Youth Engagement and the Water–Energy–Land Nexus in Costa Rica

Abstract

The water–energy–land nexus methodology proposes land management treatment based on watershed areas, considering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) objectives of SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation and SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy, and the evolution of governance. This framework was applied in two volcanic watersheds using open-source geodata methods. The results explain the governance evolution by stakeholder’s types and their activities around the water, land, and energy distribution and land evolution.

1 Linking SDGs with a Nexus Framework

I propose to use a nexus methodology with YouthMappers techniques to evaluate the governance within a natural watershed location in my home country, Costa Rica. This idea links the water–energy–land nexus tropical model through the lens of open mapping, led by youth engagement in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the local community’s participation in Cartago, Costa Rica, including that of YouthMappers.

The objectives of my work were identifying the principal stakeholders and defining their relationship with the water, energy, and land SDGs and the position of local governance. However, geodata is not available for the watersheds. The principal challenges I faced included that the research and fieldwork needed to explain the hydrological and the governance relationship. In the end, this work shows the obligation and need to improve the communication among the multiple stakeholders who interact within the watershed and use the catchment resources – as well as with youth who can provide framework ideas, mapping, and input as to how to sustainably develop our water, our energy, and our lands, for our future. All figures and maps have been made using free and open-source software.

1.1 Water, Energy, and Land

To begin with, we used the nexus framework for evaluating the SDGs 6 and 7. The nexus or “the water, energy, and food security resource platform,” as Mekonnen et al. (2020: 9) calls it, is an analytical framework that understands, in a methodical way, the monitoring of water resources in different socioeconomic sectors (Fig. 10.2). He uses a triple support sector: (1) water, (2) energy, and (3) land. Those pillars are the supporting index where all the socioecological practices and policies are implemented into the system. Nexus can organize all the trade-off of the socioecological system to demonstrate the current situation, allowing numerous methodical interpretations in the present, and use them to estimate the future SDG principles (Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, 2021). My work will apply this to a site local to me and incorporate a vision imagined with YouthMappers’ experience to assess the development.

1.2 The Birris and Paez Basins

The study area is located in two hydrological units called Birris and Paez in Costa Rica, Central America. Both are described as watershed units (geo-administration scale) and catchments units (natural hydrographical area). These water catchments have a geometric characteristic of 52.64 km² (Birris) and 33.36 km² (Paez). In addition, the perimeter of those watersheds is around 41.39 km in Birris and 49.88 km for Paez, and both are considered small basins by their morpho-dynamics and physical parameters. The Birris and Paez rivers are located on the northeast side in the province of Cartago, Costa Rica, exactly in the Alvarado and Oreamuno canton. Both originate from the Irazú volcano, the tallest volcano in the country. In general, the landscape is folded and faulted by volcanic activity since the Pleistocene age (Rojas et al., 2006). The Birris and Paez rivers cross through eight different rural villages in which are living around 500,000 and 600,000 inhabitants (INEC 2011). They are focused on agricultural activities, public transport, and local ecotourism (INDER 2016: 54). These rivers drain into the Cachí water basin, which is an important hydroelectric reservoir for all of the country.

1.3 Land-Use Distribution and Resource Management Context

The principal land use distribution includes agriculture activities and conservation areas, which include national parks and wildlife corridors. This area can produce more than 60 percent of all the vegetables for all the country, and some products are for international exportation (INDER 2016: 57). The agricultural products that are cultivated are potatoes, onions, pepper, cavendish, cilantro, and other kinds of green legumes (INDER 2016: 23; Solórzano 2004: 3). This area contains three ecological corridors that connect with national parks, Turrialba and Chírripo National Parks, and protected areas such as Carpintera and Cerro de La Muerte. On the national scale, these areas are connected to the Amistad International Park (Costa Rica–Panamá) and the Central American corridor. The principal objective of these corridors is the ecological connection between the local and international migration of species in all the American continents (Plan General de Manejo Zona Protectora Cerros de La Carpintera Gestión Participativa Para La Conservación 2012). All these watershed characteristics have a common point of comparison: the water resources related with the socioecological effects.

The resource management process is the responsibility of the Costa Rican State by the National Conservation System or SINAC (Brenes and Soto n.d.) linked to the Environment and Energy Ministry (MINAE), protected by the laws as the Canon (legal rate of water use) of water and the future water law (currently in discussion at the time of writing) can provide a legal basement of the resource conservation. However, the local monitors are responsible for the environment with the SINAC. Each city hall are partners in the resource management (Plan Gen. Manejo Del Parq. Nac. Volcán Irazú, 2013, p. 8). However, for these catchments, the local organism is the COBIRRIS-Paez (Watershed Commission of Birris and Paez) who are responsible for the management and planning of activities inside the basins. The most important thing in this commission is the local governance promoted by stakeholders as academic, government, private, and community leaders.

