The Santiago government officially presents the group that will design the Maipo River Basin Council.

The Promoter Group will include representatives from various sectors involved in the direct and indirect uses of water in the river basin (public, private, and civil society, including academia), who will coordinate to achieve water security. The River Basin Council will facilitate the planning and coordination of actions related to sustainable and decentralized water resource management.

The Santiago City Government officially presented the Promoting Group of the Maipo River Basin Council, which aims to establish a formal governance space for coordination and participation in support of water sustainability in the basin. This group includes representatives from various sectors involved in the direct and indirect uses of water in the river basin (the public sector, the private sector, and civil society, including academia).
River Basin Councils are entities responsible for implementing actions related to water resource management and operate in conjunction with user organizations, national, regional, and local authorities, and other basin stakeholders. Chile is the only OECD country without such bodies.

The initiative, led by the Metropolitan Government of Santiago with technical support from Fundación Chile’s 2030 Water Scenarios, seeks to impact sustainable territorial development and is aligned with the current government’s goal of advancing a just water transition.

The event, open to the public, was attended by the Governor of Santiago, Claudio Orrego; the Executive President of Fundación Chile, Pablo Zamora; the General Manager, Hernán Araneda; and representatives of the organizations that will make up the Promoter Group, among others.
The Metropolitan Governor of Santiago, Claudio Orrego, called for this issue to be brought back to the forefront of the utmost urgency: “Santiago is drying up. We are at a historic moment where, very concretely, the demand for water far exceeds supply. We have been experiencing a drought for 14 years, and this is a structural problem that will not be resolved with a little more rain. The Maipo River is ninth among the rivers with the greatest water stress in the world,” he stated.
“To face these challenges,” Orrego added, “we need to come together to adopt all the necessary measures and actions. For this reason, as a Regional Government, we are leading various initiatives for sustainable water use, such as this one: A participatory mechanism for decision-making regarding Water Security in the Maipo Basin. In addition, we are making progress on water solutions, local water strategies, efficient gardens, and sustainability criteria. In other words, as we advance toward a new institutional framework, we are also advancing solutions,” he asserted.

Pablo Zamora, Executive President of Fundación Chile, stated, “At FCh, we are promoting innovative mechanisms to address structural challenges in water matters. We seek to innovate through radical collaboration for the country’s sustainable development. In this sense, river basin organizations are entities created around the world to address the challenges of climate change and water security. We are at an important moment to co-create a formal space for decentralized coordination and planning that includes the participation of all key stakeholders and that allows us to make sustainable use of water for people, production, and ecosystems,” he stated.

Paul Dourojeanni, Head of Water Governance at Fundación Chile, emphasized that “this is a transitional working group that will play an instrumental role in developing a proposal that will allow for the implementation of the Basin Council. The Promoting Group is not and will not be the Basin Council, and its purpose is not to resolve contingency issues. Rather, it is tasked with the collaborative design of an organization capable of addressing them in the future.”

The event included a panel discussion entitled “Water Governance: How a Basin Council Could Improve Water Management in the Maipo River,” moderated by Mauricio Fabry, Coordinator of Environment, Biodiversity, and Climate Action for the Santiago Government, with the participation of Pilar Barría, Water and Governance Advisor for the Ministry of the Environment; Luis Baertl, President of the Maipo River Surveillance Board, First Section; Diego Urrejola, Executive Director of the Cosmos Foundation; and Cecilia González, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Association of Rural Drinking Water.