Latin America; in English (pdf) - Transboundary Freshwater Dispute ...

Lempa River, El Salvador. Photo credit: Katherine Hayden.
The Managing Committee of the San Simón
River basin was officially created in 1999 and
has concentrated its efforts in three municipalities
of the province of Usulután. The Committee is
composed of the municipal mayors, the community
leaders, the local development council’s
representatives, the government and nongovernmental
organizations of the region and
the Geotérmica Salvadoreña representatives
(Alvarez 2001).
2.6.3 International Projects in
Transboundary River Basins
In both Central America and Hispaniola Island
over the last decade, a number of projects have
been executed with the basic purpose of improving
the quality of life and environmental conditions in
transboundary river basins (see Table 2.10 for a
synthesis of these recent projects; also see Appendix
3 for an extended list of current initiatives).
In addition to this real progress, however, the
countries of Central America and Hispaniola
Island must continue to move forward in the
process of consolidating frameworks in order to
promote cooperation and avoid conflicts related
to international waters.
2.7 THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS
IN PREVENTING CONFLICT AND
FOSTERING COOPERATION:
THE LEMPA RIVER BASIN
The Lempa River Basin offers an excellent opportunity
to test the basic premise of this study: that
the likelihood of conflict rises as the rate of
change within the basin exceeds the institutional
capacity to absorb that change (Wolf 2000).
There are four main issues that impact the potential
for environmental conflict in transboundary river
basins: the level of environmental deterioration,
the level of foreign causation of pollution, the
level of dependence of populations on
transboundary waters, and the location of the
countries in the basin (López 2002).
2.7.1 Environmental Change
and Transboundary Cooperation
The Lempa River basin encompasses an area
of about 18,246 km 2 and is divided by the
international boundaries of Guatemala, Honduras,
and El Salvador (Figure 2.2). Years of dense
human settlement and intense land use have
38 — Hydropolitical Vulnerability and Resilience along International Waters: Latin America and the Caribbean