LA CUENCA DE LA SIERRA

There are many ways for the world to be governed or self govern, for economies to be resilient or sustainable or neither, for people to see themselves reflected in their work and have a right livelihood, or not.

In the course of world history, many models of resource management have been tried and many people have thrived. And many people have starved. This document offers a view on the former.

There is no doubt that we live in a historical moment like no other, where resources will surely be stretched to the breaking point, and populations will be challenged to adjust to unprecedented changes. Their and our success will entirely depend on our ability to respond to new opportunities to grow and distribute food more intelligently, and manage our most precious natural resource, water, from wellspring to consumption, in better and more comprehensive ways.

The world will increasingly, and perhaps starting soon, desperately, need and find itself searching for models that exist or can be developed and made available, and teachable, for how communities truly meet their own needs, manage their own food and water, and distribute their own wealth and other resources. People are already devoutly seeking and employing systems that actually work, based in biomimicry, where populations in the face of climate change are meeting their own sustenance needs. As the earth warms, what food can grow? As water becomes more scarce, how to store it? Distribute it?

There are few places on earth with all the ingredients necessary to qualify as truly fecund. These components for a thrivable locale would likely be: low population density, tropical climate, rich nutritive soils, abundant water, little pollution, freedom from war.

As it turns out, there is no single area on our planet with as few people, as warm weather, as generative a landscape with such good farmland potential,

is as wet (from a yearly monsoon, a complex and gigantic aquifer, and mountains that capture rain year round), with as few people, and is as free from strife and destabilization, as the area just north of Los Cabos in B.C.S., Mexico.

Here in what is coming to be referred to as La Cuenca de la Sierra, a small well-

watered stretch of land crossed by arroyos, richly watered all year, along the eastern escarpment of the middle range of the Sierra de la Laguna, there is emerging a new and better opportunity to model a truly sustainable, self sufficient, economically viable, right livelihood, local living economy.

All the ingredients, most notably that rarest of geological conditions, irrigated

desert, are here to create a gourmet meal out of the ingredients at hand, provided they are properly treated as the precious bounty they are of a renewable, but not infinitely renewable, Mother Earth.

However, due to very understandable historical problems rooted ultimately in

exploitation by foreign powers, and a resulting corrupt crony government capitalism based on Mexico’s colonial past, the sweet and savory dish of a healthy community with abundant water here in La Cuenca has never created.

The people in this region remain economically depressed. The average yearly income is _____. Of the _____ people who live here, x are Mexican, y are from the US or Canada, and the difference in wealth is ______.

X percent of the people here work in y. etc. etc.

Links to full demographics of this region.

The greater area in question, and where the impacts of a well managed water program would have the most result, stretches from La Paz to San Jose del Cabo, and from Cabo San Lucas to Todos Santos and around to La Paz again.

The 10,000 or so square kilometers that make up the total region are as typically dry as the rest of the B.C.S. peninsula. However, in the middle of the peninsula’s bottom, the water that emerges from the mountains is quite substantial. For in the middle is a giant mountain range, up to 7200 feet high, where from 5000 feet and up clouds all year pour giant amounts of water. The granitic and partially volcanic aquifer within this upheaval is poorly understood, and considered utterly unique in geologic circles.

The broader vision is that if you go southern Baja we’re an island surrounded by water. There’s the desert, which seems quite dry. Meanwhile, it’s the fastest growing tourist destination on Earth.

And so where does most of the money actually come from in southern Baja these days?

It comes from tourism. Which exists along a coastal strip.

The water from this strip comes from the mountains.

And in between the mountains and the coastal strip there’s a dysfunctional, non-economic, semi-depressed community and water management. For the most part, overall, the locals are not involved in their real economy. This is a towards a proposal to create an economics that make sense for the locals to be involved in, and even manage, as their own local economy. Even control the water that comes out of their backyard. Much like citizens of certain small oil producing nations are all millionaires, we need to sell the vision to the locals that managed correctly, they are like oil sheikhs.

Oh, I’m a millionaire. I live in this country that makes this magic gold. OK, but there are also responsibilities. It’s a collective. We all work on it together.

Maybe we find out there is 3000 of them (us) total. We tell them: you are the new water stewards. Whoever can deliver this message can win.

The water that emerges from this mountain range is estimated to be sufficient to supply ___ times the number of ___ inhabitants of the region, as well as water ___  farms in the valleys and foothills along the east cape.

In days of yore, the rancheros used to run cattle and make money, and people still do these things, which make a little bit of money, but there’s no one who can really today earn a living off the land for the most part in the way the system is operating at the moment.

However, if you imagine that the water keepers are allowing the water to arrive at the coast in a reasonable amount and condition, why don’t we look at water as the value, more than anything else that’s coming out of these mountains, in allowing the coastal tourism to happen. We propose ceding some control to the people who live where the water is.

Water is the currency. And why don’t we re-imagine the system so that we reinvest some of that profit back to make these regions more functional. So that their people can be more capable to look after the water in a more productive way, and have all the systems based on that idea, rather than having it where you depend a great deal on what amounts to a veiled system of government handouts that inevitably benefit the very few.

