Restoring Our Watershed
Restoring Our Watershed (ROW) is a non-profit organizational partnership with stakeholders in the United States and Costa Rica working to protect and improve the Nandamojo River Basin in Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica. ROW partners with organizations from the local to international scale to restore the Nandamojo River and surrounding landscapes. Led by Executive Director Tom Rosensteele, ROW has partnered with local families for the past 10 years to protect the vitality of the region and its resources, with the twin goals of longevity and sustainability.[1]. ROW’s two primary goals are to restore degraded land and create green jobs through increasing sustainable food production, and to “make the river flow again” in order to sustain the way of life of Guanacaste residents [2].
ROW’s work began in 2000 with the development of university courses by Tom Peifer and Will Raap [1]. Peifer, who founded El Centro Verde, a Costa Rican sustainable farming organization, and Raap, of the University of Vermont Law School, collaborated on courses on economic and environmental pressures affecting the Nandamojo watershed [3]. This work expanded in 2001 to create ROW. Through ROW, Raap and Peifer have brought sustainable land use and restoration practices to the people of Nandamojo to protect their livelihoods, culture, and the ecosystems on which they depend.
Environmental Context
Located on the western coast of the Guanacaste province, the Nandamojo watershed includes over 29,000 acres of land, eventually emptying into the Pacific Ocean in Playa Junquillal [4]. The basin provides drinking water to its residents and is rich in biodiversity, providing habitat to endangered and ecologically important species. The climate of the valley results in a wet summer and a dry winter season, with lushness accompanying the former and limited productivity during the latter [5]. These conditions create a unique tropical dry forest in Guanacaste, where temperatures can reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit on hot days [4].
The rains and droughts of the wet and dry seasons have been exacerbated by climate change. These changes are compounded by altered land use, reducing the resilience of ecological and agricultural systems. In recent years, the Nandamojo River has experienced low or no flows during periods of the dry season, and the wet season has brought extreme flooding [6]. The region has also experienced groundwater shortages from a falling water table during droughts, and erosion and downstream deposition that harm soil productivity in floods[4][7]. Both extremes harm agricultural and ecological interests. Much of ROW’s work is necessitated by, and responsive to, these climatic changes [6].
Economic context
Many of the ecological problems currently facing the Nandamojo River Basin arise from economic pressures with adverse environmental impacts [8]. The area remained sparsely settled until the mid-1900s, prior to which only small, relatively isolated agricultural communities existed. These communities relied on traditional cultivation methods that used the Nandamojo’s resources for sustenance and livelihoods. However, in the mid-1900s, settlers flocked to the area in response to increased demand for beef from the U.S. hamburger industry[5]. Cattle ranches were built within the watershed by clearing forested land and grassland, disrupting the balance of the natural ecosystem of the basin. Development pressures in Costa Rica also increased shortly after the expansion of cattle ranching, causing more damage to the local ecosystems and economies through declines in land fertility [4].
Since the landscape changes beginning in the 1950s, the people of the Nandamojo River Basin have increased their reliance on outside sources of food, moved away from traditional land cultivation practices, and experienced water shortages [4]. Nearby urban areas have introduced infrastructure changes to address water shortages, but rural communities in the basin have not benefited from such projects [6].
Many of the farmers of the Nandamojo River Basin feel that they lack the economic capacity to better care for their land and are more concerned with their ability to feed their families than with environmental work [6]. The practices and programs promoted and implemented by ROW are attentive to this reality, and they work to demonstrate that environmental and economic feasibility and sustainability need not be at odds. This focus on economic and environmental wellbeing in the Nandamojo River Basin is manifested in a variety of ways, as ROW helps bridge the gap in capital and education to allow watershed residents to transition to new practices and to understand the connection between land degradation and poor farming returns.
Cultural context
Because of its remote location and geographic removal from more populous and developed regions of Costa Rica, the Nandamojo River basin has experienced relatively few cultural shifts due to tourism and foreign interaction [5]. However, economic pressures and resultant changes in agricultural and social practices have already begun to erode some traditional knowledge. ROW uses grassroots-level work to protect and reinstate agrarian traditions. It engages in educational outreach, enterprise building, and direct work on the land with residents. ROW’s approach prioritizes the ideas and needs of citizens in achieving landscape transformation.
