In the following section, the contribution of the different PHES implementation processes towards IWRM operationalization is assessed. The assessment illustrates the specific contribution to solving the problem of spatial fit, improving institutional interplay and improving local decision-making. In the context of water resources management integration, in the first place, refers to deliberately moving away from fragmented approaches of sector policies. As far as the physical integration within a river basin is concerned, this involves integration of land and water management, surface water and groundwater management, water quantity and quality, and upstream and downstream water-related interests. This challenge was introduced in Section 3.1 as the problem of spatial fit.
The implementation process of PHES schemes in Nicaragua, like the one in the Gíl González river basin, in general departs from a common problem situation which is based on a shared belief on land use and hydrological services linkage. It is thus commonly believed that changed land use in the past years or more often decades, e.g. deforestation for agricultural purposes or pasture, in upstream areas of the river basin, had caused rivers to run dry, groundwater tables to lower and/or water quality to decline. It is further believed that a reversal to former, closer to natural state land uses can enhance water quality and quantity downstream. Thus, the assumed physical cause and effect relationship is based on the geographic unit of the river basin. Actually, because of the size of many PHES schemes in practice, some river basins should be called sub-basin or micro-basin since the basin size in question varies from 10 km2to 70 km2(see Table 6.3). However, as the PHES example of the Gíl Gozález river basin shows, this spatial extent represents the actual level of local impact and problem perception. In the case of the Gíl González river basin, the positive correlation between forest coverage and dry season flow was perceived as a proven fact because in micro-basins where the portion of forest left was higher than in others of similar size, dry season flow was present while in others it was not (Flores Barboza et al., 2011). The logic of upstream lands that provide hydrological ecosystem services and downstream beneficiaries, which are connected through the surface or sub-surface water flow of a river basin, is inherent to the PHES concept. Therefore, it addresses water resources management from “source to tap” (cf. Mitchell, 2005). The policy instruments of Environmental Management Plans (Plan de Gestión Ambiental) and Local Development Plans (Plan de Desarrollo Local), which have been developed by the municipalities for their respective administrative boundaries, are now developed in the PHES scheme of the Gíl González river basin on the river basin basis, considering the administrative areas of the three municipalities Belén, Potosí and Buenos Aires. For this reason, soil and land use maps, previously developed separately for each municipal area, were combined in order to develop maps covering the whole river basin as a common area for environmental and development action.
In order to improve the understanding of the right fit of measures introduced by the PHES scheme, monitoring of land use changes and river discharge at different points of the river basin are continuously carried out to learn more about cause-impact relationships (see Figure 6.6).
Figure 6.6: Discharge measurement carried out for baseline assessment of hydrological service provision (Source: CASUR)
PHES scheme Organizations Respective tasks of organizations Stakeholders involved
Gíl González (Hack, 2010)
Managing committee Administration of the PHES fund, su- pervision and monitoring of land use changes / forest protection and ecosys- tem service provision
Service buyers (CASUR, mu- nicipalities of Belén), service providers, GIZ
Technical committee Capacity building for service suppliers, awareness raising and educational ac- tions
Members of the Manag- ing committee, CASUR, rep- resentatives of MARENA, MAGFOR, INTA, INAFOR and AMUR
La Golondrina (Baltodano, 2008)
Municipal council Makes decisions on water management and provision as well as the administra- tive process of the payment mechanism
Mayor and three representa- tives of the municipal parlia- ment
Administrative council Execution of the PHES and supervision of the water supplier, control of pro- tected areas, promotion and amplifica- tion of the PHES including additional Service buyers and providers
President of the munici- pal water supplier and four members of the civil soci- ety (one school director and three service providers) Estelí / El Regadío
(Ardón Mejía and Barrantes, 2003; FAO, 2010c)
Water committee Administration, management and main- tenance of the water supply service, preservation and restoration of the river basin, execution of the PHES
NGOs (PASOLAC,
MOPAFMA), local mu-
nicipality, water users and service providers
Table 6.8: Examples of established organizations, respective tasks and stakeholders involved in selected PHES schemes (Author’s elaboration
The river basin, as a geographical reference has further implications for the implementation of PHES concerning the institutional framework and stakeholder involvement. As the institutional interplay analysis suggests, implementing IWRM does not necessarily require the creation of new all-encompassing organizations, but rather a change of working practices to look at the bigger picture that surrounds each stakeholder’s actions and to realize that these do not occur independently of the actions of others. IWRM implementation seeks to introduce an element of decentralized democracy towards the way water is managed with an emphasis on stakeholder participation and decision-making at the lowest appropriate level. In order to manage water resources sustainably and equitably all needs and uses of water, and therefore all respective stakeholders and relevant institutions behind those, have to be considered and integrated in the decision making process. This requires cooperation and coordination across policy sectors, stakeholder groups and often administrative units. This in turn, often results in problems of institutional interplay (see Section 3.2). Whereas traditional environmental policies in Nicaragua, basically municipal environmental management or development plans, have been elaborated within individual municipal boundaries without much consideration or consultation of different stakeholder groups, especially without the consideration of populations in areas far from the municipal capital, the implementation of PHES requires an assessment of the different stakeholders as well as a negotiation process among them to reach agreements. Water users as well as land users are considered for cooperation as either potential service buyers or service providers.
