La Montañona, El Salvador

Organizations:
Environmental Committee
of Chalatenango (CACH)
Committee of Land Reform Beneficiaries of
La Montañona (CORBELAM)
Project Leaders:
Roberto Aguilar, president, CACH
Arnoldo Garcia, president of SES (economic and social system)
Geographic Area: El Salvador
Links:
Salvadoran Program for Research on Environment and Development (PRISMA)
http://www.prisma.org.sv/pubs/descentral.pdf
E-mail:info@prisma.org.sv
http://www.fordfound.org/publications/recent_articles/ docs/Solutions_40-45.pdf

With the end of civil war in 1992, the El Salvadorian government resettled a motley crew of ex-combatants and 1,800 refugee families (many of whom had sympathized with opposing sides) in La Montañona. Largely unsuitable for traditional agriculture, the region is home to four rivers that feed the country's largest reservoir and borders El Salvador's last remaining primary forests.

After years of tumult and bloodshed, the new residents were determined to put down roots and to find sustainable ways of improving the land. Driven by this grassroots desire, local governments and NGOs formed a regional coalition focused on generating jobs while stewarding natural resources.

Called the Environmental Committee of Chalatenango or CACH, this partnership between local governments and NGOs within La Montañona started with a regional planning exercise that helped citizens understand resources available and the consequences of different levels of use. Building off of this base, CACH has begun experimenting with innovative strategies to maintain environmental integrity while improving the economy.

CACH is leveraging its broad-based support throughout the watershed to test an ecosystem services payment scheme. It's connecting residents who are protecting forests that filter water supplies with downstream users who need high quality water including the national water company and multinational corporations looking to offset their polluting activities. In this way, downstream users are beginning to pay citizens for upstream protection efforts.

CACH's success developing a negotiating framework for the watershed capable of brokering an ecosystem services payment scheme is remarkable, especially given the region's war-torn past. But economic opportunities are still scarce; the water payments alone will not sustain the communities. Unless CACH is able to develop a diversified regional economy, it could find its ecological gains washed away.