By Aishwarya Bajpai
NEW DELHI, Mar 21 2025 – While a local community prides itself on caring for a sensitive biodiverse region, and despite centuries-long stewardship of the Kaziranga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the authorities rebuff—sometimes aggressively—their attempts to remain involved.

Now the broader community, living close to tiger conservancies, has the threat of a wholesale eviction to contend with too.

“We take pride in the fact that the communities around Kaziranga have sacrificed so much to preserve this special biodiverse region. It is one of the areas where communities have sacrificed to protect one-horned rhinoceroses, tigers, and elephants and share a symbiotic relationship with them,” Pranab Doyle, convenor of Greater Kaziranga Land and Human Rights Committee and founder of All Kaziranga Affected Communities’ Rights Committee, says.

“But the forest department or the modern conservation industry is very antithetical to the way communities look at shared spaces.”

Kaziranga, a national park and a tiger project in Assam, India, is famous for the conservation of the Indian one-horned rhinoceros.

According to an article published in 2019, 102 one-horned rhinoceroses were killed in various parks in India between 2008 and 2018. There are also statistics for the number of poachers killed (40) and arrested (194). A more recent article says that in 2022 no rhinos were killed in the park. Rhinos in Asia and Africa are often poached for their horns, which are used in traditional medicine in some Asian countries.

Despite the success in combating poaching, the community faces conflict due to the wildlife authorities’ strong-arm tactics.

The community says there was a time when wildlife sanctuaries were used for grazing animals, as playgrounds, and for food baskets, and the community shared their crops with the animals living there.

However, because of the power vested in the forestry department, only wildlife or the department’s agenda is given consideration, the community says.

“This has led to a very militarized process in Kaziranga where multiple lines of military establishments are set in the name of protecting wildlife. There are special task forces, forest battalions, commando task forces, and the use of modern techniques of vigilance and armory in the name of poaching,” Doyle says.

Consequently, authorities often resort to victimizing people.

In 2010, a special power was given to the Indian Forest Service, where they were given immunity from prosecution when confronting poachers.

“In the year 2010, the Government conferred the power to use arms by forest officials and immunity to forest staff in the use of firearms under Section 197 (2) of the CrPC, 1973,” according to a press statement released in 2017.

Doyle disputes the official statistics and claims that since 2010, more than 100 people have died because of this law. He says that although there should be executive magistrate inquiries into it legally, there have been none.

According to the Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism website, investigations have included probes into poaching syndicates.

The strong-arm tactics used by the authorities result in a tense relationship.

“We have been constantly fighting against it, and as a result, the forest department treats us as their enemies. Instead of looking at us as people whose rights have been violated and giving us the opportunity to dialogue, they are treating us as criminals and have put multiple cases on us,” Doyle says. “We cannot go fishing in our own lakes, cultivate our own lands, and collect some basic minor forest products, which are traditionally a part of our culture, thereby annihilating everything that is our identity.”

According to the community, the authorities often cancel public meetings despite prior commitments and retaliate with legal action when pressured through mass agitation.

What is more concerning is the eviction of indigenous communities from around tiger protection reserves by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

Doyle claims that they want to evict 64,000 families from 54 tiger reserves in the country. Since 1972, the Indian government has evicted 56,247 families from 751 villages across 50 tiger reserves, according to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) data from 2019. The move has led to petitions and protests.

He says the law doesn’t give them the authority to pass an order of this magnitude.

“We as communities who live with tigers, elephants, and rhinos and have been living there for generations, strongly demand this order be revoked. It should be immediately taken into cognizance by all the bodies that claim to protect Indigenous rights and make the forest department accountable for it.”

Dr. Ashok Dhawale, President, of the All India Kisan Sabha and Polit Bureau Member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), says the exclusionary forest conservation measures that began during British colonization continued after independence.

“The (colonialist) government took control of the forests, seizing them from our tribal people. Although the forests had always belonged to the tribes, who protected them for generations, independence brought little change.