In the Gíl González PHES scheme, these stakeholder groups were, in a first step, identified and in a second step entered into a dialog with the aim of finding solutions for cooperation. Although the PHES concept has a conservationist background, it does not represent an explicit sector policy instrument, since it focuses on the cooperation or functional linkage of ecosystems, the facilitation of ecosystem services through certain land uses and beneficiaries from those services from all sectors. Hence, the logic of cooperation among service providers and buyers is not bound to predefined policy sectors. The PHES concept uses the strategy of “issue linkage“, a strategy that makes the solution of an issue that is of concern to another actor dependent on the solution of an issue that is important to oneself (Mostert, 2003; Dombrowsky, 2007a), to bring up- and downstream parties together. In this case, the basis for this “linkage” is an intact ecosystem that provides the desired services and the solution to spatial fit as described above. This way the PHES concept facilitates a simultaneous discussion of issues formerly considered independent, e.g. environmental degradation, agricultural production and water supply, for a joint settlement.
The negotiating process in the Gíl González case as well as in other PHES schemes in Nicaragua was facilitated by the municipal authorities with the aid of donor organizations and ended in the establishment of organizations responsible for carrying out the PHES implementation and execution. Table 6.8 provides examples of organizations, their respective tasks and the stakeholders involved in selected PHES projects.
It is clear that PHES do not develop in the absence of prior environmental legislation, institutions and policies, but rather come up as an alternative or often a complement to traditional environmental policy instruments as the case of Nicaragua shows. Many attempts to allocate financial resources to environmental protection through different types of funds (e.g. National Environmental Fund, National Water Fund) were made in Nicaragua, but have failed in the past for different reasons. Problems of institutional interplay exist because institutions are poorly developed, e.g. the National Water Fund is still not supported by institutional or structural mechanisms for its implementation; the law on water use fees needs to be approved before fees can be charged. In addition, the National Environmental Fund, the National Cleaner Production Fund and the Fund of Private Forest Owners did not have the expected impact of channeling financial resources to the environmental sector (López Nolasco and Jiménez Otárola, 2008b). Contrary to “artificial“ superimposed organizations that lack capacity and legitimacy (Lankford and Hepworth, 2010, cf.,), the organizations established through the PHES (e.g. management committee or the river basin committee in the Gíl González River Basin) are a result of the willingness to cooperate to address perceived problems. Institutional interplay was further promoted due to the participation of land users and ecosystem service buyers in the definition of potential areas of ecosystem service provision and mutual agreement on measures to improve ecosystem service provision that allow for compensation through payments.
Moreover, the actual political commitment at the local level, even where several municipalities are involved, is an important outcome of the PHES schemes established in Nicaragua. In all PHES schemes in Nicaragua, the local municipalities take an active role and contribute to the scheme with financial and human resources. Awareness building actions are a core element of PHES in order to involve service providers and buyers. Practical experience has shown that it was more difficult to involve providers than buyers in some schemes, while the opposite was true in other schemes. Poorer service providers, often because of lower opportunity costs, were more easily available as service providers than land users with higher incomes. Nevertheless, the view of upstream land users as exploiters of renewable resources is changing to one where they are seen as possible stewards for nature, using practices in synergy with ecosystem processes and functions (FAO, 2010a).
Experiences from the PHES scheme in the Gíl González river basins as well as other schemes in Nicaragua show that there has not been much success in involving the national public water supply company ENACAL as a service buyer, although it is present in all PHES schemes, except in the case of Río Blanco where the municipality took over the local ENACAL branch (Flores Barboza et al., 2011). In the case of Río Blanco, water users even expressed willingness to pay for the ecosystem service in addition to a water fee. In the case of Río Blanco, the municipally owned water supplier spent part of the PHES revenue to cover production costs (FAO, 2010d). In all cases, there is stakeholder involvement on both the supply and on the demand side although the benefits do not outweigh the costs of provision or real benefits are absent, e.g. upstream land users often participate even if they are not better off economically. This is sometimes because of a conservationist attitude or because of non-monetary benefits, e.g. inclusion in other development projects, compensations in kind.
Apart from solving problems of spatial fit and institutional interplay, the availability of information on natural resources in countries like Nicaragua poses an additional challenge for decision-making in the context of IWRM. Novo and Garrido (2010) point out that “[...] like many other data-poor countries, Nicaragua lacks a complete spatial and temporal water database”. Therefore, a very important step at the beginning of a PHES implementation process is the assessment of the state of the ecosystem service and the main factors influencing its provision. In the case of hydrological ecosystem services a thorough assessment and mapping of soil types, land uses and topography is required. Quantification of baselines (e.g. river flow around the year, groundwater tables, water quality) of the current service status is also necessary to validate comparatively a service alternation through monitoring later on. This information provides the basis for identifying critical areas and conflicting land uses or other controversial actions (e.g. discharge of waste water) within the river basin. As already described above these actions facilitate the formalization of the river basin as the area of action (spatial fit), stimulate participation and cooperation with upstream land users (institutional interplay) and raise awareness for environmental problems in a productive way. The initial bio-physical assessment is often carried out by universities acting as consultants or by the National Institute for Territorial Studies. In the best case, this assessment is carried out in cooperation with the land users in a participatory way, as in the case of the Gíl González River Basin (FAO, 2010a).
