Description
The Goascoran River basin has a superficial extension of 2.345,5 km2 and it is shared by Honduras and El Salvador. It is conformed by 36 “sub-basins”, located in the areas of La Union and Morazan in El Salvador and La Paz, Valle, Comayagua and Francisco Morazan in Honduras. For its natural characteristic and location, this is an area of great environmental, economical and geopolitical importance.
Action taken
In 2006, the Management Group of the Bi-national Basin of the Goascoran River (GGBCG) was created as a multi-sector instance to integrate, influence and coordinate sustainable management of the shared basin and to improve the life conditions of the inhabitants of the region.
Its objective is to coordinate actions of bi-national character that can be funded by national and international bodies, through the articulation and participation of different sectors of both countries and the development of processes of incidence for the appropriate use of the basin.
Lessons learned
The management group, at institutional level in both countries and as a bi-national instance, has obtained positive results in the support and development of a management plan of the basin, as well as in the incidence, for the emission of municipal legal instruments in pro of the conservation of the local natural resources.
From the technical point of view of river basin management, the experience shows the “key stages” in the development of a management plan, including the phase of characterization and the actions of conservation and management to be done, which implied negotiation processes of the representatives in both countries starting from processes of participative local planning.
Importance of the case for IWRM
This experience is of great value for IWRM, as the management group establishes a model of work for the population of both countries, in search of an appropriate use of the natural resources in a shared basin.
Through this, the bi-national effort is shown with a single objective, with the active participation of the representatives of diverse sectors in all the levels (local, central government's institutions, civil society, NGO, private company, groups of producers, environmentalist associations, teachers and the representatives of the municipalities of this basin) where the understanding and, mainly, the work of volunteers, constitute the primordial factor of its management.