People expected that the forest lands would be returned to the tribal communities, but what was enacted was the Forest Conservation Act of 1980.

This law focused on conserving forests, not on protecting the rights of the people who had safeguarded them for centuries.

“To address this historical injustice—explicitly acknowledged in the act’s preamble—the Forest Rights Act was passed by Parliament in 2006 after immense struggles across the country. This landmark legislation sought to ensure that Adivasis (tribals) were granted ownership of the lands they have tilled and nurtured for generations.”

But since then, India has introduced laws and amendments that undermine the rights of tribal and forest communities.  The Jan Vishwas—People’s Promise, (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023, aims to decriminalize and rationalize offenses to promote trust-based governance and facilitate ease of living and doing business. However, it also significantly enhances the powers of forest officers, raising concerns about its impact on the rights and livelihoods of these vulnerable communities.

Another major amendment, the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980, now known as Van Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan Adhiniyam, enforced from December 1, 2023, has emphasized national security in the guise of implementing projects of national importance leading to heavy militarization in the respective areas, Dhawale says.

Madhuri Krishnaswami from Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan (Awakened Tribal Dalit Community), Madhya Pradesh, says that all these legislative changes are designed to undermine the Forest Rights Act 2006.

Krishnaswami says that capital-driven business expansion harms the climate, yet ecologically sensitive communities are unfairly burdened with the blame.

Doyle adds that the relationship of indigenous communities with the land is deeply rooted.

“The survival and health of the land and environment depend on people acting as stewards to care for them—a fact proven throughout history. Instead of empowering communities to preserve and improve their environment, the state is evicting them under the pretext of climate degradation. This approach must be entirely rethought and redesigned to prioritize and support the very people who hold the solutions to combating climate change.”

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Chile’s goat tradition began in 1544. Now, despite a prolonged drought, the women herders are adapting it to climate change and producing award-winning cheese.

By Lyla Mehta
BRIGHTON, UK, Mar 21 2025 – The principle of leaving no one behind is central to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The progress toward achieving SDG 6, which aims to ensure universal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene by 2030 is increasingly under threat with recent development funding cuts posing a significant barrier.

As humanitarian funding diminishes, vital water and sanitation projects, especially in low-income and crisis-affected regions, are facing severe setbacks. This World Water Day, humanitarian efforts are at a critical juncture and the consequences of inadequate support could leave millions without basic human rights of clean water and safe sanitation, further hindering global development.

Since Donald Trump took office for the second time, the US has cut close to 90% of its USAID budget with massive implications for global health, life-saving humanitarian efforts, water and food systems. Followed by the US budget cut, British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer announced a budget cut to the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) from 0.5% of the gross national income to 0.3%, ostensibly to beef-up defence spending – (this is well below the UN’s 0.7% target for ODA contributions). Other European countries like the Netherlands, France and Switzerland have also slashed their aid budgets.

These cuts have a huge impact on basic needs such as clean water and sanitation as some of the poorest countries in the world depend on USAID for over a fifth of their total assistance – making up about 11% of their income. The recent USAID cuts have left 50,000 people in Colombia, more than 270,000 people in Mali, and more than 400,000 people in Northern Burkina Faso without access to basics such as clean water.

There is a lot to criticise about foreign aid, not least due to how increasing amounts have been diverted to serve national or business interests, sometimes never leaving the donor country in the first place, such as the UK government spending ODA on housing asylum seekers.

Yet we must not forget that aid saves lives, about 3.3 million people per year from USAID alone according to recent estimates. The implications will be catastrophic for countries already struggling to meet their SDG targets. Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) targets under SDG 6 face particular challenges.

Back in 2020, UNICEF and WHO stated that “With only 10 years left until 2030, the rate at which sanitation coverage is increasing will need to quadruple if the world is to achieve the SDG sanitation targets”. Sanitation is already one of the most off-track SDGs. With these cuts, it’s very unlikely that sanitation coverage can be quadrupled to meet the SDG targets.

