FIAES Rio Lempa Watershed PES - El Salvador Debt-for-Nature Conservation Programme

The Fondo de la Iniciativa para las Americas - El Salvador (FIAES) was established in 1993 through a debt-for-nature swap between El Salvador and the United States. The Rio Lempa watershed it protects covers 49% of El Salvador's territory and supplies approximately 68% of national freshwater needs for around 6 million people.

In October 2024, El Salvador completed the world's largest debt-for-nature swap for river and watershed conservation — a US$1 billion operation backed by the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) — creating a fund that will direct US$200 million over 20 years to conservation and restoration in the Lempa basin, with 75,000 hectares of protected aquifer recharge zones committed by 2044.

Conservation projects financed through this mechanism pay farmers, cooperatives, and community organisations for sustainable land management in designated watershed zones — an avoided-cost watershed PES in which protecting upstream ecosystems avoids far greater spending on water treatment infrastructure. The new fund is co-managed by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and FIAES.

Over three decades, FIAES invested more than US$90 million in over 54 documented conservation projects protecting coastal, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems across El Salvador.

FIAES's 31-year track record is credible, but the Lempa Conservation and Restoration Program created by the 2024 debt swap is at an early implementation stage; independently verified outcomes will require several years before formal assessment.