Main beneficiaries & outcomes
Beneficiaries to the solutions include approximately 730 direct beneficiaries of the Mixteque community, who depend on the water generated in the micro-watershed. Additionally, there are also 5991 and 19634 indirect beneficiaries in the capital parish of Mucuchíes and the municipality of Rangel, respectively.
The beneficiary population consists of peasant-mestizo communities whose livelihoods are based mainly on agricultural activities, paid off-farm agricultural work, commerce, construction and transportation. Because of its proximity to the capital parish of Mucuchíes, the inhabitants of Mixteque have good access to basic health services, sanitation, and basic and university education. Mixteque's population is characterized by high levels of participation and organization, especially in irrigation committees and producer groups, which has allowed most producers to have access to drinking water and sprinkler irrigation.
Initiatives for the management and conservation of paramos and wetlands, including the fencing and exclusion of cattle or the management of community vermiculture, have been led by two female community leaders, ecologists and popular educators, Ligia Parra and María Vicenta Dávila, whose work was strengthened by the interventions of the PPA, in which these women leaders continued to lead.
Planning and implementation
Environmental Coordinators Association of the Municipality of Rangel (ACAR): Local organization that leads initiatives for the protection and rehabilitation of wetlands through their partial or total enclosure/fencing to exclude cattle and horse grazing, while promoting their rehabilitation through reforestation with native paramo species.
Andean Paramo Project (PPA): A regional initiative that worked for the conservation and sustainable use of the paramos of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. It was led by the Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion (CONDESAN) with different implementing partners in each country. The PPA was financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) through the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The PPA provided technical and financial support for many of the initiatives for the management, conservation and monitoring of the paramos and wetlands, as part of the strategies in the Mixteque-Gavidia pilot site.
Institute of Environmental and Ecological Sciences of the Universidad de los Andes (ICAE): Executing partner of the PPA in Venezuela. It has been providing technical and academic support to the community since the PPA, in the socioeconomic-environmental assessments, involving as well professors and students in the research processes such as participatory mapping/zoning, hydrometeorological monitoring, water balances, analysis of the impact of grazing exclusion practices in wetlands, rotational grazing and ecosystem rehabilitation.
Irrigation committees: strategic actors at the local level, whose own initiatives for paramo conservation and wetland fencing, mainly focused on guaranteeing water availability and quality for users in the middle and lower part of the micro-watershed, have been the basis for the development of other adaptation initiatives in the micro-watershed and motivated participation and replication in other communities in Venezuela, such as Gavidia and Túname.
Community Councils: Organizational bodies of the local population promoted by the State to facilitate local participation in the planning and execution of public policy. They have been the link between the executing and implementing bodies and the community, allowing for better participation and involvement of the local population in the different CCA initiatives.
Small agricultural producers and other community members: Direct beneficiaries who have received technical assistance, training, equipment and infrastructure as part of the adaptation measures agreed and prioritized through participatory processes.
Finance
The GEF through UNEP was the main funding entity for the different CCA initiatives that the PPA designed and implemented in Mixteque. Approximately 50,000 USD were invested, half of which was allocated for research and equipment activities (installation of the hydrometeorological and water balance monitoring system, ecosystem rehabilitation, participatory mapping/zoning, controlled rotational grazing in pastures), and the remaining half in the implementation of different CCA practices (support for some wetland fencing activities and impact assessment, paramo and hillside restoration with native species, agroecology, prevention of soil and water contamination through the recycling of agrochemical containers and pilot wastewater treatment plants, recovery of traditions and cultural identity focused on ecotourism processes).
It is important to emphasize that the local population, especially through the irrigation committees, have led the wetland fencing activities, financing the participation of community members (mobilization, labor, food) and providing fencing materials (wooden posts and barbed wire).
Innovation
The most relevant innovative aspect of CCA initiatives in Mixteque has been the involvement of the local population in the planning, analysis, design, implementation and monitoring of the different adaptation measures identified and prioritized through participatory processes that involved key actors at the local, national, public and private levels. These included irrigation committees, community councils, producer groups, NGOs ( Popular Education Center for the Integral Development of the Family (CEPDIF), ACAR, Integral Producers of the Paramo (PROINPA), local educational institutions (school and college of Mixteque), academia (ICAE), public entities (National Institute of Parks of Venezuela (INPARQUES), and the Ministry of People's Power for the Environment (MOPE), and the National Institute of Parks of Venezuela (INPARQUES); Ministry of People's Power for the Environment (MINAMB); Ministry of People's Power for Agriculture and Lands (MPPAT), Municipality of Rangel) and the PPA. This participatory space for planning, design and implementation was mainly reflected in the mapping and zoning processes, and in the hydrometeorological monitoring of the páramo and wetlands.
