Foundational inconsistencies of the IWRM: The CCRH

As part of a nationwide IWRM structure that the federal government organized in a top-down fashion (that is, based upon a model designed from Mexico City for the whole country, and then replicated initially in 25-later 26-major Consejos de Cuenca- River Basin Councils), the Yucatan Peninsula Basin Council (Consejo de Cuenca de la Península de Yucatán, CCPY in Spanish) was inaugurated by the National Water Commission (Conagua, in Spanish) in 1999. The 26 basin councils were formed between 1993 and 2009. However, if we exclude the first council (formed in the Lerma-Chapala river basin, in 1993) and the last (Costa Pacífico Centro, 2009), the period of councils’ creation lasted five years: from 1996 to 2000. The two most-active years were 1999-2000, during which 22 river basin councils were formed-among them the CCPY.

Initially, many of the river basin councils operated through working groups related to different problems raised within a large basin. Several of those groups originated within the Conagua itself, that is, the federal authority regarding water issues. However, in some cases the groups were replaced gradually by the so-called auxiliary agencies: commissions on the scale of sub-basins, as well as by basin committees formed to carry out IWRM actions in micro-basins. One example of a working group that was replaced in this way is the Oaxaca Coast Basin Council, which inaugurated the nation’s first river basin committee for Los Perros River in 1999. Other examples are Grijalva-Usumacinta Rivers’ Council and the Chiapas Coast Basin Council, both of which have created various committees since 2003.

The CCPY continued to organize meetings around the specialized working groups (GTES, in Spanish). In contrast, other water councils organized their meetings around the auxiliary agencies. In that context, the first auxiliary agency to be created was none other than the Hondo River Basin Commission (CCRH), in 2009-ten years after its inauguration as a river basin council. In the CCPY, the river commissions and committees continued to work in parallel with the GTES. Thus, this spatial organization of the CCPY around river basins came later than its thematic structure of working groups. Both continue in existence at this writing.

The CCRH was inaugurated in 2009, after completion of the Basin Diagnostic in 2007. The document entitled “Diagnóstico para el Manejo Sustentable de la Cuenca Internacional del Río Hondo al 2025” (“Diagnostic for the Sustainable Management of the International Hondo River Basin by 2025”) was financed exclusively by the Mexican ^{Conagua (2007)} as a result of an accord reached in 2003 by the International Boundary and Water Commission [IBWC] (Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas México-Belize (sic) - (CILA, in Spanish). Hence, the document was a bilateral collaboration, although under Mexican leadership-an arrangement that was not without tensions:

“Why don’t we approve the agreement now? At the time when we approved it in January of 2005 [in IBWC], they approved it in the same month, the same month, January of 2005, at the same time as a high level meeting of the Binational Commission México-Belize that was held in Belmopan, Belize in January of 2005. The Mexican Secretary of External Relations-Secretary Derbez-along with the Prime Minister of Belize, signed the Minute, in which it is said that the governments announced their formal approval of Minute 12 of the International Boundary and Water Commission so that [the two countries could do] the study entitled “Diagnóstico para el Manejo Sustentable del Agua en la Cuenca Internacional del Río Hondo México-Belice al año 2025”-that’s what the study was called-which will begin in 2005 and be financed by the Mexican government through the Mexican National water Commission, in coordination with the National Meteorological Service of Belize. Even the chancellors were named. That reflects how important it was to Belize and Mexico to carry out this study.”

From an official of the Mexican Federal Government, during the second meeting of the Yucatan Peninsula Basin Council, Special Working Group on Water Treatment in Quintana Roo (GTESQROO), August 24, 2006.

The diagnostic excluded Guatemala from the beginning. Fieldwork conducted in the region since 2003 revealed two diametrically opposed historical situations that explain how this trinational river basin became converted into a binational one from the political viewpoint. In the first place-and as is highlighted by the following excerpt from an interview-Guatemala was markedly uninterested in a basin at the fringe of its territory, in an almost unpopulated area with difficult access:

“First, it’s that the Hondo river basin, these are almost unexplored areas of the country, here you will not find much institutional collaboration.”

(Member of an NGO, Guatemala City, May 29, 2007).

