Technology in Water and Agriculture

Interaction with Local Government - Technology in Water and Agriculture

Mon, Mar 30, 2009

Other questions? Okay, over here?

Hi, I'm Darcy O'Callahan, from Food and Water Watch. Senor Consejo, thank you very much for your presentation. One of the questions I would like to ask is about how you interact with the local government, and if you are looking to replicate your model in other local communities?

Well, as I mentioned, one of the principles is that of collaboration. And we devised that as a kind of a table in which all the actors are seated. The government is an important actor, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. So we have to have it in the table. And perhaps this is the most difficult part. I mean, it's easy to interact with communities, and we are used to cooperate with other non-governmental groups, but government officers are hard to convince, because they have to accept not only to sit at the table at which there are twenty or fifty other actors, but they have to follow what they decide. They used to kind of treat with kind of advisory councils, but the idea of this project is that the capacity of the table is also mandatory, and they have to decide what to do. The principle is that we get this photograph, we put it at the table, and then all the actors discuss what should be done about a general issue such as city growth planning, or about a specific issue such as fees for different services. So we are using the power of the whole of the members to press government to accept what we are discussing at the table. And also we have the three levels of government, we have the federal government, state government, and local government. And in the case of local government, I would say it's much easier. They're quite more open to collaborate, because they urgently need this kind of support.

Could you give a specific example?

Well, in a way, what this table does is, kind of recommendations in the form of human rights commission. So, very often, what we review is government projects. Nowadays we are struggling against a huge government project to bring water to this watershed from a faraway source. That means a big dam, and a channel of eighty kilometers to get the water to the city. We think this is a bad idea. And we are trying to convey, with all the actors, to discuss this openly. The usual way that government does this is it presents the project as something decided. Of course they say it will benefit the population, but in fact most of the process is hidden. So what we are trying to do, and I don't know if we'll succeed, is to make this process open to the different sectors, so whatever they propose can be done, provided preconditions, sound projects, an open process, and respecting the law, especially environmental law.