By: Armando Calvano Zúñiga and Luis Fernando Guerra Daza

Pro Sierra Nevada Foundation of Santa Marta

On the north side of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Tapias river basin is located, that supplies water to Riohacha and the municipality of Dibulla. It is the third in importance, with an extension of 1.035,7 km2, el 5% of the total area of ​​the peninsula. Therefore l Corpoguajira and the Pro-Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Foundation, signed a strategic alliance through the project "My Round", through which they implemented strategies for their environmental management (middle part), in the search for an integral culture of the use of resources; thereby improving the quality of life of the communities in the region.

“The project allowed to support the strengthening of community processes of conservation and restoration of the basin, with training activities, planning and participatory action in the micro-basins of the San Francisco and El Totumo rivers; allowing the establishment of biological corridors with landscape management tools as a conservation strategy to improve water regulation ". Luis Manuel Medina Toro stated, Director Corpoguajira.

The beneficiaries received 25 ecological stoves and 13 basic sanitation units. With community support, "My Ronda", was based on the improvement of water regulation accompanied by processes towards the generation of a social culture, with activities such as the establishment of 16 linear kilometers of isolations in the water rounds of the El Totumo streams, Higueronal, The monkeys, Las Colonias and Puerto Colombia.

Additionally, active restoration work was carried out through the enrichment of 20 hectares of stubble; 25 hectares of agroforestry arrangements with plantain, citrus, fruit trees and avocado; also promoting the establishment of sustainable production systems with peasant communities, to strengthen structural connectivity in the landscape mosaic.

In the same sense, the implementation of 16 hectares of silvopastoral systems, 39 home gardens for food safety, 16 productive yards with a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, 10 hectares of agroforestry systems with coffee in the Wiwa indigenous community of Wikumake.

“Working in this area was of great satisfaction for the team of professionals and technicians from both Corpoguajira and the Foundation; Community participation was relevant since they appropriated their conservationist role and were sensitized about the protection and care of their water rounds as a guarantee of survival.” Expressed by Luis Fernando Guerra Daza, Project coordinator.

All previous, it was achieved with the direct participation of one hundred families, five teachers and twenty students from the Sierra Nevada Ethnoeducational Center in the townships of La Palma and Juan y Medio (Riohacha) and the support of the Departmental Planning Advisory Office, in some events. Además, within the framework of "Mi Ronda", support was given to the environmental organization Herencia Ambiental Caribe in its jaguar conservation program, an initiative that is carried out in association with Corpoguajira.