Globally, 800,000 children die every year due to diarrheal disease. According to WHO, 44% of children with diarrhoea in low-income countries receive the recommended treatment with little progress since 2000. As diarrheal disease burden ramps up on children and other vulnerable communities, morbidity and mortality will increase, not decline.

Recently, the Gates Foundation abruptly stopped its support for City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS), a programme that has played a critical role in promoting non-sewered sanitation systems in many parts of the global South. This has already had consequences on the 1.5 billion people without access to sanitation.

Everybody sh..ts, and the sh..t needs to be safely contained, especially in rapidly urbanising areas of the global South, as found by the Towards Brown Gold research project. Clean water is crucial for human wellbeing, planetary health and our agricultural and industrial economies.

Poor access to water and sanitation has serious implications for climate adaptation, girls’ education as well as food, health and nutrition security.

The aid cuts from the global North could also mean that global South nations find ways to prioritise and support basic services in their own countries, rather than rely on aid. But this is a long-term project and requires substantial political -economic rewiring. In the short-term, Ugandans are already reeling with thousands of jobs being lost, supply chains affected and wider economic ripples felt throughout the economy.

The looming end of the global consensus on the need for egalitarianism, humanitarianism and solidarity for the poorest and most vulnerable should terrify all of us. Yet these trends are not new. Under Boris Johnson at the height of the global pandemic, the UK already cut the WASH budget by 80% in 2021.

The cut of about £4 Billion (from £150 Million in 2019 to £30 million in WASH 2021) alone plunged millions around the world into water insecurity and led to unnecessary illness and deaths, especially of children.

Since October 2023, Israel has deprived aid to two million Palestinians living in Gaza and denied them even the barest minimum access to water and sanitation. The denial of fuel and electricity has led to a collapse in desalination plants, reducing water supplies for drinking, washing, and sanitation.

This deliberate denial of basic rights to water and sanitation has led to thousands of deaths, over and above 60,000 deaths due to malnutrition (also linked to lack of access to WASH).

By insufficiently condemning or sanctioning Israel due to these gross violations of established international law and global human rights, the Gaza genocide has revealed the callousness and hypocrisy of the global North and the wider international community. Current aid cuts build on this callous indifference and dehumanisation of black and brown lives in the Middle East, Africa and beyond.

While the US Government appears proud to destroy USAID due to the nationalist ‘America First project, we expect better from European countries. The UK government’s aid cuts are morally vacuous and indefensible. For one, the UK looks diminished on the global stage, especially in the eyes of emerging economies and the majority world.

You can’t ‘save the world’ from security threats if insecurities increase – and economic and social insecurities breed political insecurity. The UK and other European nations need to listen to Keynes’ advice from 1941 and further tax the super-wealthy of which there are many.

This is a less painful way to meet increased defence and social spending without compromising on aid budgets and the basic rights including access to clean water and sanitation of the world’s most vulnerable people. We all share the same global system, after all.

Professor Lyla Mehta is a Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and a Visiting Professor at Noragric, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She trained as a sociologist (University of Vienna) and has a PhD in Development Studies (University of Sussex). Her work focuses on the water and sanitation, climate change, transformation, rights, resource grabbing and the politics of sustainability, scarcity and uncertainty.

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By External Source
Williamsburg, VA, USA, Mar 21 2025 – Tuberculosis (TB), caused by the aerophilic intracellular obligate pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is a globally endemic bacterial infection transmitted person-to-person through airborne droplets. Although fully preventable and curable, TB remains a persistent global health challenge and is projected to be a leading infectious disease by 2025.

Since its discovery in 1882, TB has claimed over one billion lives, continuing to be a deadly threat worldwide. While TB has been overshadowed by recent health crises such as COVID-19, it continues to be a leading cause of death in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

While it’s unclear yet if global TB funding will eventually be restored, this disruption could reverse years of progress, increase mortality rates, and cause a resurgence of TB in vulnerable populations across the world

Mortality rates in these regions are significantly impacted by a lack of access to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. The Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), followed by the agency’s shutdown, threatens decades of progress in TB efforts.

