GEM TIES Healthy Watersheds and Sustainable Livelihoods in Oaxaca, Mexico

Project Overview

Sierra Norte landscape

The Sierra Norte landscape

Fresh and sufficient drinking water is a critical challenge in impoverished Oaxaca, a southern state of Mexico rich in cultural and biodiversity. Clean water and sustainable livelihoods for indigenous Zapotec communities in the Sierra Norte region is the focus of an international project of the Global Environmental Management Education Center (GEM) at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP) and Mexican institutional partners. Concurrently, citizen and professional capacity building of Mexican nationals is another product of this GEM project for long-term, sustained action to promote and maintain the health of the Upper Rio Grande Watershed and income generation for the indigenous communities.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) supports this effort via its Training, Internships, Exchanges and Scholarships (TIES) Program to build human resource capital in Mexican nationals while addressing critical priority areas identified by USA/Mexico. The GEM healthy watersheds project in Oaxaca is one of 60 TIES projects selected and funded since TIES inception in 2002, with over $18 million in awards granted with a similar cost share by US-based universities and other partners

GEM was awarded a $500,000 grant to augment its efforts in Mexico.
With this grant in 2005 from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), GEM is helping rural communities in Mexico manage their watersheds in healthy, sustainable ways, to build sustainable livelihoods, and to increase job opportunities and income in this impoverished region. (Read more about the grant award here.)

This GEM program has formally trained 10 Mexican students, including Clarisa Jiménez Bañuelos, who has received a master’s degree in watershed management (read Clarisa's thesis here) from UWSP, and Marco Hernandez, who completed his master's program in December 2008 (read Marco's thesis here). (Read about the 2007 UWSP seminar for Mexican graduate-level students.) With the help of GEM staff, students, and partners, an additional 100-150 local residents have been trained through a series of interactive workshops, field days, and practical learning experiences in Oaxaca, Mexico. GEM is working with partners in Mexico including Estudios Rurales y Asesoría Campesina (ERA), Oaxaca; Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey – Campus Monterrey (ITESM, or Monterrey Tech); and Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo (UACh), Texcoco, Mexico.

Follow this link to read a publication providing an overview of the GEM TIES project in Oaxaca.

Read how GEM is successfully helping Sierra Norte residents improve water quality and about training for watershed monitoring and planning, in an effort that has potential to serve as a model elsewhere in Mexico, how the GEM-TIES team has helped a small Zapotec community establish a community water group to develop strategies to clean up and manage its water sources, how the GEM-TIES team helped improve solid waste management, and how GEM is helping community members develop business plans and working with small-business owners to foster entrepreneurial economic growth.

The partnership is focusing on non-consumptive forest uses in several rural communities of the Rio Grande watershed in Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte region. Using watershed management and agroforestry techniques the project helps provide clean water, protect biodiversity and sequester carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

GEM has developed training manuals for community involvement.

The manuals are in Spanish and intended for use in the Sierra Norte communities but may be valuable elsewhere as well. NOTE: THESE ARE PDF DOCUMENTS AND WILL OPEN IN A NEW WINDOW.