Goascorán Basin : Honduras and El Salvador : revitalising cooperative management through expanding stakeholder involvement

The waters of the Goascorán River are shared between Honduras and El Salvador. Since 2011, BRIDGE has worked to promote better cooperation over transboundary waters, taking a non-conventional approach to water diplomacy. One of the challenges was the level of involvement in the institutional arrangement existing in the basin. The initial makeup of the Binational Management Group (BMG) had a limited representation of Municipalities only giving the institution a narrow scope and legitimacy with stakeholders. There was a need to revitalise the BMG expanding the level of participation across scales and across sectors. Responding to these challenges, BRIDGE has played an essential role in enabling and facilitating changes through a multi-level water diplomacy programme to build good water governance capacity. It uses a combination of knowledge and information tools, procedural advice and technical support, and capacity building and training to strengthen relations between stakeholders across local, provincial, national, and regional levels.