mitigation in the Río Grande
catchment.
The municipal governments and water cooperatives of Comarapa, Mairana and Los Negros have operated
Municipal Water Funds (MWFs) for four years with EGP contribution, and other municipalities are now
following their lead. The process of developing these funds is similar to “payments for environmental
services”, but the difference is that they are designed and implemented from the bottom-up, led by local
leaders in municipalities, and focus on building a local political constituency by pioneering “reciprocal
agreements for conservation” (or ARA, Arreglos Reciprocos por Agua) and compensating farmers for the
opportunity cost of their conservation activities with bee boxes, barbed wire, fruit trees and capacity building.
Due to this project1, local authorities enrolled in a 20 year commitment to watershed management. The mayor
of Vallegrande is committed to protect every single upstream water source in his jurisdiction. Furthermore, the
project catalyzed the creation of the mancommunity of the Rio Grande Protected Area -an institution for
municipal leaders committed to conservation through a grand 7-municipal alliance- with a further starting
commitment of 6500 euros each year.
Many local land users have actively participated in project events with the result that protecting watershed
services is starting to become a “mainstream” activity in the entire protected area. This is crucial as the longterm success of watershed management will not only depend on the number of hectares that are being
protected today, but rather on whether community members perceive conservation and sustainable
management to be useful. These Water Funds can facilitate investments by downstream actors in upstream
conservation.
Since March 2011, Fundación Natura Bolivia started a project evaluation to demonstrate the effects of
conservation. They assessed water quality in upstream areas and in communities in more than 140 microwatersheds2. In addition the organization reanalyzed and improved a series of models predicting the effects of
deforestation in the Pirai watershed. The results are presented at meetings with upstream communities and
municipal leaders, and to municipal and departmental authorities in the city of Santa Cruz.
Downstream institutional infrastructure has been developed under this project3 so that initial donor
investments can leverage long-term, self-sustainable financing. So far, 9000 hectares of upstream forests have
been effectively conserved for the long term and 500 families have signed conservation contracts and received
compensation packages. There are now 9 funds with statutes, legal status, and board gender balance and an
umbrella funding mechanism is defined, legalized and implemented. The hydrological data collection and
modeling allow better quantification of correlation upstream deforestation and flooding frequency and
1
EGP; Bolivia; FNB; Business planning for a new protected area: the Río Grande biosphere reserve (Liliana Jauregui)
http://www.ecosystem-alliance.org/sites/default/files/documents/ARA%20Program%20Evaluation.pdf
http://www.espa.ac.uk/files/espa/impact_story_003.pdf
3 EA; Bolivia; FNB; Improved water productivity through watershed management in Santa Cruz, Bolivia (Liliana Jauregui)
2
severity. This way, downstream agriculturalists can be shown how upstream conservation efforts will benefit
them4.
IUCN NL is supporting a comparable approach in Argentina5. Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina (FVSA), a
trusted IUCN NL partner since 2005, develops innovative financial mechanisms that encourage sustainable
forest management. The famous Iguazú waterfalls embody the importance of the Atlantic Rainforest for the
water supply in the region. Tributaries originating in this part of the Atlantic forest all flow into the Paraná
River. Many stakeholders like downstream companies, municipalities and tourist companies are willing to pay
for a reliable supply of clean water. By organizing and convincing stakeholder groups to pay for the water,
upstream communities, landowners and local authorities receive revenues that will prevent them from logging
the forest and enable them to restore degraded areas.
The forest in the Misiones province of Argentina is part of the Atlantic Rainforest: a biodiversity hotspot that is
under severe threat. Only 7 percent of the original forest remains, and what is left is becoming increasingly
fragmented. Iconic species like the Jaguar, Ocelot and the Toco Toucan (the largest toucan species in the
world) are just a few examples of the abundant biodiversity of the Atlantic Rainforest ecosystem.
The Atlantic Rainforest in northeast Argentina harbors an extraordinary biodiversity and provides water to
downstream economic activities. Nevertheless this rain forest is under severe threat of deforestation due to
the expansion of soybean fields and cattle ranching. By connecting companies that use the water from the
forest to the communities, landowners and local authorities that use or manage the forest, an economic
counterweight is established in favor of forest conservation.
4
5
http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline/winter-2013/investing-latin-americas-water-factories
EA; Argentina; FVSA; Creating new incomes by protecting the rainforest. (Henri Roggeri)