The second historical situation is the conflict that surrounds the so-called “line of adjacency” between Belize and Guatemala. Disagreeing about the delimitation, and recognizing the impossibility of resolving their boundary dispute by other means, the two countries took that dispute to the International Court of Justice at The Hague (^{Alija, 2019}). The following excerpt from an email received by Guatemala’s Vice-Minister of Exterior Relations is abundantly clear on that matter:

“Thank you for including me in the distribution of this email and I wish to make clear that Guatemala still has NO borders defined with Belize, the which will be submitted to the International Court of Justice, for which reason I will appreciate it if the language used is clarified and in any case that (the wording) refer to the ‘Line of adjacency between Guatemala and Belize’, the language agreed upon by both countries.” (sic).

Email received March 19, 2012.

The Vice-Minister’s statement signifies that the combination of (1) disinterest in water policy regarding the river basin and (2) its condition as a disputed section of border have kept Guatemala from becoming very interested in the area. Nor are that country’s water-policy stakeholders at all interested, as evidenced by the interviews conducted by our project. Absent, too, in Guatemala is any trinational-scale vision of the river basin.

Thus, although the diagnostic financed by the Mexican National water Commission (^{Conagua, 2007}) mentions that the river basin is trinational, and that Guatemala occupies the highest part of it, all of the information presented in the document is centered on Mexico and Belize, and the credits to government structures are restricted to these two countries. No data on any subject come from Guatemala. It should also be noted that regarding IWRM and water policies, the Mexican part of the diagnostic is the most developed-a fact that demonstrates an imbalance with respect to Belize. Similarly, the recommendations derived from the document tend to ignore the basin’s Belizean problems.

Therefore, a historical imbalance exists in this trinational area, whose dynamic has been essentially binational. As a result, the IWRM of the river basin is highly contradictory because the upstream waters are excluded from any transboundary management-a situation totally contradictory to the idea of river basins as the favored territorial units for the expression of this pillar of Mexico’s water policy. This situation is thus a key element of the inconsistent IWRM.

Finally, with the installation of the Hondo River Basin Commission (CCRH) in 2009, the favored status of river basins in IWRM (at least in the case of the Hondo basin) was further eroded by the growing awareness that the Mexican part of the Hondo river basin was affected by phenomena outside its limits. That recognition led to impulse a subsequent initiative attending transboundary problems like the invasive suckermouth catfish (Hypostomus plecostomus), a pest that, according to experts interviewed, has an undeniable transboundary background, given that it had crossed several borders before arriving at the Mexican part of the Hondo basin. Clearly, the solution to the threat posed by this fish must be transboundary.

Consequently, we have a Mexican basin commission that has had, since a decade ago, a certain interest in binational actions for/in a trinational basin-a situation that contravenes the basic principles of IWRM and its preferred space of action: the river basin in its full territorial extent.

In general terms -and here we find another inconsistency regarding IWRM- the interviews with stakeholders who are linked to the CCRH reveal an essentially binational vision of the basin, with unclear limits. In addition to frequently ignoring distant Guatemala, it is completely forgotten, too, that a significant portion of the Hondo river basin lies within the Mexican state of Campeche (Map 1). Both entities (Guatemala and Campeche) are fundamental to understanding the dynamics of the river basin in their totality, because the upstream waters extend within those territories. Campeche is so completely overlooked that it is conspicuous by its absence in the CCRH: the Commission does not include stakeholders from this part of the basin, who represent the downstream Hondo exclusively. That is, they are from the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

Additionally, it is essential to highlight that in the majority of the interviews, the discourse tended to separate three related environmental media (the Hondo river; Chetumal Bay into which the Hondo empties; and the marine part): even though those media are connected environmentally in the basin. The stakeholders express a narrow view of the relations among these three connected parts of the Hondo river basin. More specifically, that view is neither well integrated nor integrating. In addition, it restricts the basin to the main stream of the Hondo River and does not look at the territory beyond it.

These elements of the CCRH representatives’ vision contradict the precepts of IWRM, and pose a series of historical limitations that do not facilitate a broad vision of the Hondo river basin. Instead, those elements help propagate a fragmented perspective determined by international politico-administrative limits and those of Mexico. That perspective is also limited to the immediate sphere of action of the interviewed stakeholders. That is, a completely truncated vision of the Basin, as evidenced by the membership of the CCRH itself. This fragmented, constricted vision constitutes an enduring inconsistency that has existed since the CCRH was formed.

A sum of inconsistencies: water policy with IWRM or versus IWRM?

