Plan Yaque Northern Yaque Water Fund (Dominican Republic)

The Plan Yaque Water Fund (Fondo de Agua del Yaque del Norte) is a civil-society-led financing and governance mechanism established in 2015 to secure water quality and quantity for the Yaque del Norte River, the Dominican Republic's most important river basin and the primary water source for Santiago de los Caballeros (population ~1 million) and surrounding communities.

The fund operates through a pioneering payments-for-ecosystem-services model: hydropower companies, the Santiago water utility (CORAASAN) and other downstream water users make voluntary payments into a dedicated fund, which in turn compensates upstream landowners and farmers for conserving or restoring watershed forest cover. Plan Yaque—a coalition of 32 civil society and governmental institutions—provides technical coordination and implementation support.

A key legal milestone was Ley 44-18 (September 2018), which established the first national legal framework for PES in the Dominican Republic, formally recognising the mechanism and enabling a national scale-up. Building on this, the government launched a National PES Strategy 2024–2034 to expand from the Yaque del Norte pilot to other river basins nationally.

Documented outputs from the programme include: conservation and restoration of 193.25 hectares of forest in the Higua River Watershed (a sub-basin of the Yaque del Norte); construction of 34 artificial wetland treatment systems to reduce pollutant loads entering the river; and an 80% reduction in seasonal water flow variability attributed to intact watershed cover in conserved headwater areas. The fund has 27 institutional partners including the Ministry of Environment, national universities, CORAASAN and TNC.

The Yaque del Norte catchment covers some 7,044 km² and its regulated flow supports irrigation for the Cibao Valley, one of the Caribbean's most productive agricultural regions, as well as hydroelectricity generation. Evidence of additionality and payment effectiveness remains indicative rather than rigorously controlled, though the legal institutionalisation and multi-partner governance represent a documented step change for Caribbean PES.

Read the full analysis: https://www.unccd.int/news-stories/stories/dominican-republic-restoring-land-secure-clean-water-millions