1.4 A Stakeholder Governance System Re-imagined by Youth

The COBIRRIS has an open governance composed of multiple stakeholders (Fig. 10.1), and everyone has the same level of relevance in the decision-making. The governance and policy relationship can be described as linear scale (Koontz and Newig 2014: 416–417). This framework could be explained to understand the current roles of stakeholders and their position in a geopolitical system. Using this framework exposes dependencies or independencies of the sociopolitical system, governance and government actions, impact and opportunities, and vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the management of resources.

Fig. 10.1

Stakeholder relationships are framed for the Watershed Commission of Birris and Paez, Costa Rica

The objective of the COBIRRIS is to discuss all projects and situations related to the water resources for human consumption, such as the state of the pipelines or maintenance of the water system, and the water evolution through the dry and precipitation seasons. The COBIRRIS can share tools, gear, and replacement parts when necessary to provide fresh and potable water for all villages within the watershed. Additionally, the COBIRRIS teaches about the environmental impacts and the watershed status, for example, the agricultural impacts and their evolution, the research of any situation that impacts the basin, and the funding of transdisciplinary studies. All the budget for each project, reparation, or any other logistic expenses are covered by institutional and community stakeholders. In the communication and logistic field, the COBIRRIS-Paez has developed an assembly each month and a WhatsApp group in which the group has open discussion and publicity/reports of present situations or future actions.

The COBIRRIS-Paez represents a non-linear governance framework where the stakeholders can present, help, improve, share, and grow the watershed management. However, the geographical system implementation and the open-source methods and technologies have not been used or implemented, opening a new line of research and applications. The current composition and status of the governance have not been evaluated in order to detect weaknesses nor then to propose opportunities for developing a better framework. This is where re-imagination from this project and the YouthMappers methodology could contribute.

1.5 The Role of Local Water Associations

These organizations are conformed to local leaders with the objective of the administration of the water for human consumption (AyA 2020: 12). These groups are coordinated by the National Administration of Aqueducts and Sewage (AyA). The ASADAS are responsible for the maintenance, operation, decontamination, and water supply for all villages. All the operations of the ASADAS are government sponsored by the AyA. Inside the COBIRRIS-Paez, ASADAS play a relevant role in the monitoring and detection of the water issues during the season, reporting of damage in any pipelines sectors, claims of the replacements parts, and presentation of future projects where the funding and the capital will be aimed. Members of ASADAS living inside the Birris and Paez basins can understand the upcoming principal vulnerabilities and dangers for months and even years.

2 Methodology

2.1 Local Governance

Governance is a challenge, and any discipline can understand it in multiple ways. However, the governance is important to measure the government actions’ effects and community resilience at any scale and space. The governance of COBIRRIS-Paez is related to volcanic space (folded with high slope rates) with the presence of a dendritic hydrographic distribution located in government policies and socioeconomic activities inside a watershed-scale and outside a regional-scale process.

One scientific method that can show the principal variation and many interpretations of the governance is the nexus framework. This methodology was created to measure the hydrologic governance status, and the nexus will expose more accurate governance in a hydrological administration area (Fig. 10.2).

Fig. 10.2

A Land-Water-Energy nexus framework exemplifies complexity. (Adapted from Nexus.org, 2021)

In my own research, I adapted it to the local context for the case of COBIRRIS-Paez including (1) the local stakeholder’s participation as a new fourth pillar and (2) using a timescale variation of the activities and actions of the administration. This last point took the communicative abilities of the commission for communicating their projects, actions, and achievements to the communities, institutions, or any other watershed commission. This communicative point is useful to see the divulgation and sharing of good practices to others. This measures the influence of the actions taken by COBIRRIS-Paez. My methodology required fieldwork to understand the system variations in the social, economic, and environmental fields.

2.2 Open-Source and Geodata Applications

Kobo Toolbox v1.29, an open-source application, was used in an android phone, version Android 9. The principal objective of the use of this application is the open and online survey that can be easily filled in the field. This application can create a form and be completed remotely making it easy to use and share with community leaders. This is a common tool for many YouthMappers to adapt to local projects.

