RESUMO
Water scarcity is a global problem that can be compounded by inefficient water management, including underinvestment in infrastructure, underpricing of water use, and underenforcement of user rules. Here, we explore whether these inefficiencies can be reduced in rural Costa Rica via an externally driven community monitoring program (i.e., a program initiated by an outside organization and run by citizens). The monitoring program aimed to reduce groundwater extraction from aquifers, as well as to improve water quality and user satisfaction, by supplying additional information about field conditions and additional scrutiny of user and management authority activities and by fostering citizen engagement in water management. Using a specially designed smartphone application (app) and WhatsApp, monitors could report weekly on the conditions of the water system, including service disruptions, water quality, leaks, and source contamination. The app automatically compiled the individual reports into a summary report, which was then made available to the community water management committees and water users. The program was randomly implemented in 80 of 161 communities that expressed an interest in participating. One year after the program started, we detect modest, albeit imprecisely estimated, effects of the program in the predicted directions: less groundwater extracted, better water quality, and more satisfied users. Although the estimated effects are imprecise, the monitoring program appears to be equally or more cost effective for reducing groundwater extraction than another program in the same region that encouraged households to adopt water-efficient technologies.
Assuntos
Conservação dos Recursos Naturais/métodos , Abastecimento de Água/métodos , Participação da Comunidade , Costa Rica , Monitoramento Ambiental , Água Subterrânea , Humanos , Qualidade da ÁguaRESUMO
Like many small-scale fishing communities around the world, the community of Buen Hombre in the Dominican Republic is dealing with a set of challenges to reconcile its fishing activities with the ecology on which it depends. Also like many such communities, this case has been examined at a particular period in time by a group of social scientists, but not over substantial lengths of time in order to examine the longitudinal validity of the conclusions made during this period. In this paper we combine data from previous anthropological work with our own primary social and ecological data to conduct a longitudinal case study of the Buen Hombre fishery. Our over-time comparison focuses on a suite of mostly social and institutional variables to explain what we find to be a continued degradation of the fishery, and we conclude the analysis by presenting a causal-loop diagram, summarizing our inferences regarding the complex interactions among these variables. We find that a mix of factors, notably changes in gear and fishing sites used, the number of fishermen and their livelihood diversity, as well as an increased connectivity between Buen Hombre and its external environment, have contributed to the decline of the condition of Buen Hombre coral reef fishery. We conclude with a discussion of what may lie ahead for this particular case and others like it.