Participatory mapping and zoning is a method for collecting and mapping agricultural and socio-economic information at the farm and community levels. For this purpose, collective workshops are organized in which participants have the opportunity to directly delimit their farm boundaries and their internal sectorization, using large-scale printed remote imagery. The maps obtained are then used to collect detailed and sectorized information (through agricultural and quality of life surveys) on the different socio-economic-productive aspects of each farm and household, with which contextualized interventions can be estimated and designed at different levels (farm, community and territory), such as yield, cultivated area per productive category, animal load, quantity and types of fertilizers applied, irrigated area, economic income diversification, poverty levels, coverage of basic services, etc. The results of participatory mapping, agricultural surveys and surveys of the population's quality of life are the basis for participatory zoning of the territory, which involves participatory analyses where the community's historical processes and vision for the future are analyzed. In turn, this allows the identification of problems and possible conflicts and solutions, which are then used to elaborate the zoning proposals for the territory in different working groups. The most complete and detailed proposal is selected by consensus in a collective workshop. Based on the participatory zoning, a Regulation of Use was established for 12 zoning categories, which was subsequently approved by the irrigation commissions and the Mixteque Communal Council for its application and follow-up.
Besides being highly efficient, reliable and cost-effective, the participatory mapping and zoning method allows the production of digitized cartography of farms, communities and larger territories with an equivalent quality to that generated through field surveys and the use of detailed and specialized agricultural and socioeconomic information.
The main objective of the MHMP was to integrate community members in all phases of the research process (from the selection of the sites to install the monitoring stations, to the installation, collection, interpretation and communication of the collected data) as a strategy to promote the dialogue of knowledge between local empirical knowledge and scientific knowledge related to the hydrological aspects of the micro-watershed, allowing a better understanding of the different socioeconomic, biophysical and environmental aspects of the paramo and the wetlands, both for the local population and for the technical team of ICAE (Universidad de los Andes), which otherwise would not have been explored. The technical team in charge of hydrometeorological monitoring trained members of the irrigation committees and the community (children, adolescents and adults) in the handling of the equipment, data collection, processing, interpretation and publication of data, to be regularly displayed on a bulletin board in the community center. Using these data, extended workshops were organized to train other members of the community in their interpretation and importance in water planning and optimization. These activities were able to involve and make the community more aware of the importance of the monitoring process, allowing them to play a leading role in providing materials and labor for the protection and fencing of the weather stations, and in the construction of a spillway for flow measurement, which involved the temporary diversion of the creek. As a result of this experience, a network of rain gauges and climate stations in the upper part of the Mixteque micro-watershed, protected and monitored with community support, was in place between 2009 and 2018. Additionally, there exists the first and only automated high mountain spillway in the country. This has provided important information for sustainable community management of water resources. Other interesting experience stemming from hydrometeorological monitoring and which reflects the practical aspects of this process focused on solving the problems of local population, was the proposal for the construction of a new communal reservoir tank for irrigation, whose design is based on the hydrological data collected during 3 years of measurements.
In this adaptation initiative, another innovative aspect was the recycling of agrochemical containers, which reduced solid waste in the community, avoiding water and soil contamination, as well as the manufacture of plastic posts (poles) by Maderas Plásticas de Venezuela. These were used as an alternative material for fencing the wetlands, due to their lower cost, ease of transport and greater durability than traditional wooden posts.
Performance evaluation
Long term maintenance and sustainability
The sustainability of the adaptation measures implemented in Mixteque is considerably limited due to the country's socioeconomic and political situation, which has direct repercussions on public, private and community actors, especially in the case of the ICAE-Universidad de los Andes, the irrigation committees and the community councils. Which see reduced their financial and human resources to continue with some important processes such as the MHMP (completely stopped after 2018), the fencing of wetlands, the implementation of the regulations for the use of participatory zoning and rotational grazing practices.
