AJAASSPIB — Twenty-Eight Water Committees Buying Back Pico Bonito's Watershed, Honduras

In the southern buffer zone of Honduras's Pico Bonito National Park, community organising that began after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 formally became AJAASSPIB (the Association of Water Boards of the Southern Sector of Pico Bonito National Park) in 2006, eventually uniting 28 rural communities across 14 micro-watersheds. Rather than relying on a distant environmental authority, the member communities pooled resources — sometimes buying back degraded private land from neighbours in instalments — to convert fragmented, deforested slopes into nine legally recognised community-protected areas totalling 5,453 acres (roughly 2,207 hectares, individual sites ranging from 52 to 1,193 acres).
Conservation is financed directly by the water users themselves: local water boards charge mandatory tariffs for the potable water supply serving more than 40,000 people, with non-payment triggering a fine and eventual service disconnection, which funds ongoing reforestation of degraded slopes, resident-run watershed patrols against illegal logging, and maintenance of intake pipes and storage tanks. Working with the US NGO EcoLogic Development Fund, AJAASSPIB's model won UNDP's Equator Prize in 2012, one of 25 winners recognised that cycle from among a global pool of community-led sustainable development initiatives.
The model's central limitation is legal permanence rather than ecological performance: as of the most recent published account, formal Honduran government legalisation of the nine community-protected areas remained pending, meaning the watershed's long-term protection still rests more on continued community cohesion and fee collection than on a secure national legal title.

Read the full analysis: https://www.ecologic.org/post/water-for-peace-a-journey-towards-sustainable-water-management-in-northern-honduras