An Overview Of Our Solution
The AQUA Project is a project that was worked on in three regions of Venezuela, Siquisiqui Edo. Lara, Tucupita, Edo Delta Amacuro and Canoabo, Edo Carabobo. In this work we present the activities of the Canoabo chapter, which through outreach education sensitized more than 5,500 people indirectly and more than 300 participated directly, using education and reforestation and incentives for the conservation of rural aqueducts and nurseries to generate the conservation of biodiversity, protection of rivers and aquifers, how to promote the conservation of local birds, connecting with people from different areas of the basin, formed 8 local subcommittees and formed a Great parish committee where sustainable water management is a priority to generate the change of consciousness in people.
- Population Impacted: 8000
- Continent: South America
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Context Analysis
Caonabo is a rural parish belonging to the Bejuma municipality, Carabobo state, Venezuela, this area belonging to the high valleys of the western part of the region houses the Caonabo river basin, contributes to supplying water to the populations of the Urama - Puerto Cabello axis and a group of national basic companies that provide electricity to various areas of Carabobo state. This basin provides water to more than 15,000 people indirectly and to 8,000 people directly.
The population of Canoabo lives in a valley, where they produce various foods for local consumption and export to cities such as Bejuma, Valencia and Maracay.
Historically, 200 years ago during colonial times, Canoabo was a high producer of cocoa and coffee, but by the late 1980s and early 1990s, the coffee industry declined. The presence of the new reservoir built by the state changed the microclimatic conditions of the valley, and in turn the inhabitants switched to the production of oranges and tangerines, which impacted the soil, the forest, as well as the conservation of local biodiversity.
Lately, it has shown signs of environmental degradation as a consequence of forest deforestation, soil erosion, sedimentation, and contamination from the discharge of sewage into watercourses. With this, stability is threatened and compromises the provision of environmental and socio-productive services, especially affecting the loss of water collection due to the impact of cloudy, humid and riverine forest ecosystems, all this has changed and mismanagement of resources is impacting the livelihoods of farmers and residents.
Due to this, Fundación Tierra Viva has been working in this rural area for 5 years , hand in hand with the inhabitants, encouraging behavioral changes, from learning by doing to sharing technical solutions for the sustainable development of the communities.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
In the last five years Fundación Tierra Viva has worked on behavioral changes so that communities improve their relationship for water conservation and understand the risks associated with climate change, as solutions that have been implemented to improve the livelihoods of the rural communities have been implemented in Canoabo in main action 6500 trees have been introduced with the support of 8 community nurseries, in order to sow water and protect local biodiversity. With the support of the community, an ecotourism route was also designed in Las Garcitas (Canoabo), which is being managed by local producers, opening a new venture that involves mountain hiking, promoting sustainable agro-ecotourism, and in turn encouraging residents of this sector, together with the Canoabito sector, the planting of Coffee and Cocoa Agroforestry Systems, as solutions for water conservation and biodiversity.
Describe your behavioral intervention.
Canoabo is a basin that has an extension of 14,000 ha , which flows north of the Carabobo state into the Caribbean Sea, providing water to 8,000 people who live in the Canoabo Parish directly through its 12 sub-basins, feeding downstream with other populations. such as La Luna, Morón, which in turn, this river being a tributary of the Tirgua River, feeds the main state companies, in the Puerto Cabello municipality, the second most important cargo port in the country.
However, the studies carried out on the Canoabo river determined that during the dry period (January and May) the riverbed is reduced by 53%, with the North-East slope being the most affected, reducing its flow by 83%. % during the Niño year, leaving the aqueducts and plantations without water (Study carried out by the AQUA Project in 2022), affecting the inhabitants.
Comerma & Co. (2009) makes reference in various studies, that the change in the soil pattern and its misuse due to bad agricultural practices, would generate an impact on the water infiltration regime in the region. At this time, due to excessive logging and burning inside and outside the Canoabo river basin, the impact is looming. Because people are being trained in reforestation and restoration actions, Increases in Coffee and Cocoa Agroforestry Systems, in the same way design of Agrosilvopastoral systems, modified behaviors in residents as a result of the Fundación Tierra Viva effect.