This approach also benefits the tourism because it makes another level of interest for the tourist. People go to these resorts and want to get out. After two days of sitting by the pool people are ready for actually experiencing something.

We could offer a great deal of diversion for one or two days. But not as a government mandated overlay to the actual culture here. It has to come from within the culture, and be real. The only thing we have to sell is what is still real about this place.

The solution we envision could be beneficial in that the water systems get improved, or it could be detrimental in that busloads of people come and stress and infrastructure that can ill afford to support so many cars and waste and needs.

The question:

How do you look at and how do you reinvest some of the profits that could come from correct water management rather than just saying here is the honey pot and don’t actually create something of value.

Identify:

Cabo has x people, growing at y rate, with water needs z, but potential water available is only a (but it could be b).

Part of the problem is a broken water system.

Other part of the problem: local officials are not compensated for their time or work. They are expected to do work for very little money. Hence, they’re all trying to figure out how to stay financially solvent while they are occupying this public office.

The issue isn’t ultimately about managing the water. It’s about how do we manage the people.

How do we manage the people to get the money to pay for the repairs to allow the water to make the difference it’s meant to and needs to.

Politicians at the Ejido level are people go into job knowing it is unpaid, but aware that they might have the opportunity to siphon off some federal monies.

Goal 1:

Collect, aggregate and detail this data.

Gather together studies of water that show the reserves, the existing infrastructure, and that prove how the water was mismanaged

Organize this data from the water studies

Demonstrate that the passionate mismanagement of water is costing us a lot.

The other part of the problem is that true estimates for what amount of water is produced by this water system and is therefore available have never been mapped.

Why don’t we get the smart people together who manage these water systems or have a role in such things, and understand water, and look at how this could work. we know there are strategies for harvesting water, and maintaining water quality, and rebuilding ecosystems of promote the water being held here in far greater amounts and lengths of time. how do you take those ideas and convert them into sensible policy. That can then be implemented by Ejidos and other folks at various levels. It’s a big question.

Goal 2:

Have a two or three day seminar with all the key water figures with the goal being to fill in the blanks, solve for x, identify where the existing studies are, and form some committees to draft some proposals that we can circulate.

Proposal:

So, first step: have a retreat – who would be good to come?

• fill in the blanks
• collaborative design: what the components would be
• capture the water: visions for how this could be done
• build biodiversity
• improve the real economy as measured by the 8 forms of capital

Right livelihood for all the local people that live here and seriously consider a model where they would be stakeholders in and were reoriented to the extent that they believed in the vision of being ranchers that have also evolved into water keepers and farmers and protectors of the land.

Say to the local people: Imagine. The water was saved, the waterways were repaired and the water was theirs to manage to some extent

Focus on these things:

• rehydrating the landscape and restoring the hydrology
• bring the land back to its full function
  • trap the pigs
  • designate areas for regeneration
  • designate areas for water distribution

Beyond that, what alternative payment models for Ejido leaders? What are the levels of water management above Ejido level. City: Santiago. Municipality: Regionality. And national: Conagua, feds but with local presence.

• Work toward a water ownership collective.
• Planting idea in people’s minds that they are the water stewards
• Create a buffer zone between the biosphere and regular land
• Focus on regenerative development
• Requires us to reforest, create a full soil environment

Mexico has one of the most progressive systems of water management in the world. But the problem is the “last kilometer.” Strong, transparent leadership around water is needed. The best platform to govern B.C.S. is to do something sensible around water.

So, our idea was to invite knowledgeable, local people to pitch in and have a strategy around managing water in southern Baja that wasn’t based on nothing, which is currently the case.

Area to be discussed: the whole eco-system south of La Paz, the “Cuenca de la Sierra.”

Bring busloads of people up here witness farm to table culture, ranchero culture, experience one of the last pure places on earth.

But, it has to 1) support this infrastructure and 2) has to actually be growing lots of stuff and is sustainable! At the moment, the thing isn’t quite working right. The water isn’t flowing to the farms. The median income is depressed. In the context of hills that denuded by cows and pigs, it’s a pretty ravaged and unbalanced eco system.

How many people live here? OK, if those people were stakeholders. Waterkeepers. Were people that protected the water.

Final Summary of Proposal:

This is an economic proposal. We figure out what the cost is to repair what’s broken, figure out what mechanisms exist in Mexico for funding that. And then you figure out what you get back from that investment, what the multiplier of that is, and then you work backwards from that profit, and that’s how you get people to buy in. Probably partnerships on different levels of government, possibly bond sales, but that’s the purpose of the meeting: to get people who have experience deciding, and then let’s make that transparent so people get to experience what it looks like to have an honest open process.
There are ways of doing projects that Mexico may not have tried, involving the blockchain and other methods of proof of work and proof of stake, that could leapfrog existing methods.

So our mandate is: let’s get a bunch of the right people together to talk about it and understand what needs to happen in the system and figure some possibilities out.