Dominican Republic: restoring land to secure clean water for millions

When the flow of a tropical island nation’s most important river varies by 80 per cent between the dry and wet seasons, something is amiss. In a conserved watershed, the volume of water only fluctuates by 20 per cent, pointing to the role of healthy lands in trapping and slowly releasing moisture as opposed to having water run off in a flash. 

Such is the predicament of the Northern Yaque river in the Dominican Republic, a mountainous Caribbean country of 10.5 million. Today, water pressure on the river is around 96 per cent, meaning that virtually all the water that the river can be counted on to carry permanently is committed to use by a growing urban population, plantations, and industries. But change, with both short- and long-term gains, is underway.

For the past 15 years, dedicated partnerships convening the civil society, public, and private sectors have come up with sustainable land and water management strategies that work for everybody — smallholders, utilities providers and financiers — creating a blueprint from which others can draw inspiration.

Experts working to rehabilitate the Northern Yaque watershed, which covers 14.6 per cent of the country, talked us through their process and the success factors in improving the water security of more than 1,8 million people, while building drought resilience in the face of climate change. 

Partnering with water users 

The civil society-led Plan for the Development of the Northern Yaque Watershed, or Plan Yaque, convenes 32 civil society and governmental institutions to reforest water catchment areas, train farmers in sustainable land and water management, and help communities treat wastewater before it is released into the river. 

In turn, Plan Yaque is a technical advisor and a key project implementer of the Northern Yaque Water Fund, a financial and governance mechanism launched in 2015 to raise and administer funds for water security in the watershed. 

The Fund, which is one of two such structures in the Dominican Republic, brings together 27 partners, including the Ministry of Environment, universities, and the water utility company of the country’s second largest city, Santiago. Additionally, it involves major users like manufacturing companies and banana, rice, and tobacco producer associations —crucial since agriculture accounts for an estimated 85 per cent of water consumption in the area. 

“The Water Fund is built on the notion that no single stakeholder can do it alone,” says executive director of the Water Fund Walkiria Estévez, who notes that the Dominican Republic is one of the most water stressed countries in the world.

Ensuring financial sustainability

Private sector partners contribute economically to the Fund, while each of the customers of the water utility company of Santiago contributes a small amount. 

The money is then invested in different portfolios and 75 per cent of the profits are used in support of nature-based solutions for water security. The rest is channeled back into the Fund to grow it. But how did the fund get the private sector on board in the first place?

“We don’t speak of donations, but of investments,” says Estévez. “The private sector is investing to secure a crucial input —water— for their operations now and in the future. Ultimately, it is about having users take responsibility for managing a vital resource sustainably.”

Upholding accountability

For Estévez, measuring results, financial accountability, and transparency have been central to gaining and maintaining the trust of partners, as has been starting with low-investment, high-impact interventions that are based on science.

“We did not wait for the trust fund to reach a substantial size to start funding projects and presenting results. That was vital to prove that our model worked and to keep the momentum,” she says. 

However, she notes that continuing to grow the fund is important to bring successful strategies to scale and to support new ones. For example, upcoming trainings to help lowland farmers conserve soils and improve water use efficiency, which currently stands at less than 30 per cent, according to technical project coordinator Alberto Lizardo.

Artificial wetland in the Dominican Republic

Deploying nature-based solutions

One of the star interventions in the watershed are artificial wetlands, treatment systems that use natural processes involving wetland vegetation, soils, and their associated microbial diversity to improve water quality. 

Plan Yaque is the NGO behind the development and implementation of these low-tech, low-maintenance systems, which have proved to be a transformative solution for rural communities. They have so far built 34 of them. 

The wastewater from the septic tanks at homes and schools is channeled to the constructed wetland, where microorganisms, aquatic plants, and sunlight remove more than 90 per cent of the pollutants, before the water is released into the river. Water pollution is, alongside flow reduction, one of the two main issues jeopardizing water security in the basin.

“The nature-based system works wonderfully and does not need inputs or maintenance, beyond removing the sewage sludge every three months, which communities do themselves” says founder and executive director of Plan Yaque Humberto Checo, one of the leading figures in the watershed restoration and management movement in the country. 

Working in micro-watersheds

For Checo, from Plan Yaque, a key to their success is focusing each intervention in selected territories drained by streams, or micro-watersheds, 52 tesserae that collectively make up the river Yaque basin. 

The NGO conducted a diagnosis of the 19 micro-watersheds in the upper basin and prioritized those with both high-water production and imminent threat from the expansion of the agricultural frontier, which leads to deforestation and the loss of the natural systems that maintain an adequate water flow. 

Then, they identified key farms or producer associations and set out to demonstrate why shifting from slash-and-burn agriculture to self-sustaining forestry and agroforestry systems was in their best interest.

Changing mindsets 

“Changing mindsets to transform land management one family at a time is the most important part of the whole strategy, and our most important learning,” says Checo.

Short cycle crops like corn, sweet potatoes, and yuca mean that farmers must toil incessantly into their old age to make a living, he says, whereas planting macadamia nut trees, orchards, and even coffee ensures a good source of future income with minimal effort while regenerating the soil and protecting water catchment areas. Land use planning across the farm is part of the approach.

Parched, denuded hills of the farmers who continued with business as usual 15 years ago now stand next to the stunningly verdant slopes of those who opted to shift to more sustainable agricultural practices, reviving the landscape and building economic security for present and future generations along the way. These type of efforts largely account for the rise of the Dominican Republic as a global land restoration hotspot.

“Sustainability lies in this newly gained awareness of the need to care, together, for the natural systems that sustain us,” says Estévez of the Water Fund. This is what we ultimately strive for.”

Bringing what works to scale

Plan Yaque has also pioneered a payment for ecosystem services scheme (PES) with support from hydropower and water providers, and the country recently passed its first law on PES. 

The next challenge, says Checo, is bringing this and other internationally lauded, science-based initiatives to micro-watersheds across the country.

“After decades of experience in watershed restoration and protection, we have evidence on what works,” says Checo. “With the right policies and investments, we could bring this expertise to scale while supporting the next generation of landscape professionals.”