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Issues concerning a diagnostic study of an action plan for the San Juan river basin

An action plan is being formulated for the San Juan River basin, shared by Costa Rica and Nicaragua in Central America. The action plan is assumed to be ‘a planning tool designed to ensure the availability of the goods and services that water resources provide for the conservation of ecosystems and for social and economic development’. Development of the action plan comprises two phases, namely elaboration of the diagnostic study and drafting of the action plan. The diagnostic study was published in 1997. After examining previous cases in international water systems, for which the diagnostic study was developed as the precursor of an action plan, the author felt that the existing diagnostic study for the San Juan River basin still had room for improvements, in particular in the following aspects: (a) inventory of past, ongoing and future projects; (b) impacts of reserved areas on the basin as a whole; (c) instruments to promote public participation; (d) support by central decision makers; (e) mechanisms for information transparency. These aspects, which need enhancements, seem to suggest that more emphasis should be put on the ‘soft’ aspects of the sciences. While the diagnostic study addresses issues of natural environment in detail, both data and analysis of human environments are in low profile. The lesson gained from the Zambezi River basin project is that lack of a proper strategy and political commitments by the central decision makers (of the riparian states) will lead to an impasse in implementation of the project, due mainly to paucity of support within basin countries. Lack of support by the general public may also lead to a failure in the implementation phase. These aspects should have been sufficiently addressed in the diagnostic study, so that appropriate actions (to be listed in the action plan) should be elaborated for implementation. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.