The problem

Extensive grazing is the primary threat to forest and water quality in much of Latin America. Cows damage riverbanks through overgrazing and compacting soils. Forest regeneration is limited, levels of waterborne fecal coliforms, flooding and sedimentation increase, and incomes and quality of life decline. Watershared reverses this cycle, based on the logic that protecting upstream forests helps maintain water supplies, and that sustainable conservation requires the financial participation of water users. By providing economic alternatives that encourage landowners to conserve their forests and move away from drought susceptible agriculture, Watershared helps communities mitigate and adapt to climate change. At the same time, it provides indigenous communities with water potabilization systems, thus enabling them to manage their drinking water provision through integrated locally run systems.

Watershared: A climate solution that works

Reciprocal watershed agreements – otherwise known as Watershared agreements – are simple, grassroots versions of incentive-based conservation that help upper watershed forest and land managers to sustainably manage their forest and water resources to benefit both themselves and downstream water users. Watershared agreements focus on changing behaviour through economic and non-economic incentives and building institutional capacity. This is done by showing local authorities and water users that watershed protection is in their own interests, and then helping to create the institutional framework needed to plan and implement it.

The first Watershared Program was initiated in 2003 between the villagers in the upstream town of Santa Rosa and irrigators in the downstream town of Los Negros. The basic intervention has been refined and improved since then, but the philosophy underlying Watershared remains the same: “people who provide water share it, people who benefit from water share the benefits”. This model – with its climate,

development, social, environmental and economic benefits – has proved remarkably robust.

Since 2003, more than a hundred municipal governments in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador have adopted the Watershared model, with more than 30,000 upstream landowners conserving 600,000 hectares (and 100 million tons of carbon) of forested “water factories” in return for € 500,000 worth of development projects (irrigation systems, fruit tree seedlings etc.) each year.