Enhancing Adaptation and Resilience to Drought in Dry Tropical Social-Ecological Systems: The Guanacaste, Costa Rica Example – FuturAgua

The scientific quality of the proposed research is apparent in the integrated perspectives guiding the research, and the objectives, methods, and the composition of the research teams for the work packages. We have assembled three internationally-recognized groups of researchers, with expertise in climate and weather issues, water resources including important monitoring and modelling of ground water, ecosystem services, modelling and decision support, governance, stakeholder decision processes, psychology, and rural development. We have an effective set of four work packages: (A) characterization of current conditions, (B) impacts of changing climate and weather on resources, people and other drivers of change; (C) methods for and implementation of decision aids and stakeholder’s ownership, the development of practical new heuristics, communication, and outreach; (D) project management.

CIRAD advanced on the characterization of agricultural water use and farmer decisions and use of forecasting. They concluded a study characterizing agricultural productive systems in two watersheds and created a bio-economic model to gain insight on the assessment of adaptation strategies to drought. CIRAD is now working in improving the model and assessing autonomous and supported adaptation strategies, and providing a basis user ownership and understanding of the overall FuturAgua research findings. They have improved the CORMAS platform and established a roadmap for further improvements.
CATIE has completed a first phase of the governance study. They are completing a paper to report the Drought Governance process highlighting the challenges that should be addressed by institutions across scales to avoid future pitfalls. They have used cases in Guanacaste that affected by water-related conflicts in the past as examples to provide lessons to avoid future conflicts among or within sectors.
UBC deployed meteorological, Eddy Covariance, and water level monitoring stations for characterizing hydro-climate variability, fresh water security, and agricultural water footprint. In addition, they have made significant advances on the characterization of the hydro-climatic variability and their trends in Guanacaste. They have advanced their studies on external drivers and impacts of drought on ecosystem services with interviews to farmers (to learn about their reasons for participating in PES programs) and to tourist (to identify their opinions about compensating for the ES they enjoy in Costa Rica).
CMU has concluded a first phase of its research on mental models of socio-ecological system and use of forecasting. Their study showed important gaps in terms of the value that different sectors and water stakeholders give to forecasts, and the actual capacity to use forecast information for enhancing their resilience to drought.

-CIRAD: The assessment of adaptation strategies using the bio-economic model suggests that irrigation is a robust strategy for agricultural production and simulations showed that irrigation increases farmers’ income. However, irrigation outside DRAT (Arenal-Tempisque irrigation district) is not a common strategy in Guanacaste, in spite that farmers stated that they have water sources that could be used for implementing such technology. Agricultural farmers value forecasts as a source of information for decision-making. However, the bio-economic model indicates that such tool can produce both important income increases and loses depending on its accuracy.
-CATIE: The emergency declaration process led by Costa Rican National Emergency Commission was centralized, reactive, and time consuming for addressing the last drought. Guanacaste urgently needs support for implementing coordinated efforts to enhance resilience to drought.
-CMU: A key gap for the use of decision tools such as weather forecasts is the actual capacity to use forecast information for enhancing their resilience to drought. Sectors with more resources such as large agricultural and hydroelectric companies have more capacity to use forecasts than sectors with less resources such as small farmers and ASADAS (Co-management organizations providing water service).
-UBC: The annual rainfall pattern in Guanacaste is explained by a double-Gaussian distribution with two rainfall peaks, and inter-annual variability of precipitation is strongly correlated to ENSO.
The next period will be dedicated to completing pending research tasks (fieldwork and analysis, software and tools development), publishing results in peer-reviewed journals, and continue working with local stakeholders. We will be joining efforts on research tasks such as: (a) the characterization of stakeholders’ beliefs about resilience; or (b) the provision of a basis for user ownership, understanding, and involvement with our research findings.

McDaniels, T. et al. 2014. Enhancing adaptation and resilience to drought in dry tropical socio-ecological systems: The Guanacaste, Costa Rica example. Poster. AGU 2014. San Francisco, US, 1 p. futuragua.ca/ubc/wp-content/uploads/McDaniels-FuturAgua-AGU-16122014.pdf
Larghi, M. et al. 2015. Evaluation ex ante de différents outils d’adaptation du secteur agricole au Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Poster. CSA Global Science Conference 2015. Montpellier, France, 1p. futuragua.ca/ubc/wp-content/uploads/Largui-2015-Poster-Montpellier-Fr-08072015.pdf
Bommel P, Becu N, Le Page C, Bousquet,F, 2015. Cormas, an Agent-Based simulation platform for coupling human desicion with computerized dynamics, ISAGA Pierre. 46th ISAGA conference, Kyoto, Japan, 17-21/7/2015.
Larghi, M. 2014. Adaptation à la variabilité climatique: Evaluation de différents outils d’adaptation du secteur agricole au Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Thesis M.Sc. Ecole Nationale Superieure D’ Agronomie Et Des Iindustries Alimentaires. 67 p. futuragua.ca/ubc/wp-content/uploads/Thesis-Mathilde-Larghi-Fr-08072015.pdf
Wong-Parodi, G. et al. 2014. Management of freshwater resources given stakeholders’ perceptions. Poster. AGU 2014. San Francisco, US, 1 p. futuragua.ca/ubc/wp-content/uploads/Wong-Parodi-poster-AGU-16122014.pdf
Grossmann, I. 2014. Eliciting climate experts’ knowledge to address model uncertainties in regional climate projections: A case study of Guanacaste, Northwest Costa Rica (GC13F-0728). Poster. AGU 2014. San Francisco, US, 1 p. futuragua.ca/ubc/wp-content/uploads/Grossmann-poster-AGU-16122014.pdf

Three teams of diverse natural and social scientist will engage in a collaborative regional case study set in the arid region of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. The partners will work closely with the civil society organizations in the region as well as the entities that manage water, giving particular focus to the community values and economic circumstance that influence water related decisions. Interviews with the leaders and managers of these entities will assist the partners in translating mental models to graphically portray the impacts of drought on social-economical systems. The partners will characterize the water balances, flows, and allocation in key sub-watersheds of the region by identifying current and historical influences on the system’s network. This research will be coupled with GCM based rainfall pattern research to develop new analytical perspectives that ascribe additional value to forecasts that build system intelligence. The partners, in collaboration with local leaders and managers, will ultimately
create sets of alternative actions that could build specific kinds of resilience in water-oriented SES.
The proposed project would provide a fuller characterization of relevant SES dynamics, including effects of external drivers and multiple scales of governance. It would create a deeper understanding of the biophysical and social processes affecting these systems, of the benefits affected by these processes, and how these processes are addressed in regulatory and water allocation. It would produce a more appropriate representation of the complexity and uncertainty within SES in conceptual and methodological terms, which will contribute to improved decision processes that generate better alternatives and greater insight for decision-making at multiple scales.
Civil society organizations will play an important role in project design. The research teams will be managed by the leading PI and will meet regularly to discuss progress, and will have close contact with civil society organizations throughout the project.