In the Mexican part of the Hondo river basin, the CCRH represents the formal expression of IWRM, in which it constitutes the structure proposed by the Conagua to implement IWRM in the area. It should be noted that when the study of the basin was engaged during the years 2014-2016, the CCRH was mentioned as central to this territory, and as being an articulator for various stakeholders (Kauffer, manuscript accepted, n.d.). Thus, the CCRH is a space for collaboration, with a strong academic component that is recognized for its role in providing information and making known the problems of the basin as a space where different stakeholders converge.

However, in parallel with the recognition of the presence of a body in charge of the river basin, there persists a lack of clarity regarding what type of body that is: A council? A commission? A committee? The stakeholders who were interviewed-principally participants in the very CCRH-do not know the CCRH’s scale of action, and express confusion regarding the CCRH’s role as an “auxiliary body”, sometimes calling it a council or even a committee.

This situation may be explained by the CCPY’s (Yucatan Peninsula Council) own ignorance, for a long time, of the Hondo river issues, and by insufficient interaction between the Commission (the CCRH) and its “elder brother”, the council. Or, at least, by the lack of clarity and direction regarding how local stakeholders were to interact with the CCPY. Moreover, this situation is the direct consequence of an IWRM that is detached from local realities, and organized around a verticality driven by Center of the Republic-a verticality controlled via two mechanisms: the basin organizations’ lack of status as legal entities, as a result of the National Water Law, and the difficulty (for the river basin organizations) of becoming decision-making bodies for their respective basins. This situation is a consequence, as well, of the terms under which the Water Law established the river basin organizations (council, commission, committee): despite the reforms of 2004, which expanded the participation of local stakeholders, these participative bodies have had difficulty in becoming real spaces for negotiation and decision-making about basins. Exceptions are those organizations that, in the course of time, have achieved a certain legal or financial autonomy. Such exceptions are rare in Mexico, and their condition usually owes itself to the presence of certain non-governmental leaders or politico-economic elites present within such river basins.

The legacy of a centralized policy is expressed strongly by the interviewed stakeholders, who mentioned that the role of the CCRH consists essentially of providing information to certain sectors-a viewpoint that can be seen in other cases as well (^{Kauffer, 2005}). Therefore, according to its participants, the CCRH does not make decisions, nor does it act. In sum, it does not truly constitute a body for water management. However, the thing that is widely recognized by the local stakeholders is the CCRH’s role for making alliances, and for establishing coordination among different actors when acute problems arrive. For example, the alliance made with the business sector when the suckermouth catfish problem arose -a situation that will be discussed later:

“The CCRH’s strengths are the number of sectors…sometimes I think the businessmen are a bit over-represented, but okay (…) and the great limitation, we said, is the lack of international cooperative activities. There needs to be someone from Belize, if I were forced to be frank, even someone from Guatemala”.

Interview with a researcher on the Hondo river basin, Chetumal, September 21, 2016.

The second element (related to Mexican water policy) that has brought on a dynamic of inconsistency within the CCRH has been the crisis of insufficient resources. Between 2009 and 2015, through a slow, gradual process of consolidation, the CCRH seemed to offer promise not only as a vehicle for IWRM for a large part of the region, but also for the possibility of thinking of a certain cross-boundary dimension where cooperation is almost nonexistent (^{García & Kauffer, 2011}; ^{Kauffer, 2017}; ^{Kauffer, 2018}). However, the CCRH’s lack of short-term sustainability has been made evident since 2016, when the decrease in funding from the Conagua not only made continuation of research projects impossible, although almost caused CCRH to disappear entirely, as it could not hold meetings because the Operating Manager was not replaced for several months:

“We’ve arrived at this unfortunate situation, I tell you that the river basin organizations [as the CCRH] had functioned because there were federal funds to maintain them, but once they are gone, I believe that the organizations will not work…that will be the part…Probably the economic problem will be…but this…the main drama (…) The last meeting was on 19 April 2019, and XXX [the Operating Manager, name omitted here] was no longer coming, in fact I believe that XXX was about to leave because he was no longer going to have any possibilities, it was the last meeting in April, and now we have no Operating Manager. (…) And so those of us who could did meet because there were no resources for meeting physically, and since then we have been at a standstill, and I think we were also waiting for the change of government”.

Interview with an academic who was a member of CCRH, Chetumal, September 20, 2016.