USAID, a leading donor providing about one-third of international TB funding, supports services through various partners. The abrupt cessation of support poses an existential challenge in high-burden TB countries, risking program shutdowns and leaving millions without essential TB services.

While it is unclear yet if the funding will eventually be restored, this disruption could reverse years of progress, increase mortality rates, and cause a resurgence of TB in vulnerable populations, severely affecting the overall TB treatment cascade.

TB is a challenging disease to diagnose, treat, and control. The dwindling resources and loss of public health capacity, coupled with existing limited access to care and difficulties maintaining both clinical and public health experts, exacerbate these challenges.

Currently, the only approved vaccine for TB is the century-old Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, which is widely used despite its inconsistent effectiveness in adults.

The emergence of drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in geographically distinct communities remains an emerging concern. This is further compounded by a complex interplay of factors, including exposure to anti-TB drugs during treatment, person-to-person transmission, global travel, and inadequate TB care.

Anti-TB drugs, such as isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide, and ethambutol, are essential for treating TB, but improper or incomplete use can lead to drug resistance.

These challenges are even more pronounced among Africa’s 268 million nomadic pastoralists. This is driven by a combination of individual behaviors, community beliefs, and systemic deficits, uniquely impacting nomadic communities and increasing their vulnerability to TB infection and spread.

Their mobility, driven by the need for water and pasture across different ecological zones, complicates TB control efforts. This mobility disrupts consistent treatment, delays diagnoses, and facilitates the spread of drug-resistant TB strains.

Additionally, cultural norms and preconceived ideas about TB lead many individuals to actively avoid TB diagnoses by refusing to seek treatment after exposure or when symptoms emerge.

The general treatment for TB requires at least six months of antibiotics, meaning that individuals must maintain access to health services for this entire period. With the everyday demands of life, this is a lot to ask of anyone. But, for those in nomadic communities, this long treatment period is nearly impossible to achieve because their migratory lifestyles often prevent them from receiving long-term care at a single healthcare facility.

The lack of healthcare-seeking behaviors among individuals can partly be attributed to social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. TB is a common co-infection of HIV/AIDS, leading to the belief that someone infected with the bacteria causing TB must also be infected with this virus, extending existing stigma against HIV patients to those with TB.

Finally, at the healthcare system level, some of the most significant TB care challenges are prompt detection, consistent treatment, and case profiling.

The healthcare system must address these challenges to improve TB outcomes, particularly in nomadic communities where mobility and cultural factors complicate access to care. Ensuring timely diagnosis and maintaining consistent treatment are critical to controlling the spread of TB and preventing the development of drug-resistant strains.

Effective case profiling can help tailor interventions to the specific needs of different communities, ultimately improving health outcomes and reducing the burden of TB.

While it’s unclear yet if global TB funding will eventually be restored, this disruption could reverse years of progress, increase mortality rates, and cause a resurgence of TB in vulnerable populations across the world.

As the world steps up efforts to end the global epidemic on March 24, 2025, addressing these challenges is more crucial than ever.

Caroline Mullen, Pablo Troop, and Brenna Keam are Research Assistants in the Ignite Lab. Dr. Julius Odhiambo is an Assistant Professor of Public Health. Ignite Lab is a multidisciplinary research lab based at the William & Mary Global Research Institute and focuses on the effective, efficient, and equitable distribution of global health resources.

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 21 2025 – Over the past two decades, conversations surrounding mental wellness have entered the cultural consciousness in the western world. Despite this, these topics receive far less media exposure in the Global South, particularly in areas that have been entrenched in warfare, where the onset of harmful mental health conditions are prevalent.

Protracted warfare often hit women and children the hardest, with poverty, food insecurity, a cessation of schooling, disease outbreaks, and social stigma compounding levels of psychological distress in these populations. According to estimates from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), over 473 million children currently live in conflict-affected areas, the largest numbers since World War II.

