Water and Pronatura
¿What is Pronatura Mexico doing?
Pronatura’s mission is the conservation of flora, fauna and priority ecosystems, as well as promoting the development of society in harmony with nature. Water is an essential element for the health of the ecosystems and for the development of humankind, for this reason, the subject of water conservation has become one of the central action lines of Pronatura Mexico. For water availability in quality and quantity, an integrated vision in water management that takes into account the different uses, users and environmental conditions is needed.
The subject of water conservation is a main concern for Pronatura. Therefore, the organization has developed a Water Program divided in five components:
1) Environmental policy
2) Watershed Conservation and Restoration
3) Water Harvesting
4) Communication
5) Water Rights for Conservation
1 Environmental Policy
Direct actions in conservation must go hand in hand with indirect conservation strategies such as advocacy and lobbying in key public policy issues and lawmaking. Human resources, time and money can be spent in conservation and restoration activities, but if there is no political vision that recognizes the ecologic importance in the long term of these actions, or a legal framework which supports them or regulates the activities, then these resources might well have been thrown away.
Therefore any conservation action in the field must be accompanied with the appropriate public policies and strategies and the use of the different instruments available for the adequate organization of the environment. These public policies may be local, national, regional and international, and as stated before, they make use of a range of various instruments, legal as much as economic, for their promotion, enforcement and compliance.
Legislation is just one of the many tools available to regulate activities and the environment. However, it takes on a vital importance to prevent that the achievements reached so far in conservation are not set back by insurmountable obstacles created by the absence of legislation or the existence of legislation that promotes activities that are contrary to conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources.
Other instruments that have gained in importance and popularity due to the flexibility in their enforcement are economic instruments such as financial, fiscal and market based. These instruments appeal to the logic of the current neo-liberal economic model and promote a sustainable use of natural resources through the internalization of external costs (many times environmental) generated by their productive activities.
Main objective:
• Lobby and advocacy on public water policies and legislation with lawmakers such as: environmental use and water allocation for the environment, environmental services, water efficiency in agricultural and industrial activities, water quality and quantity.
2 Watershed restoration and conservation
Watersheds are the basic unit in water resources management. They are territorial units limited by a dividing line from which water runs in a different ways thereby forming a hydrographic network that flows to an exit point either to the sea or to an inner receptive body (lakes). Watersheds are complex systems due to the existent interrelations between the bio-physic environment (water, soil, flora, fauna and other natural resources), the different uses and users, productive activities and institutions. The focus on watershed conservation and restoration is aimed at protecting and/or recovering the dynamic of water and its relations with the other biophysical components of the watershed.
The degradation in watersheds caused by change of land use, loss of vegetable coverage and pollution has negative consequences such as loss of biodiversity, diminishment of water infiltration, soil erosion and sedimentation of rivers and dams. The above ironically triggers water scarcity in terms of quality and quantity as well as floods that cause risks to human health, to productive activities and to human settlements.
The conservation and restoration of watersheds is vital for the preservation and reestablishment of the environmental services and ecologic functions that take place within the watershed such as water infiltration, carbon dioxide sequestration, soil maintenance and protection of flora and fauna. The focus of watershed restoration is oriented towards the preservation and/or recovery of water dynamics and their interrelation with the other bio-physical components of the watershed.
At Pronatura we work in the subject of water conservation through watershed restoration, improving the levels of water capture and infiltration, avoiding erosion and sedimentation of superficial waters. Besides the creation of criteria for the identification of priority sites for water conservation and generation, we have a program specialized to give legal certainty to conservation activities in private and social lands and another to offer different productive and sustainable activities.
Main Objectives:
• To develop and put into practice a series of instruments and methodologies, that range from the biological to the legal, to restore and conserve priority watersheds.
• To work with community and private landowners to guarantee conservation actions and to offer alternative and sustainable productive activities.
• To promote local and regional payment of environmental services markets.
3 Water Harvest
One of the more representative examples of water harvest is the one taking place in the Ixtaccihuatl-Popocatepetl National Park. In the year 2001, Pronatura Mexico together with the Nacional Forest Commission and the Group Modelo established the program called “Restoration, protection and conservation of the Ixtaccihuatl-Popocatepetl National Park”. Among their multiple objectives are the conservation and use of its natural resources, as well as the use and promotion of its environmental services with an emphasis in water resources. Beside the actions implemented for the recovery of the ecosystem’s functionality, in the specific case of capture and infiltration of water a total of 27,505 “pits” were excavated since 2001 in the eroded slopes that are part of the high watershed in a surface of 43.8 hectares. These pits or holes help retain rainwater and soil, and filter water. With the help of installed rain gauges in the areas near the blind tubs, there is a daily registry of the precipitations to calculate the total water harvested and filtered. We can say with enough certainty that to this moment a total of 73,088,905 liters of water has been captured, a quantity barely equivalent to the annual water consumption of a small population of a thousand people. In regard to soil capture, the measurements indicate that the blind tubes helped to hold back 11,291 m3 of soil.
The seriousness of the situation we face is exposed when reviewing the above information; the time and labor that the capture of 73,088,905 liters of water represented, a quantity that supplies only a year of water to a thousand people. If we want to avoid a full blown crisis in water availability, it is necessary to duplicate and strengthen these kinds of actions and start a population awareness campaign.
Main objectives:
• To implement water harvesting methodologies, adequate to the site under restoration or conservation, to enhance water infiltration to underground water ecosystems.
• To apply the necessary techniques and methodologies to avoid soil erosion.
4 Communications
One doesn’t need to be an expert to realize that the lack of water has become a potent detonator of social conflict. Newspapers are full of articles detailing the evident lack of water availability in the cities, of the long draughts that affect productive activities and the conflicts that arise from these situations, of the serious health problems from the lack of potable water and sanitation. On the other side, there are areas where water scarcity is not an issue, on the contrary, the problem is related to the excess of water, causing floods and affecting the physical and economic integrity of people, settlements, cities and productive activities.
Within this scenario, the access to information is essential. It goes further than just making the population aware on water issues in Mexico. It has to do with promoting a participative society, with capacity, will and interest to participate in decision making processes on water resource management in the country. It has to do with a population that, conscious, applies saving measures in water consumption at home and at work. It also has to do with the proper enforcement and compliance with the legal framework and the creation of policies which guarantee the resource’s sustainability in the long term.
Pronatura Mexico is plainly conscious that the subject of communication is strongly linked to issues of information access and social participation. To achieve success in natural resources conservation, it is necessary to side with a participative society.
Actions:
- Water conservation strategies must go hand in hand with a communication strategy that promotes a responsible use of water to target audiences.
- Pronatura is constantly promoting campaigns on the importance of water and its responsible use, mainly through posters and bus stops, magazines, radio and television.
5 Water Rights for Conservation
Pronatura México is known for its innovation on the subject of private and social land conservation. Water conservation is not an exception. The establishment of Banks that trade Water rights for conservation is a concept that Pronatura has been developing as well. The purpose of these banks is to buy water rights from other uses (mainly agriculture) and allocate water for environmental use to maintain the necessary environmental flow in aquatic ecosystems. There is still much to be done, but Pronatura has started to work on the subject of water rights transference for environmental use in the Colorado River Restoration Project and Cuatro Ciénagas in the State of Coahuila).
|