Behavioral Levers Utilized
As needed, please explain how you utilized the lever(s) in more detail.
During the four years of the AQUA project, it focused on the development of training activities and skills for people, developing community leadership actions in various workshops for "Sustainable Water Management" in their communities, focusing on awareness and conservation of the basin through through the design of community nurseries, reforestation of degraded areas, development of community projects to strengthen rural aqueducts. These activities generated confidence in the participants, which led to the development of the parish water committee. During the various activities , between 2021 and 2022, 5,500 trees were planted in different areas of the basin to help recover dry forest and cloud forest areas. With these actions, people became aware of conserving local biodiversity .
Describe your implementation
Before the development of the AQUA project, there was no parish committee working on the socio-environmental problems of Canoabo and promoting the development of the population . The first strategy was to collect basic information on the socio-environmental context of the Canoabo Parish (Bejuma Municipality, Edo, Carabobo, Venezuela), visit the 23 sectors or settlements, to locate community leaders interested in these issues, with the support of local allies, such as or it was Fundacanoabo. With the presence of the leaders, workshops began to be developed based on the interests of the groups, based on experiences and processes in their social context. Workshops related to the need to conserve the forest, seed recovery, nursery design, and reforestation techniques based on the Wangari Maathai green belts and the Miyawaki reforestation method were held. Many of the participants are people who have completed higher level studies and have environmental sensitivity, another positive context for the development of activities.
To ensure that water solutions and reforestation were part of the community's change process in order to promote the development of a culture of Sustainable Water Management together with the conservation of Biodiversity, the participants were given training material . support, bags to collect seeds, seed collection calendar based on 80 mainly native species, supporting the nurseries with the delivery of hoses, bags, forest plant seeds, substrate, support with the articulation of government organizations, which began with seven community nurseries for the year 2021, managing to establish a total of twelve for the year 2022 and ten are currently in operation. The most difficult obstacle for the development of the activities was the pandemic between 2020, which delayed the execution of many activities to respect the regulations.
Describe the leadership for your solution. Who is leading the implementation?
The implementation of these actions is currently led by the "Parish Water Committee" made up of people on average between 32 and 60 years of age, associated with 8 subcommittees around the basin, made up of an average of 8 people present in each subcommittee on average. All proactive and highly committed people, with diverse ethnic origins, among them descendants of Caucasians, Spaniards, native Caribbean peoples, and Afro-Americans. The participation of young people is beginning at this time, where young people between the ages of 15 and 29 are being recruited, to constitute the relief generation . Due to the situation in the country, many young people are unmotivated, but in Canoabo approximately 90 young people have been involved over time in reforestation activities associated with the brotherhoods of the Catholic Church and evangelical Christian groups.
Share some of the key partners or stakeholders engaged in your solution development and implementation.
Among the key actors that helped the development of the project are community leaders associated with the communal councils, FundaCanoabo in the Hands of its president Emilio Torrealba, who helped guide us in the communities to get the key participants who helped form the water brigades and the local committees, prior to the formation of the Parish Committee. Within the private institutions, the support of the Valle de Canoabo Chocolate Factory, the Single Association of Canoabo Producers (AUPROCA), and with the support of government entities such as: the House of Culture, Educational Institutions, Hydrocentre, It was possible to manage actions for the conservation of the basin and community actions for the preservation of rural aqueducts.
Network of teachers made up in turn by representatives of the schools that helped to train through workshops and group dynamics which impacted the student sector in various areas of community work, these worked with the Carlo Sando Agricultural Technical School public high school, The Luis Eduardo Acuñas Private High School.
Support from the community councils of Naranjo, Feliz Adam, Boqueron, in addition to the support of La Comuna, the various AQUA committees and brigades made up mainly of 8 sectors, support from engineering technicians in the area of hydraulics, flow measurement, water quality and state of rural aquedoctos.
Who adopted the desired behavior(s) and to what degree? Include an explanation of how you measured a change in behavior.