In areas that have experienced long-term bouts of warfare, such as the Gaza Strip, the limited availability of resources and humanitarian aid has made living conditions nearly inhospitable. Since 2023, routine bombardment in Gaza has decimated homes and other critical infrastructures, spurred widespread displacement, and led to the dwindling of basic services, such as food, clean water, healthcare, and education.

“Children in war zones face a daily struggle for survival that deprives them of a childhood,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Their schools are bombed, homes destroyed, and families torn apart. They lose not only their safety and access to basic life-sustaining necessities, but also their chance to play, to learn, and to simply be children,” added Russell.

According to UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram, roughly 100 percent of the children in Gaza urgently require psychosocial support. The absence of formal schooling for over a year in the enclave has greatly exacerbated rates of mental distress in children.

Education is considered a fundamental human right, and is a necessary tool that assists in the mental and social development of children. Without education, children are deprived of an environment in which they can build critical skills and emotional intelligence, which will help them navigate the harsh conditions of war.

“Education is the only asset the Palestinian people have not been dispossessed of. They have proudly invested in the education of their children in the hope for a better future. Today, more than 625,000 deeply traumatised school-aged children are living in the rubble in Gaza. Bringing them back to learning should be our collective priority. Failing to do that will not only lead to a lost generation but also sow the seeds for more extremism, hatred and violence”, said Philippe Lazzarini, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner General.

The societal impacts of war on mental health can also be seen in Haiti. Widespread gang violence has created an environment that enables perpetrators to commit sexual violence, which most often tagrets women and girls, and receive almost guaranteed impunity. Social stigma and fear of reprisals often prevents victims from seeking justice or receiving physical and psychosocial healthcare.

“Exposure to this level of violence impacts children in a multitude of ways. They are victims first and foremost. Those who have (experienced) horrendous abuses will require support to deal with the mental trauma or the consequences of that as they go forward in their lives. They will need psycho-social support and access to reintegration and rehabilitation, much like demobilized child soldiers in other parts of the world,” said William O’Neill, the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner’s Designated Expert on Haiti, in a recent interview in Geneva.

Additionally, exposure to protracted conflict and large-scale devastation is correlated with the onset of a host of mental health conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and even personality or psychotic disorders.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), almost all people affected by conflict will experience some form of mental distress as a result. A study conducted by WHO states that among the sample size, roughly 22 percent of people who have been exposed to war or conflict from 2012 to 2022, roughly 22 percent will have depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Furthermore, 10 percent of people who are exposed to traumatic war conditions will develop behaviors that will disrupt their daily lives including psychosomatic problems, insomnia, and stomach aches.

A common byproduct of war is displacement, which is also correlated to the onset of detrimental mental health conditions. In a study conducted by Matthew Porter and Nick Haslam titled, Predisplacement and postdisplacement factors associated with mental health of refugees and internally displaced persons: a meta-analysis, worldwide populations of refugees and non-displaced persons were examined.

The results indicated that displaced or refugee populations were significantly more likely to develop “poorer psychopathological outcomes” than non-displaced persons. The study underscored the importance of education, socioeconomic status, access to essential resources, positive economic development and suitable living conditions, all of which are detrimentally impacted or eliminated entirely by protracted conflict.

It is crucial for civilians who have experienced worsened mental health in protracted crises to have access to psychosocial support. The onset of harmful mental health conditions often results in dangerous behaviors such as aggression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse, all of which exacerbate humanitarian crises. The availability of psychosocial support is an essential first step in fostering redevelopment and recovery.

“I do not see the provision of mental health and psychosocial support as less important than providing a child and his/her family with shelter and food. On the contrary, mental health and psychosocial support should always be an integral part of any response that aims to ensure children’s optimal development and wellbeing in emergencies. Moreover, it is important to integrate a mental health and psychosocial support lens into the delivery of services designed to meet basic needs such as food or shelter – for example, ensuring that food distribution uses methods that are empowering, participatory, and promote dignity,” said Aaron Greenberg, UNICEF’s Senior Regional Advisor for Europe and Central Asia.