Thus, a third problem is the CCRH’s dependence upon a few persons-a reality all too evident at the local scale. Those persons may be the manager, or some researchers from academic institutions, but in any case the result is a personalized type of IWRM that is far from the paradigmatic participative space that the IWRM vision was intended to build in Mexico. Or, at least, the CCRH’s IWRM is far from being the sort that is presented in various documents.

To that problem, it is necessary to add the vulnerability to changes of government that derives from the model established by the Mexican Federal Government. In the south of Mexico, that level of the government first took direct control of basin organizations through the Conagua, then delegated certain functions to the local level (municipal or state). As a result, any structures that had not consolidated their IWRM became fragile in the face of successive triennial and sexennial changes in government.

A fourth problem is that the inconsistent IWRM principle in the CCRH is rooted in the stakeholders’ perspectives about the river basin. That perspective is reflected in the makeup of the Commission itself: it is exclusively Mexican. Various aspects come into play to explain this situation. The main aspect is the selfsame erratic condition of the IWRM, although it is assumed as an axis of a sectorial and fragmented water policy in Belize (^{Kauffer & Mejía, 2020}):

“So far no one has covered it, in the country of Belize we need something like a Commission that has to do with river basins, but it isn’t established, everyone works on what belongs to them”.

Interview with an official of the Government of Belize, Belmopan, March 26, 2007.

The difficulty of thinking of the transboundary dimension of the basin is a reality in both countries, even though transboundary cooperation exists in other areas:

“Unfortunately no activity on the Hondo River, like the pollution, is contemplated by the Mexican government or that of Belize. Activities of all types are contemplated regarding construction, crossing of the bridge is contemplated in the proposals in order to give recommendations or others... At this level nothing has been done to avoid conflicts, it has not contributed in this sense, but something should be done”.

Interview with an official of the Government of Belize, Belmopan, March 28, 2007.

Finally, the economic and political asymmetries (between the two countries) that lead Mexico to assume the full financial costs as well as the leadership of administering the river basin are a complex subject insofar as transboundary water issues are not of great interest to the Mexican Government in the South (^{Kauffer, 2018}). This situation causes tensions among the Federal government’s own institutions:

“What agreement did we make with the situation of Belize? How is the resource? We knew this before, for a long time, that it is a country that does not have resources, that has no assistance, that is why we offered, as the Government of Mexico, to make, the initiative was from us, from Mexico, the terms of reference of the study, came from us and we offered to do it in both countries in order to have this information, conscious as we were that they had no resources, it was not a study that was going to be done, our part and the Belizean counterpart, no, let us not confuse that, please. The study was to be done by us, both parts. We agreed on that, it was the formal agreement that we made, they never asked us, we offered it to the Belizeans and we offered it in those terms, that is the reality. That is how simple the costs were, if we made a mistake in 2003 by offering that when we could not do it, then it was a big mistake that we made at that time. But it was our offer to the Belizeans, and I am not defending it at the request of the Belizeans, I am defending the international commitment that we assumed and that our Mexican government made”.

An official of the Mexican Federal Government, during the Second Meeting of the Yucatan Peninsula Basin Council, Specialized Working Group on Sanitation in Quintana Roo (GTESQROO), Chetumal, August 24, 2006.

Thus, national political and economic considerations are indispensable for understanding the sum of inconsistencies that are observed, particularly in the CCRH, which-despite being the principal instrument for IWRM in the Hondo river basin-reflects a series of national and international contradictions in the water policies of the three States that are parties to this transboundary scenario.

A water security ignored and detached from IWRM

In the Hondo river basin, the issue of water security is almost ignored by stakeholders, who have difficulty identifying the notion (only three of the 13 stakeholders interviewed in 2016 did so) without managing to identify the CCRH’s actions regarding in the territory. In general terms, the stakeholders are not familiar with the concept. When they do bring it up, their vision of it is incomplete, insomuch as it does not include the four components mentioned previously: (1) water security through traditional indicators of scarcity and hydric stress, (2) vulnerability related to droughts and floods, (3) water security focused upon human dimensions of food security, and (4) the WS associated with sustainability.

In the eyes of the interviewed stakeholders, water security in the Hondo basin refers to three aspects: availability of water, access to drinking water, and the problem of pollution. To judge from that outlook, improving water quality is a concern (and is often mentioned by different stakeholders), but WS is not seen clearly. Moreover, the CCRH’s activities are not linked to that notion, which takes no concrete form at local scales. In some cases, water security is mentioned from the standpoint of national security thanks to the river’s location in a transboundary territory where border security has been strengthened along the Mexican side by two military bases and elements of the Navy. Security forces from other agencies are also present in some locations along the river.

