BFS Joins Forest Trends Water Initiative Project Design Workshop to Share and to Learn

The Forest Trends Water Initiative Project Design Workshop was held in San Jose, Costa Rica, from February 9 to February 13, 2015, to build capacity and action agendas for scaling sustainable investments in watershed services (IWS) projects. The workshop helped strengthen the partner network by working together on common issues and helping each other solve common problems and/or identify innovative solutions, and sharing what has been learned from all the partners, based on project experiences by capturing, reviewing, and synthesizing lessons and innovations from each of the projects.

BFS project staff Li Hao and Shen Qianqian, as representatives of the China Pilot joined the workshop and shared our project experiences and lessons learned. It was the first time that BFS met other project partners, and learned more about their lessons and new perspectives which can be a reference for various aspects of project implementation in the Miyun Reservoir Watershed.

The IWS initiative is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and implemented by Forest trends. Pilot activities have been conducted in China, Peru, Ghana, Mexico and Bolivia. New pilots in Costa Rica and Brazil have joined the initiative recently.

The IWS Initiative in China’s Miyun Reservoir Watershed is to seek a sustainable approach integrating natural infrastructure for addressing the water crisis in Beijing. Upstream economic and downstream hydrological interests are better aligned through negotiated, performance-oriented funding allocations and coordinated action to protect water sources.