Political Context
ROW takes a grassroots approach to watershed restoration and climate adaptation, coupling these with economically viable practices to empower individuals. While ROW’s initiatives mainly target individual families and farmers, it also works at the community level, facilitating collective decision making processes and collective action. By focusing on individuals and communities within the watershed, ROW bypasses traditional governance units, though such groups are sometimes approached as stakeholders or partners [9]. ROW aims to place power over water resources into the hands of local residents.
Institutional context and approaches
In the absence of other public or private providers of capital and education, ROW is a part of a broader movement towards a watershed-based approach to environmental management [10]. This approach focuses on managing the geographic area that drains to a single body of water (a watershed or catchment basin), and addressing the human and non-human processes, activities, and concerns that occur within its bounds. This approach relies on the fact that a watershed, unlike most political boundaries, has some correspondence with natural processes and systems, and seeks to align restoration efforts accordingly. However, this approach has been critiqued for too strongly emphasizing the ability of a watershed-based approach to holistically consider and address all human and non-human dynamics and phenomena [11].
Work
Informed by their context, ROW works on a variety of projects with local communities in the Nandamojo River Valley.
Sustainable Land Use
ROW teaches Nandamojo landowners about managing their land to reduce erosion and runoff while remaining viable for subsistence or commercial farming [7]. These efforts combat a cultural lack of emphasis on protection of water resources and the ill-effects of economic stagnation [7]. ROW also works with communities to use green techniques to catch rainfall and recharge aquifers to holistically address potential water shortages arising from drought [12]. ROW further partners with watershed landowners on reforestation projects, providing families with plant species that benefit both the families and the local ecosystem at no cost [13].
Restoration
ROW implements restoration projects along the river’s edge to reduce water lost to evaporation, provide habitat, and improve water quality through biofiltration [14]. These projects are implemented in coordination with local landowners, with ROW providing education, support, and access to tools, capital, plants. ROW works with other organizations, such as The Freshwater Trust and Drones Guanacaste, to map out and model features of the watershed and to restore critical areas adjacent to the river by planting ecologically appropriate species [14].
Watershed-conscious economic development
ROW seeks to address the impacts of impoverished or stagnant local economies on land use practices and environmental health, combating the resulting deforestation and overgrazing through which farmers seek economic refuge [8]. Alongside local businesses and leaders, ROW has worked to create the Nandamojo Valley Chamber of Commerce to coordinate efforts to sustainably bolster small businesses and create jobs [8].
ROW also formed and supports an Ecological Blue Flag committee in the Nandamojo region to promote water resource protection [9]. The committee brings together representatives from different parts of the Nandamojo watershed and produces annual reports on environmental, education, safety, and accessibility [9].
Bees for Trees
Through this project, families in the region can get small loans for beekeeping in exchange for reforesting part of their pastureland, using the honey produced to repay the loans [15]. Sales from the honey, under the Bees for Trees brand, fund further reforestation efforts [15].
Education
ROW works to engage local and international students in hands-on learning experiences [16]. This equips students with an understanding of how watersheds work, human impacts on the environment, and local, communal actions to increase sustainability [16]. ROW’s internship program provides an opportunity for college students to work with experienced ecologists [16].
Approaches
ROW employs and exemplifies a number of Community-Based Environmental Management (CBEM) techniques in their watershed-scale work. CBEM is a process by which people come together to manage their own environment: ROW, through their programs and projects, has facilitated this process.
Three Legged Stool
ROW’s programs seek to holistically address the environmental, economic, and social conditions of the Nandamojo region. One such project is the Bees for Trees program. Recognizing that many families in the rural areas of the Nandamojo do not receive government or institutional economic aid, ROW implemented this program to provide families with economic security through a new source of revenue from one of their existing assets: land [15]. By “trading” land use for economic opportunity, both ROW and watershed residents achieve environmental, economic, and social benefits. This ties into the analogized three legged stool of sustainability, which touts that the environment, society, and the economy must all be considered for successful sustainability initiatives, as these three sectors are thought to connect with sustainability in the middle [17]. Without one ‘leg’ of this stool, the foundations of sustainability are not fully supported, and the initiative will ultimately collapse.