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By Edgardo Ayala
CANDELARIA DE LA FRONTERA, El Salvador , Mar 21 2025 – The hope of Salvadoran Cristian Castillo to harvest tomatoes in a municipality of the Central American Dry Corridor hung by a thread when his well, which he used to irrigate his crops, dried up. However, his enthusiasm returned when a regional project taught him how to harvest rainwater for when the rains begin in May.

“We are waiting for May to start collecting rainwater and begin planting again,” Castillo, 36, told IPS. He is a resident of Paraje Galán, a rural village of 400 families in the district of Candelaria de la Frontera, in western El Salvador.”Here we have artisanal wells, but they are no longer enough, and when the water project came, we were thrilled because we would finally have water all the time”: Gladis Chamuca

This district is located in the so-called Central American Dry Corridor, where water is always scarce, affecting agriculture, livestock, and other livelihoods of rural families.

The 1,600-kilometer-long Corridor spans 35% of Central America and is home to over 10.5 million people.

In it, more than 73% of the rural population lives in poverty, and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Central America is a region of seven nations, with a population of 50 million people and significant social deficiencies.

However, Candelaria de la Frontera and its surrounding villages are part of the Trinational Border Municipal Association of the Lempa River, a regional, non-governmental effort that brings together a total of 25 municipalities: 11 from Guatemala, 10 from Honduras, and four from El Salvador.

Due to their proximity, these localities have joined forces to promote sustainable development projects in their territories. Local governments are the backbone of the initiative, but professionals in various fields are involved in its operational, executive, and administrative management.

Cristian Castillo benefits from a rainwater harvesting system installed on his nearly one-hectare plot in Paraje Galán, a rural village of 400 families in the western Salvadoran district of Candelaria de la Frontera. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Water for Food Security

Projects on food security and integrated water management and governance, among others, are what this initiative promotes in this region of the Dry Corridor, where producing food is always a challenge.

These programs helped Castillo, like dozens of other families, receive  materials to build a water catchment tank. Its metal roof will serve as the surface to “harvest” rainwater and redirect it to the tank, which can store 10 cubic meters of water, equivalent to about 50 water drums.

“All that collected rainwater will be pumped to the upper part of the property where the tomato crop is,” said Castillo, sitting next to the tank, which is already built and is only lacking the roof.

Castillo estimates that, with this system, his nearly one-hectare property can produce about 100 boxes of tomatoes per harvest, each weighing 13 kilograms. He hopes to sell them and generate income for his family: his wife and three daughters, aged 4, 11, and 13.

For Gladis Chamuca, 57, life is easier when water comes directly from the tap, thanks to a community water project in the village of Cristalina, in Candelaria de la Frontera. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The rainwater harvesting system will also allow him to save the US$40 he pays monthly to the community water system, which charges US$5 per cubic meter. With this water, he has been able to irrigate and keep his tomato plants alive, which already show green fruits, while waiting for the rainy season in May.

When the dry season arrives in November, the farmer will be able to keep his crops productive thanks to the water stored in the tank.

But Castillo might also need to rely on the tank during drought periods, even during the rainy season.

In the July heatwave, farmers can go more than 20 days without rain, explained agroecologist Arturo Amaya, who is in charge of the demonstration farm that the municipal association maintains in Candelaria de la Frontera.

Since 2017, the farm has been a demonstration site for agroecological production. Families from the involved municipalities come here to learn various techniques for harvesting with organic fertilizers and other bio-inputs produced on-site.

They also teach how to build tanks like the one installed on Castillo’s property. Members of environmental organizations and students, among other groups, also visit the farm.

“One of the main policies of the association is the promotion of zero hunger, meaning developing food and nutritional security through food production with an environmental conservation approach,” said Amaya.