It should be emphasized that in the water-related goals of Master Plan for environmental protection, conservation, and recovery of the Yucatan Peninsula for the period 2015-2024 (^{Conagua, 2015}), water security is enunciated only with regard to prevention of droughts and floods, in four problem areas: reductions in quantity and quality of water; deterioration of natural resources; extreme phenomena; and climate change. References to water security are lost among the details of the axes, objectives, and strategies of the Yucatan Peninsula Water Program 2030 Vision, just as they are lost among the Program’s actions, high-priority problems, strategic objectives, and general goals. References to water security also disappear in the updated Master Plan of 2015. Those omissions signify that the mentions of water security are found only at the Federal level, and have no implementation within the Hondo River Basin.

The finding derived from the interviews and from examination of institutional documents is that while water security is unfamiliar and seldom invoked on the local scale, it is referred (when mentioned at all) to the availability, accessibility, and quality of water on the Mexican side. That is, the concept of water security that figures in the interviews and institutional documents does not cover the full range of the concept proposed on the international scale, and by the Conagua itself. For its part, the predominant theme in the institutional vision of water security is that of droughts and floods. The foregoing signifies that IWRM and WS are not clearly linked at any time, either by local stakeholders related to the CCRH-the favored space for formal IWRM-or by those stakeholders who are linked to IWRM at the regional level through the CCPY. The concept of WS is enunciated only in the national objectives of the Conagua itself.

The enduring water insecurities in the Hondo River

If we center the reflection on water insecurities as the product of power relations, it is essential to refer to the major problems of the Hondo river basin that affect the local populations and their ecosystems, and vice versa.

On the Mexican side, the major source of water insecurities in the basin, historically, has been pollution of the main current as a result of a twofold dynamic: use of agrochemicals in agricultural activities, and deficiencies in treatment of wastewater. The main triggering event reported in the Diagnostic (^{Conagua, 2007}) and by many of the interviewees were the 2007 mass deaths of fish in Chetumal Bay. Investigations of that event identified agrochemicals whose origin was related to the strong sugarcane activity on both sides of the river, principally in the Belizean part. This situation affects fishing for self-consumption, which although it is not commercial, is one of the principal human activities-along with cross-border smuggling of merchandise-observed along the Hondo River during our fieldwork. Hence, pollution of the river creates a health issue that affects the local populace, including the emerging recreational activities, as possibilities for further development of the tourism sector along the Hondo River.

In the Diagnostic (^{Conagua, 2007}), one of the basin’s principal problems, noted as appearing in the international literature as well as in the Conagua’s national documents from the perspective of a traditional vision of WS, is flooding. The floods that are caused by hurricanes are mentioned as an element that we can also consider from a broader, socio-political perspective as part of the water insecurities that affect the Hondo river’s population, especially in the Belizean section. Hence, during the interviews conducted in Belize this issue was the one that came up most often regarding the Hondo river-and for Belize as a whole. The poorest areas of that country are characterized by the long-lasting marks of floods on buildings. The presence of shelters for the protection of the public is notable in those areas, unlike on the Mexican side, where the predominant theme is the pollution of the water resource. This situation highlights that water insecurities can be perceived differently among the various stakeholders who live on the banks of the same river, and who use the water resource for diverse activities, or who carry out water-related actions within a given river basin.

One of the problems mentioned by Mexican stakeholders is the deforestation in the middle area of the basin, a process that produces erosion, loss of soil, and runoff of sediment into the main current. The Diagnostic (^{Conagua, 2007}) evokes that problem clearly. It is also a recurrent element in the interviews that were conducted. It affects the Chetumal Bay Reserve, a Quintana Roo state’s natural protected area that is a sanctuary for the manatee-a species in danger of extinction. Because the Reserve is located downstream in the basin, the place reaps the consequences of all the actions and activities carried out upstream.

Access to quality water is an outstanding issue in the Mexican side of the Hondo river basin. In the Calakmul municipality, Campeche, which is a little-known part of the basin, there is no surface water, and the subterranean waters have hardness problems-as do the waters of the Hondo river itself-that impede their use for human consumption, and therefore the population’s access to water for domestic use.

Water sanitation continues to be a troublesome issue because only about 50% of the water in the Mexican part of the river basin is being treated. That situation causes an unhealthy environment and public-health problems, in addition to endangering activities that are carried out in lagoon systems such as the Bacalar lagoons, which have surface and underground connections to the Hondo River.