Established organizations with PHES schemes generally consist of a managing organization that administrates the fund and that is responsible for establishing of legal contracts between service providers and buyers, and often also a technical organization that is responsible for monitoring of the service provision, e.g. by documenting changed land use and applied conservation actions, better also through direct measurements of services provided, and capacity building for the service providers (see Table 6.8). The established organizations facilitate coordination and cooperation in actions of conservation, e.g. the status of the conservation measures taken, the participation of service providers and water users as well as the service provision is communicated regularly. The status assessment, the establishment of a system of payments and the integration of new stakeholders can be realized by involving new stakeholders in the assessment actions and by implementing a system of payments to encourage the presence of potential additional service providers (FAO, 2010a). By
Figure 6.7: Functional role of PHES schemes in the Nicaraguan IWRM implementation process (Author’s work)
doing so, this may serve as a promotional action in order to engage additional providers and buyers. This was done, for instance, in the case of the Gíl González PHES.
As a result of the PHES implementation process, in the next step a river basin plan is developed as a spatial planning action including a zoning of the river basin for different uses, e.g. in form of environmental management and development plans based on the river basin. The economic valuation of the considered hydrological ecosystem services is of particular importance within the PHES implementation. Starting at the demand side, the willingness of water users to pay is assessed based on the ecosystem service concept and their water use is quantified (at least roughly). The potential service providers can be identified based on the conflicting uses already assessed. Their cost to provide the service has to be estimated as well. A process of promotion and communication of the payment mechanism often accompanies this economic valuation (Flores Barboza et al., 2011). Capacity building in soil conservation measures and water saving actions for service providers and water users often are also included (FAO, 2010b). If the PHES is agreed upon, legal and administrative actions are required to implement the scheme, thus, municipal decrees are applied to establish a fund for the payments and one or more institutions to manage the PHES project. Although there is still no national law that regulates the establishment of PHES, several municipalities could put PHES in action by creating administrative institutions and rules for the payment mechanism (e.g. municipal environmental funds) through municipal decrees. This demonstrates that a feasible decentralization is possible. The municipal decrees and resolutions establish PHES funds, administrative and management institutions and provide room for public participation (Juárez Martínez, 2008).
In the context of the national IWRM process in Nicaragua, local PHES schemes, like the Gíl González scheme can possibly be a complement to achieve context-specific fit and interplay at the sub-basin level. As could be shown, through the involvement of hydrological service providers and beneficiaries in planning and management processes, horizontal interplay at the sub-basin level is achieved across sectors and administrative boundaries. The PHES management committee, in its facilitating role for spatial development planning through the establishment of protection and cultivation zones within the PHES schemes, has served as a pilot for the Inter-municipal River Basin Committee of the Gíl González River which was established in 2010 (CIRGG, 2010) and recognized by the ANA in 2012 (ANA, 2012). The principal objective of the Inter-municipal River Basin Committee is to coordinate the application of policies, plans, environmental actions and conservation financing mechanisms that contribute to the sustainable and shared management (CIRGG, 2010). The establishment of the RBC demonstrates that the organizational development of cross-sectoral and cross-administrative
IWRM structures from bottom-up can be promoted through a PHES scheme. The official recognition of the RBC by the ANA is one form of vertical interplay, another form of vertical interplay was achieved through the cooperation with other governmental agencies, e.g. INTA and INAFOR, in terms of technical assistance and support in monitoring land use changes. Furthermore, the PHES in the Gíl González river basin could overcome critical operational constraints of funding, capacity and informational gaps through co-management and co-financing by public and private stakeholders. Hence, in the case of the Gíl González sub-basin, current gaps in the institutional and organizational framework of IWRM in Nicaragua could be overcome. This is illustrated in Figure 6.7, the grey colored parts in the figure are formal IWRM elements which are still lacking.
Hence, PHES schemes can contribute to the national IWRM process by providing mechanisms for horizontal interplay at the management level and vertical interplay through the establishment of RBCs and upward connectivity to higher level sector organizations such as MARENA, MAGFOR, INTA and INAFOR. Moreover, the facilitation of horizontal interplay at the management level is directly related to the solution of the problem of institutional fit. Hence, PHES schemes can obviously provide for the appropriate scale, based on interrelated solutions of fit and interplay, of a management unit as it is perceived and expressed by locally involved stakeholders. The application concept of hydrological ecosystem services represents a means of achieving this.
In the context of the IWRM process in Nicaragua, PHES schemes bear the potential to complement the processes of horizontal interplay at the national level by contributing mechanisms for horizontal interplay at the management, i.e. operational level and vertical interplay from bottom-up. The vertical interplay from bottom-up may be readily picked up by a contrarian process of vertical interplay such as the creation of RBOs, as defined in the water law. Hence, PHES schemes can fill a significant implementation gap at the operational end of the IWRM process in Nicaragua.