Dialogue on Water and Climate

Coping with Climate Variability in a Transboundary 

Basin in Central America

Characterization of the Climate, Climate Variability, and Socio-Economic Conditions in the San Juan River Basin

Introduction

During the second half of 2002, the Ministries of Environment of the governments of Costa Rica and Nicaragua initiated activities to identify and describe the coping mechanisms of the governments, institutions, populations and households in the San Juan River Basin (SJRB) when confronted with the negative aspects of climate variability. The work was financed with support from the Government of the Netherlands through the International Secretariat of the Dialogue on Water and Climate and with the technical assistance of the OAS/OSDE. It is based on the on-going work of the PROCUENCA-SAN JUAN project of these two ministries and the OAS/OSDE with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) through the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP.)

Problems associated with extreme events of climate variability generally strike first and strongest on the poor. Because of this, the first task in this IS/DWC study was to characterize the climate, climate variability and the socio-economic conditions in the SJRB. This report is the result of that initial step, which had as its main objective, to identify those geographic areas and socio-economic sectors of the SJRB that suffer most from the occurrence of extreme climatic events—particularly as related to water, its sources, quality, delivery systems, and conservation. Furthermore, since the PROCUENCA-SAN JUAN project uses the participation of civil society in its planning process, and emphasizes the roles of gender and youth in its deliberations and action programs, these will also be looked at during the analysis. The areas and sectors described as priority will then be the subject of further investigation, case studies, and remedial actions.

The data and information used in this portion of the overall study came from national institutions in Costa Rica and Nicaragua and from the reports of international organizations active in these two countries and in the SJRB (See Appendix 1). Of course, a combined analysis of physical and socio-economic data suffers from problems inherent in a study of natural phenomena overlain on political/administrative divisions or, likewise, from a socio-economic study based on physiographic or biogeographic divisions. The two different ways of looking at geographical space seldom coincide making interpretation and extrapolation of data extremely difficult.

For example, the SJRB, as described by the PROCUENCA-SAN JUAN project coincides with the physical boundaries of the basin’s watersheds but these, however, do not coincide in either Costa Rica or Nicaragua, with their political-administrative boundaries within which the vast majority of socio-economic data are gathered. For the purposes of this characterization, the basin is divided into a “Northern Sector” (Nicaragua) and a “Southern Sector” (Costa Rica). According to these data, one can clearly see that Central America suffers because of the recurrence of hurricanes, heavy precipitation, flooding and, their opposite, prolonged drought. One can also see from this information, that the problems created by these extreme phenomena are most evident in the poorer populations that lack adequate defenses from the aggression that accompanies climate variability in the SJRB.