Prior to the 1950s, residents of the Nandamojo Valley were able to comfortably live off of the land - fertile soils provided opportunities for crop growth, making communities self-sustaining and farming jobs plentiful [4]. However, the immense land degradation in the region has stripped many families there of the economic and social security provided by farming. ROW seeks to help residents reclaim this security by improving land use practices so that erosion and land degradation no longer impede efforts to grow crops. As noted above, many families now rely on outside sources of food. ROW’s tackling of this socio-economic issue not only improves the livelihoods of Costa Rican families, but it also promotes positive environmental change. Diversifying crops and utilizing sustainable land use practices improves environmental conditions by decreasing erosion that harms riparian health. Additionally, the implementation of sustainable farming is coupled with land stewardship practices that aid in restoring the watershed.
Social Capital
Social capital takes one pillar from the three-legged stool approach to sustainability and delves deeper into it with the notion that social norms and bonds aid in sustainability through facilitating cooperation and collective investment in sustainable projects and efforts [18]. ROW utilizes social capital to both facilitate the exchange of knowledge and to motivate communities towards this notion of collective action. Through their educational programs, ROW teaches community members and visitors to be knowledgeable stewards of the Nandamojo watershed [16]. These educational programs bring about knowledge within the community and help build bonds amongst attending community members and between these members and ROW employees.
ROW also uses social capital to bring together business and community leaders, further facilitating trust and connections between them to create the Nandamojo Valley Chamber of Commerce. This group has identified shared challenges and outlined specific, collaborative goals to mitigate these issues together [8].
Results
ROW’s work, in partnership with the communities of the Nandamojo watershed and other organizations, has resulted in tangible improvements in the lives of watershed residents. ROW’s strategy is a diversified portfolio of long-term projects that generate multiple benefits to promote a sustainable future in the region.
Environmental
ROW has focused on reforestation and protective land use has improved water quality, water retention, and biodiversity, and generated economic benefits. ROW has facilitated the planting of thousands of saplings in the region, stabilizing the river and surrounding ecosystems [13] [19]. By providing local landowners with free native saplines, they increase forest cover and provide “nutritious edibles, natural medicine, forage for animals or even wood for building homes” [14]. La Norma and Riparian Corridor reforestation projects have also improved water quality and availability in the region.
Economic
ROW has achieved economic benefits through their Bees for Trees program, resulting in the planting of 4,000 saplings and growing honey sales [15]. Financial incentives for landowners to preserve their land through the Riparian Corridor Reforestation project have also contributed to the economic well-being of locals [14].
Social Connections
ROW’s projects aim to strengthen community ties in the Nandamojo Valley. Their help in the creation of the local Chamber of Commerce has attracted new income to the valley. Since its inception in 2013, new restaurants and lodges have opened in the area, spurring economic growth in the region [20]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "About Us". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ "Our Watershed | puebloverde.org".
- ↑ "Meet Will Raap, Founder and Chairman: Gardener's Supply". Gardeners Supply.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 "Where We Are". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 [1]
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 "Restoring Our Watershed - A Costa Rica Community Feature". August 4, 2018.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Sustainable Land Use". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 "Nandamojo Valley Chamber of Commerce". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 "Watershed Blue Flag Committee". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ Sabtier, Paul (2005). Swimming Upstream: Collaborative Approaches to Watershed Management. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. ISBN 0262693194. Search this book on
- ↑ Cohen, Alice; Davidson, Seanna (2011). "The Watershed Approach: Challenges, Antecedents, and the Transition from Technical Tool to Governance Unit". Water Alternatives. 4 (1): 1–14.
- ↑ "Contour Line Barriers". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 "Reforestation". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 "Riparian Corridor Restoration". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 "Bees for Trees". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 "School Programs". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ Purvis, Ben; Mao, Yong; Robinson, Darren (2019). "Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins". Sustainable Science. 14 (3): 681–695. doi:10.1007/s11625-018-0627-5. Unknown parameter
|s2cid=ignored (help) - ↑ Jules, Smith (David). "Social Capital in Biodiversity Conservation and Management". Conservation Biology. 18 (3): 631–638. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2004.00126.x.
|Authors list=missing|1=(help); Check date values in:|date=(help) - ↑ "La Norma Reforestation". Restoring Our Watershed.
- ↑ [2]
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