Impact: Changes in policies, plans and strategies
Partners: LA-WET Net (Argentina)
Katia Vargas Antelo participated ‘Water Funds: Key elements for design and sustainability’ training, as technical staff member in the Municipal Government of Tarija, Bolivia. Thanks to the training, she was able to participate proactively in the formulation of the environmental study of the external damping zone of the biological reserve of the Cordillera de Sama. Biological reserves are protected areas which constitute a common good and are part of the natural and cultural heritage of Bolivia. They are natural territories with or without human intervention, declared protected areas through legal provisions with the purpose of protecting and conserving wildlife, genetic resources, natural ecosystems and river basins. They have scientific, aesthetic, economic and social values, and they ensure that management and conservation contribute to the improvement of the quality of life of the local population and regional development. The learnings acquired have specifically helped Katia to acknowledge that one of the most important threats that to environmental functions is the urbanization process. Based on this knowledge gained, the environmental study of the Sama biological reserve determined that the Municipal Governments of Cercado-Tarija, Uriondo, San Lorenzo and Padcaya have to define a regulatory instrument that guides the current and future growing urbanization within the external buffer zone of the biological reserve. The major main is to protect the water sources of the Central Valley of Tarija. As such, three regulations have been developed with the aim to enrich the provisions of the integral and territorial planning expressed in the Territorial Plans of Integral Development, both at the departmental and municipal level.
