Blog Water Management Honduras: SERNA technicians accelerate capacity building

Today, the use of innovative technologies that offer useful, user-friendly and free information has has become central to decision making., Honduras is at the forefront of this movement with Agua de Honduras, a government platform that provides information on the country's water availability, and generates information to guide water planning in the country through different digital tools and applications.

Agua de Honduras was launched in 2017 through joint work between the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and CIAT (now part of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT), in coordination with the Honduran Secretariat of Natural Resources and Environment (SERNA). Agua de Honduras has also received support from other cooperation agencies such as the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). These entities have contributed to the development of the platform with the objective of offering reliable data and information on the country's water resources to guide decisions and investments in their management and administration by national stakeholders, including the government.

"The government's strengthening of the platform is fundamental and strategic for its optimal use in relation to the management of the country's water resources and in compliance with the legal framework under which it is administered. Now, the strengthening of technical capacities is essential for the proper management, administration and implementation of the platform, and to take full advantage of the innovative tools and information available that it provides," said Jefferson Valencia, coordinator of Agua de Honduras.

The relevance and potential use of this information contributes to the development of the different actions and responsibilities of key institutions such as SERNA, the Forest Conservation Institute (ICF) and the Secretariat of Agriculture and Livestock (SAG), among other institutions working on the management of water resources in the country.

As part of this capacity-building process, in January 2023 three technicians from the General Directorate of Water Resources (DGRH) and one from the National Directorate of Climate Change of SERNA received a two-week training on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and in each of the different topics or modules on the Agua de Honduras platform such as hydrographic delimitations, climate, soils, vegetation cover, vegetation loss detections, water demand, water quality, floods and hydrology. Following this successful capacity-building experience, more joint activities to transfer the platform's use will be carried out.

Training was also offered on the use of the R programming language and RStudio software for the management of hydroclimatic data in Agua de Honduras, with the participation of more than 15 SERNA technicians from different directorates such as the DGRH, the Directorate of Environmental Management (DGA), the Directorate General of Biodiversity (DiBio) and the DNCC.

Finally, to test the knowledge acquired during the training, the technical team of the General Directorate of Water Resources will conduct a field trip to the micro-watersheds of the Central Forest Corridor:

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"The objective is for the technicians to apply their knowledge in the local context and thus facilitate the process of transferring the platform so that they can solidify its implementation in the area, especially for the survey of water demands at the micro-watershed level," said José Miguel del Cid from Agua de Honduras.

It is expected that local water planning decisions made by the government will continue to be based on data from the Agua de Honduras platform, making Honduras a pioneer in the region with a support system that provides free and reliable information to improve the management and governance of water resources.