Restoring Our Watershed

Restoring Our Watershed (ROW) is a combined U.S. and Costa Rican non-profit organization with the mission to protect water resources of the Nandamojo river basin in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. We are creating a positive model for watershed management to ensure that future generations will have access to plentiful water. Water scarcity threatens communities in northwestern Costa Rica, and the process of assigning blame is tearing many apart. Major industries, including tourism and agriculture, have been pitted against residents of small towns whose wells are going dry. In most cases, the proposed solutions to this crisis focus solely on infrastructure improvements (new wells) or limiting the amount of water industries can withdraw. Our strategy for addressing this crisis consists of three components: 1. Promoting land use change at the grassroots level by empowering families to adopt practices that infiltrate more rain into groundwater aquifers. We work directly with landowners of any size, providing them with the tools, knowledge and plants needed to transform their landscape into one that absorbs more rain. Providing watershed stewardship education for stakeholders of all ages. We reach out to everyone from elementary school students to watershed elders to discuss the urgency of protecting shared water resources and strategies for doing so. Fostering sustainable, local economic enterprises that both improve watershed health while and provide financial resources for watershed restoration and protection. We’ve implemented the Bees for Trees micro lending program to create green jobs while financing the reforestation of river corridors.