Two forms were developed: (1) biophysical variables and (2) socioecological variables. The first one exposes all the geophysical and ecological variations as lithology, slope, soil color, and hand texture and photos with their geolocation as .gpx format file. The second one was made for the people, to understand their perception of the system and the acceptance of the COBIRRIS-Paez. This form contains all the observations, opinions, and commentaries about the performance or nonperformance of the commission.

Next, the National Space Agency (NASA) dataset called “Vertex ASF” was used to download the ALOS PALSAR product. ALOS is a digital elevation model (DEM) with a spatial resolution of 12.5 meters made by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency). This DEM is open and free to use and is one of the best products because of its spatial and temporal resolution for geosciences studies. The model will be used for delimitating each basin using the open software’s SAGA (System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses), GRASS GIS, and QGIS platform. The version of SAGA used is 2.3, GRASS 7.8, and QGIS 3.1.5.

The delimitation of the basin is necessary to define the principal ecological area where the socioecological activities and the most relevant stakeholders can interact. The first action before managing any resources is the delimitation of the monitoring area (Shannak et al. 2018: 213). SAGA is a good idea for preprocessing any DEM and then returning some interesting hydrography products using algorithms. One of them is the Wang–Liu filling, which can fill and repair any “No data” from the DEM in order to ensure the preprocessing phase.

In Fig. 10.3, one can compare the pink shape, where SAGA basin was returned after the algorithm, to the light blue shape, depicting a geomorphological correction by topography isolines interpretation using QGIS 3.1.5 . The last one exposes the depuration shape.

Fig. 10.3

The pink shape depicts the SAGA basin returned by the algorithm. The light blue shape includes geomorphological correction after use topography isolines using QGIS. This last one exposes the depuration shape

Another method used is called “basic terrain analysis,” which can return the automatic delimitation of the basin, the principal hydrography, the mean slope, the hypsometry, the analytical hillshade, and the topographic wetness index. These are necessary for the physical hydrological interpretation. The last algorithm can return more automatized products; however, these were not necessary for this study. After the detection of the basin, QGIS can help to improve and validate the data using a hand control between the SAGA shapefile and the local topography isolines, and in this case, the National Geographic Institute has corrected the topography isolines. This information of the IGN is open and free to use. The objective is return the best geomorphological interpretation to get the most accurate precision in the basin delimitation and then get located the human and environmental components inside each watershed.

The location of each geographical information as enterprises, villages, agricultural crops, local tourism, and type and length of street was taken by OpenStreetMap (OSM) website free geodata information. QGIS plugin called “QuickOSM” version 0.19 (also free to use) was used. The IGN could provide access to all the geodata dataset for the basins. The government actions and the current policies bring a legal support of each action inside the watersheds. The Costa Rican System of Juristic Information (SCIJ) provided all the updated law and any statement bibliography. Similarly, the SINAC and MINAE have made available the access to all the documentation written for the basin and any other digital information.

Using all these international, national, and local datasets, the objective is the application of nexus methodology inside both watersheds using a new version of adaptive nexus for tropical and volcanic basins.

3 Putting the Methodology in Place

3.1 Geophysical and Spatial Modeling Interpretation

The application of Vertex (from NASA) DEM provided a spatial resolution of 12.5 ms. The SAGA preprocessing returned a list of algorithms, which each product has been analyzed for understanding the energy transfer in the hydrological system. The scale of the basins to subbasins can be described using the GRASS software, which can return the basin ≤100 ms (Fig. 10.4) registering 1,000,075 subbasins. This result could expose the high variation in the geographical scale that shows the socioecological system as the multiple fusions of little catchments and their little effect in all the watershed systems. Another contribution is the index list that SAGA can give. That list has appropriate importance for the local distribution between the socioecology spaces and their trade-off.

Fig. 10.4

Results are returned from the SAGA Basic Terrain algorithm products. Sub basin analyses used GRASS. Each unit colored represents each sub basin of 500 m² using the watershed module. The red lines correspond to each watershed of Paez (left) and Birris (right)

Figure 10.4 shows the resulting subbasin analyses using GRASS. Each unit colored represents each subbasin of 500 m² using the watershed module. The red lines correspond for each watershed of Paez (left) and Birris (right).

As an example, the topographic wetness index (TWI) explains the principal spatial humidity distribution inside a basin under the condition and orientation of the topography (Fig. 10.5). The distribution of water can be interpreted as potential sources of high ecology connectivity or a potential site of crop installation. The location of the water can be interpreted as the next water supply for the ASADAS in the dry season. The high distribution of water supply is commencing to be located downstream, a normal process in a volcanic basin by the water recollection of the upstream. Figure 10.5 shows the orange color as dry (lowest water concentration), whereas the light blue and blue colors represent moderately high water concentration levels.