Thus the old, unresolved problems of the Hondo river basin are expressed as a series of water insecurities for the basin’s population. The severity of the impacts varies according to location, and also according to one’s activities and level of exposure. The impact is greatest for those who live in conditions of marginalization-a situation especially evident during the recurrent floods on the Belizean bank. This signifies that water-related problems persist even with IWRM, and that new water insecurities in the basin have been added to the old problems.

Acute water insecurities: The CCRH, a platform for IWRM

Finally, in the last few years, the suckermouth catfish has been one of the most acute environmental problems in the Hondo river basin. The fish was initially detected in Guatemala, in the Usumacinta basin, and then upstream in the Hondo River, where Arroyo Azul flows. The fish was then found in Belize, and finally in the Mexican part of the basin. The presence of this fish affects the riverine ecosystem in various ways simultaneously: it nests along the banks, where it provokes erosion, and endangers other fish species by eating their eggs. In sum, it impacts the equilibrium of aquatic systems as well as the fishing activities. Another danger is that the suckermouth catfish may arrive in the Bacalar Lagoons, where it could change ecosystem dynamics and-according the specialists who were interviewed-possibly the color of the lakes, which are the area’s principal attraction. Those changes would have large economic effects, via reduction of income from tourism. However, the impact of this invasive species has more recently been classified as stable, unlike the situation in other rivers in Mexico (^{Maldonado, 2019}).

For the purposes of this article, the suckermouth-catfish episode was generated as a concrete, acute emergency of water insecurity, which some stakeholders in the CCRH were able to resolve without the support of the Conagua. The following excerpt from an interview makes that clear:

“X knew that I was part of that auxiliary body of the Hondo river and came and said to me: ‘Listen, Z…a researcher from Belize told me that they have now found the suckermouth catfish in a tributary that empties into the Hondo river’. Z… now I began to find out what the suckermouth catfish was and the impact that it had: ‘So why don’t we try to do something within this committee (sic)?’ Well, so I as part of this committee make an invitation and ask that a meeting be held so we can make progress on this…. When I go to the office of Conagua, which is the higher authority for this, I say ‘Listen, invite [the members] to a meeting, convoke all of the members because this situation is delicate and grave, and this and that could happen’ […] ‘Yes, Z…, but it’s just that at the moment we’re attending to who knows what kind of urgent institutional requests from the Conagua’. So since they had their priorities, I said, ‘Okay, so it’s grave’. So what did I do? I grabbed the distribution list of all of the members of the committee [sic] of the Hondo River and I talked to them […]. So, surprisingly, those who started immediately to look for any way they could help, they were businesspersons, the businesspersons who were part of the basin committee (sic), not the institutions”.

Interview with a researcher, CCRH, Chetumal, September 20, 2016.

Here we see that although situations of water insecurity in the Hondo river basin have persisted (and worsened with the appearance of the suckermouth catfish), and although the notion of water insecurity does not appear clearly in the discourse of local stakeholders, or even in documents regarding IWRM for the river basin, the example of the suckermouth catfish as an element of acute water insecurity -as was the concurrent pollution of the river- did in fact succeed in making the CCRH’s various stakeholders join forces. This example indicates that water insecurities can indeed become driving forces for IWRM on this scale, even when the stakeholders are not familiar with the notion of IWRM that is proposed by international agencies and in academic discussions. Thus, when faced with a critical situation, the CCRH became a platform capable of articulating a response to the appearance of the suckermouth catfish: the CCRH functioned as a space for interaction among stakeholders, and made possible a linkage between IWRM and WS, stemming from a critical situation of water insecurity.

The relations between IWRM and WS, although characterized by a lack of articulation in the Hondo river basin, have also been presented in their unfavorable version-IWRM combined with water insecurities-but sometimes, too, in a modality where IWRM serves as a tool (via the CCRH) for driving a concrete response to a situation of acute water insecurity.

Therefore, we have been able to identify a threefold modality of interactions between IWRM and WS in the Hondo river basin via the analysis of the stakeholders’ perspectives involved in the CCRH: in addition to the predominant disconnect between IWRM and WS in the basin, and the inverse relation between them, there sometimes arises a positive interaction in which IWRM makes collaboration possible among stakeholders when an acute situation of water insecurity arises in the basin.