Improving Bolivian Water Management: Incentives to Promote Sustainable Watershed Management that Improves Rural Livelihoods
Donor: DFID and International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

Project Summary
In 2004 Natura led a multi-institutional diagnostic analysis that assessed the potential for using market mechanisms to enhance watershed management and improve Bolivian livelihoods. While there is a clear need for a new way of thinking for managing water resources, there is strong opposition to the concept of market mechanisms. However, case studies showed opportunities for developing market mechanisms for watershed management: small-scale, locally managed projects can be feasible regardless of their political, legal and institutional context. In 2005, with continued funding from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), we are developing further research and actions focusing on the following themes:

1) Assessing laws and national policies, and mapping the institutional landscape
2) Detailing the state of hydrological science in Bolivia
3) Reviewing poverty, land use and livelihood issues including the role of property rights in constraining and promoting market development and improved livelihoods
4) Assessing watershed management experiences, both of existing markets and other mechanisms such as integrated watershed management
5) Assessing the feasibility of selected study sites for the development of market based management mechanisms
6) Undertaking stakeholder and actor analyses in the selected watersheds

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Sustainable Conservation of Bolivia's Amboró National Park through Compensation-for-Watershed Services
Donors: US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Conservation Food and Health Foundation

Project Summary
Natura's primary field project has the goal of consolidating and strengthening a community-led compensation-for-watershed-services system in the Amboró National Park/Los Negros Watershed. The specific objectives of the project are that by 2007:

" 2500 hectares of diverse cloud forest in upstream Santa Rosa are being protected through annual compensation-for-watershed-services;
" The Municipality of Pampagrande and downstream water users are contributing 60% of the cost of annual payments (including all operating and transaction costs);

" An additional 1060 hectares of upstream cloud forest have been set aside for permanent community water conservation reserves.

We are currently compensating farmers 1 beehive and training in honey production for every 10 hectares of cloud forest they agree to protect for a year. Honored contracts can be reenrolled into the program in subsequent years. Using short-term donor funds (from the US Fish and Wildlife Service), the farmers are thus demonstrating to downstream users-the potential long-term funders-that upstream watershed protection is feasible and trustworthy: as long as appropriate incentives are provided. Upstream landowners can enter the scheme at any time, and as confidence in the project increases, so does the number of farmers who want to join.

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Protecting the Spectacled Bear (Tremarctus ornatus): Environmental Education Around Amboró National Park
Donor: the Scott Neotropical Fund of the Cleveland Zoological Society

Project Summary
Natura's environmental education (EE) project is helping build environmental awareness and knowledge, develop positive attitudes to biodiversity, and enhance skills and participation in environmental protection in the Los Negros valley. For the initial phase of the EE program we have targeted teachers and children ages 8-15 at schools in 6 communities (Santa Rosa, Sivingal, Los Negros, Palmasola, Valle Hermoso and Pampagrande). While we understand that children and teachers are perhaps not the most important group for immediate conservation action, this age group is the easiest to access in a non-threatening way, and that the "trickle-up" effect of conservation ideas from this age group to parents is significant.

After an initial diagnostic of what is currently being taught in the communities, consultants form the Environmental Education organization, REMA, worked with Natura staff and 17 local teachers. Together, they designed an education program that is based in the reality of the local situation while also focused on Natura's objectives--biodiversity conservation and watershed management. Other issues that are important to the downstream communities, such as pesticide use, have also been included. Early in the project we implemented a questionnaire with the educators and a sample of 50 of their students to assess their current environmental knowledge. In order to assess the program's impact, we will resubmit this questionnaire to the same students and educators after the first stage of the program has been completed.

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Rapid Hydrological Analysis of the Los Negros Watershed in support of a Compensation-for-Watershed Services (CWS) Mechanism
Donor: the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Project Summary
Working in close coordination with local landowners, Natura is currently undertaking a Rapid Hydrological Analysis of the Los Negros Watershed. Not only will this study provide the hydrological data required to evaluate the basis of Natura's incipient Los Negros Valley CWS system, it will also provide guidance to the forestry research community on whether it is possible (and if so, how) to undertake rapid, inexpensive hydrological analyses that can provide a robust scientific basis for CWS systems.

Numerous small streams feed into the Los Negros River. The basis for charging for the "environmental service" provided by the upper watershed (and hence hypothesis this project is testing) is that as the watershed is increasingly deforested, water supplies will gradually reduce. In order to quickly address what is a temporal phenomena, we have reformulated the question as a spatial hypothesis: micro watersheds that are already deforested will produce less water than micro watersheds that still maintain their forest cover. Our interest is assessing differences in dry season water flow, when lack of water becomes the limiting factor for agricultural productivity. By assessing relative wet season/dry season flows within each micro watershed, we will factor out differences in the size of the watersheds. Student Alex Carrasco is currently assessing and measuring dry season stream flow in eight micro watersheds that have approximately the same wet season stream flow. We hypothesize that in the dry season, when rainfall is much lower, the watersheds that still have forest cover will produce significantly more water than those that do not. To measure this effect we will construct weirs and measuring stations in each micro-watershed and collect data on stream flow for one year.

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