Fig. 10.5

The map shows TWI location for Birris and Paez catchments

Another example is the cross-sectional curvature (CSC) value, which is one principle of the landslide modeling. This index can expose the geomorphology variation of the topography units (mountains or any other orogenic structure) based on the geometry of their facies. That means the principle between concave and convex in the relief can be interpreted as a non-structural tightness index (Fig. 10.6). The potential threat detection, especially of volcanic landslides (the vulnerability), could be detected inside the socioecological system. This volcanic landscape exposes the physical and potential hazards, which are the lava and pyroclastic flow or any volcanic eruptions and, more frequently, the earthquakes and volcanic tremors. The detection of this spatial variation locates the vulnerability and physical threats inside the watershed.

Fig. 10.6

The map shows CSC stability index for Birris and Paez catchments

Figure 10.6 exposes the heterogeneous spreading of the CSC in both basins. The values ≤0 correspond to the convex geomorphology and ≥0 as concave geomorphology. Here we can find the rivers as maximum convex features and the principal mountain pikes as concave units. This kind of analyses can express and qualify the relief and how they could differ in these basins.

The morphodynamics and hydrographic variation can define the energy, amount of water, and water reservoir that each basin can store and the variation of each one with their area, perimeter, mean length, and width of the streamflow or using the Horton (low value = high water energy and vice versa) and capacity or Gravelius index where if the number is close to 1 that means high volume of water charge (for more, read Cardona n.d: 3–10).

3.2 Nexus Application

Based on the Nexus application (Fig. 10.2) in the COBIRRIS-Paez and including the biophysical variables described in adobe, the result is in Fig. 10.7.

Fig. 10.7

Nexus approximation results from this analysis using the COBIRRIS-PAEZ context. The time scale and climate variables are included to better understand the governance relationship inside and outside the hydrological system

The timescale and climate variables are included to understand better the governance relationship inside and outside the hydrological system.

Figure 10.7 was made similar to Fig. 10.2 in order to compare both results. In the center of the diagram, we find water, energy, and land (SDGs), which express the relationship with the COBIRRIS-Paez stakeholders using a line. Each line connects these three pillars and the COBIRRIS-Paez influence. Light blue lines are the trade-off between the SDGs, yellow squares are the negative effects in the socioecological system, and green squares are the action taken by the COBIRRIS-Paez to reduce or improve better impacts. The brown lines expose the indirect causes that are outside the basin system. The policy action that promotes open and updates information is one of these indirect causes and a local climate variability.

4 Discussion of Strengths and Challenges

I presented a nexus framework application in a tropical volcano landscape in Costa Rica, using open geospatial data and tools and YouthMappers experiences. The phases to obtain all the data were mixed, including fieldwork and virtual meetings. Platforms such as Android and Windows have the most accurate results using free and open software. The data and geodata information were open and free to use. The geophysical analysis shows two heterogenous basins due to the closer distance (around 15 km). The COBIRRIS-Paez nexus exposes an adaptive framework that recalls, by a competitive way, the race between the negative impacts and the local management actions for the restoration of the system. The nexus exposes the land management inside both basins and the quick detection of negative impacts.

Access to open and up-to-date information is a right of the people because misinformation produces vulnerability (UNDP 2021). This study could get updated information and free data (as necessary for the scale of research) to understand the governance variation and biophysical effects. The conversation with the members and leaders of the community showed the pride in being part of the COBIRRIS-Paez and then the acceptance of this commission. This, in turn, advances SDGs 6 and 7 in an integrated way for the nation, Costa Rica, and a model for global consideration.

However, challenges for the future include active monitoring in open ways for all stakeholders, including youth. My research included a mapathon through a project task organized on the TeachOSM Tasking Manager, a platform using OSM for learning how to map. We planned to use Kobo Toolbox software as a monitoring tool for the community. However, due to the COVID-19 lockdown in Costa Rica, this opportunity was postponed and, finally, cancelled. The current COVID-19 pandemic situation could produce changes in the governance and actions taken by the COBIRRIS-Paez and in the environmental demand of both watersheds, setting back our work and our progress toward the UN goals. The pandemic must be accounted for in the future governance and governance studies around a whole nexus of natural resources, especially, for the role of water, energy, and land.