The local committees and the nurserymen were the main people who have maintained the changes, of 7 environmentalists that the town originally had, they have managed to train more than 300 people directly and they have managed to remain under the awareness of the change and preservation of the forest as water collection and conservation method more than 50 that remain constant and recognize the need to reforest to preserve the basin. Now the focus of the project is towards strategies that involve young people in these activities.
During the activities, we sought to inspire the needs of nature conservation in people through parades, where the educational community of the population participated together with young people for the preservation of the forest and local birds. These actions have placed the need to continue training environmental leaders as an educational, social and cultural aspect, essential for the valley, on the town's public agenda.
How did you impact the environment (biodiversity conservation, ecosystems, etc.)? Please be specific and include measurement methodology where relevant.
Water quality studies were carried out at various points in the basin during the dry and rainy season to determine the flow and its water quality, although it is true that the water quality of the basin is good in the headwaters of the rivers. In low-lying areas, the state of conservation and preservation deteriorates greatly, however, reforestation actions only mitigate contamination on a minimum scale of action. For downstream, bioremediation actions associated with the presence of different types of vegetation need to be implemented to minimize environmental contamination, in addition to the development of a recycling strategy to mitigate the presence of solid waste in the water, combined with government support from the mayor's office and the governor's office, this aspect still needs to be addressed within the project to be consolidated.
How has your solution impacted equity challenges (including race, ethnicity, social class/income, indigenous communities, or others)?
Within the activities, positive discrimination strategies have been developed that allow women to integrate into the training activities, resulting in a 50% to 65% female participation in the project activities. Emphasis is also placed on supporting female leadership and in this sense almost all the committees are led mainly by women, who rely on the work of men so that together they achieve goals by obtaining water resources. Many of these women live the sorrows of the loss of water in their communities and are the main stakeholders together with the celadores (caretakers of the water) preserve the vital liquid, they helped build feasible projects that improve the obtaining of water in their communities and continue to monitoring these activities together with the guards.
What were some sustainable development co-benefits?
Reforestation was proposed with the purpose of promoting natural restoration as a solution based on nature, a training workshop for ranchers was developed, with the purpose that they observed the Agro-Silvo-Pastoral Systems as an ecological alternative that improves livelihoods and the conservation of local biodiversity. At the same time, bird watching workshops were held as an idea to add a tourist value, avoiding the hunting and sale of birds.
Sustainability: Describe the economic sustainability of your solution.
External financing is necessary to continue working on these actions, since reforestation in Venezuela does not have the support that is required. Ecological restoration is an activity that takes time and needs constant investment to generate long-term achievements, the environmental improvement of forests: cloudy, dry and riparian is an important aspect for water conservation, thereby mitigating climate change and the migration of people due to climatic affectation and desertification is avoided, conserving the local biodiversity that is essential for the quality of life of the inhabitants. However, it could be thought of generating some forestry ventures in nurseries, with sale to ranchers who are undertaking.
Return on investment: How much did it cost to implement these activities? How do your results above compare to this investment?
These activities had a cost of $16,000.00 between development of training activities, posters and didactic material, support and incentive to some community allies, refreshments, transportation of participants and the work team to the areas of activities, specific training development, entertainment to the participants. We believe that the results have been optimal despite the pandemic, developing a space for peaceful coexistence between all allies and participants, having more than 5,000 trees planted , a parish committee that must continue to be strengthened, and more than 300 people trained in various environmental training activities. , developing a parallel committee on fire prevention.
How could we successfully replicate this solution in Latin America?
Educational actions have been carried out in a larger basin, that of Lake Valencia, involving various human groups. Currently, in order to work with various groups in reforestation in an area such as the Lake Valencia basin that is most impacted by industry, it would be necessary to work at the headwaters of the sub-basins , recognize the most affected areas and associate these activities with specific human groups with previous works, with a total of $80,000.00 to achieve these activities, covering more than three municipalities and with an indirect impact on 30,000 people, ensuring a continuous participation of 300 people.