The Trinational Border Municipal Association of the Lempa River participated in the installation of a potable water tank that supplies around a hundred families in the village of Cristalina, in western El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Saving the Lempa River

The municipal association, established in 2007, is an autonomous entity born out of the need for local border governments to generate programs and actions that alleviate socio-environmental conditions in the territories, explained Héctor Aguirre, the general manager of the initiative, to IPS.

The water component is key in the association’s actions, and the central focus revolves around the Lempa River, which flows 422 kilometers from its source in the mountains of Chiquimula in eastern Guatemala, through southern Honduras, and into El Salvador, where it runs from north to south until it reaches the Pacific Ocean.

The Lempa is the main source of energy, powering hydroelectric dams, and is also a source of agricultural, livestock, and water development for millions of people in these countries, especially in El Salvador. Of the river’s course, 85% is in El Salvador.

However, the river faces pollution and overexploitation issues.

“In this region shared by the three countries there is considerable water production, but there are also difficulties in supporting the local population,” Aguirre noted.

With projects like rainwater harvesting, farming families have been taught that water resources can be reused in agricultural production, especially horticulture, making the territories more resilient to the climatic conditions of the Dry Corridor, Aguirre explained.

The various programs are funded through three avenues: the participating municipalities pay a monthly fee, international cooperation, and the institution provides services to the associated local governments, such as creating technical portfolios or designing projects.

“The sum of these resources allows us to provide an integrated, structured, and harmonized service as an action from local governments,” Aguirre stated.

The governments of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are simultaneously promoting a similar development program called the Trifinio Plan, referring to the geographical point where the three borders meet.

However, these plans are subject to political ups and downs and depend on the ideological vision of the party in power in these nations, making the programs unstable, said Aguirre.

In contrast, in the municipal association, everyone is committed to the same goal.

For example, Carlos Portillo, mayor of Esquipulas in eastern Guatemala, emphasized that as a municipality, they are seeking financially viable options to treat the town’s wastewater to prevent further pollution of the Lempa River.

“We want to support the search for solutions that prevent the contamination of these important water resources,” Portillo told IPS during a meeting attended by mayors from the three countries, international cooperation agencies, and environmental groups.

The meeting, organized by the association, was held in San Salvador on March 14.

A section of the Lempa River in the department of Chalatenango, in northern El Salvador. This river is key for food and water production in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Water for All

Another important project of the association was the installation of a drinking water distribution tank that provides water to about a hundred families who previously lacked this benefit in the village of Cristalina, still within the jurisdiction of Candelaria de la Frontera.

The project, initiated in November 2019, led to the formation of the Water Board in this rural community dedicated to subsistence agriculture.

These boards are community organizations that set up their own water systems, as the central government fails to provide the service to these remote villages. It is estimated that there are about 2,500 such structures throughout the country, providing service to 25% of the population, or around 1.6 million people.

The FAO and the city councils of Barcelona and Valencia in Spain, among other institutions, participated in the construction of the system.

In Cristalina, water is pumped from a well to a 25-cubic-meter tank, perched on a 20-meter-high platform supported by eight cement pillars. From there, it flows by gravity to the taps of families, who pay about US$7 for 13 cubic meters per month.

“Here we have artisanal wells, but they are no longer sufficient, and when the water project came, we were thrilled because we would finally have water all the time,” Gladis Chamuca, a resident of Cristalina, told IPS.

Chamuca, 57, who is a homemaker, said life is easier when water comes directly from the tap.

Her neighbor, Juan Flores, added that the system has worked very well so far, thanks to the good coordination and communication among the board members, of which he is the chairman.

Flores, 72, is also engaged in pig farming and uses pig manure to produce fertilizer for his tomato and cabbage gardens.

“Here it’s a horticultural area: chilies, cucumbers, tomatoes. People are asking me about the fertilizer because it’s 100% organic,” he said.

For all of this, water has been key, he stresses.