Beans, milking machines and microloans

The Goascorán River originates at about 2,300m above sea level in the Honduran mountains and flows for 130km before draining into the Gulf of Fonseca in the Pacific Ocean. Its river basin covers about 2,600 square kilometres, an area equivalent to the canton of Ticino. The climate is characterized by long dry seasons in winter and torrential rains in summer that cause landslides and floods.

Such extreme weather events have increased due to climate change, which has also led to more frequent and destructive hurricanes in Central America. "This development has highlighted the vulnerability of the river basin, which plays a vital role in many ecosystems and the lives of people," says Mayra Espinoza, SDC programme manager in Tegucigalpa.

The Goascorán basin community-based management programme is centred on a multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach. The regional council and 22 local councils are responsible for water management. Based on a general analysis, they manage the watershed, water resources, climate change adaptation measures and disaster risk reduction (DRR). Espinoza states that the programme benefits about 20,000 families from 17 municipalities. "A key instrument is the plan de finca. Local families and councils participate in deciding suitable measures and technologies to protect natural resources in the medium and long term."

The programme promotes a range of measures that can be implemented by the communities and individual farmers to strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. These measures include reforestation, planting commercial tree species, waste management, water and wastewater management, the use of metal silos for winter storage as well as crop diversification and crop rotation. The cultivation of new varieties, such as the high-yielding, heat-resistant and disease-resistant Amadeus bean is also promoted. This bean variety has been successfully grown on 24 farms leading to better harvests and living conditions for the families.

Luciano Mejía is a smallholder farmer who lives in the upper zone of the Goascorán basin. He grows grain for his family on his 20-hectare farm and raises dairy cows. A business plan outlines a series of measures to improve the family's income. "Thanks to the support provided through the programme I was able to build a milking barn and a water trough," says Mejía. He has also started growing alfalfa because it prevents cow manure from seeping into the village well. In the summer, he uses drip irrigation. Through his membership in the Nuevo Amanecer (new dawn) agricultural cooperative, he received a loan to buy a mower to make fodder for his cattle.

Not far from where Mejía lives, 24 women of the Las Golondrinas (the swallows) community set up the Esperanza del Futuro rural cooperative bank with financial assistance from the SDC. "For smallholder families, local cooperatives are a very important avenue for obtaining microloans that are usually denied to them by larger banks," says Espinoza. But Esperanza del Futuro does much more than facilitate savings and loans: it provides a space for joint activities. Women are able to share their knowledge and experiences, thus strengthening social solidarity.

Francis Rosibel Euceda, one of the founders, explains that she has learned to administer loans and run a savings bank or a business: "These skills are very useful and allow me to improve the quality of services for my clients."

Doris Suyapa Moreno, a member of the cooperative bank, says that the loan helped her to implement soil conservation methods that she learnt in the courses offered by experts under the SDC programme. "I was able to increase yield and consequently the amount of fodder for my animals. This in turn improved my family's quality of life," she reports.

In 2024, the Swiss bilateral cooperation programme in South America will be phased out after 40 years. Humanitarian aid programmes in Central America will remain active. The programme for the community-based management of the Goascorán basin wound up in March 2023. It was so successful that the Honduran government declared the region a model for natural resource management for the entire country.

Numerous events were organised at the local and national level during the phasing-out period from January to March 2023. "Our goal is to manage the responsible phasing out of Swiss bilateral cooperation in Honduras and ensure that capitalisation, knowledge transfer and the long-term impact of the programme are maintained to allow positive lessons learned to be applied elsewhere as well," says Espinoza.