The General Water Law of Honduras was approved in 2009, however, it lacked the regulation to ensure its effective enforcement and a water policy to define the state’s management priorities. To date, several institutions have responsibility in the management of water resources, including the Ministry of Environment, as well as sectorial institutions such as the Ministry of Agriculture and the Institute of Forestry Conservation.
The Directorate of Water Resources of the Ministry of Environment of Honduras has been designated through an executive decree to prepare the mentioned instruments in a period of 24 months, which concludes in December 2020.
To this end, a draft regulation was prepared during 2019 and was revised in 11 workshops held between November and December 2019 in the different regions of the country. Actors from the water sector and beyond participated in this consultation process. During the workshops there was a total of 526 participants, which included representatives from the government, private sector, academia, NGOs, and civil society among others.
The Water Directorate convened the representatives of the Interinstitutional Technical Group [1], to then review the inputs and incorporate them into a final document. This process was finalized in January 2020. The next step is to send the final draft to the Ministry of General Coordination of the Government, to get their opinion before the final approval of the regulation.
GWP will continue to support the approval process for both the regulation as well as the preparation and approval of other policy instruments, such as the water policy, and in this way contribute to improving the policy gaps identified in the SDG 6.5.1 baseline.
The objective of the regulation is to "provide the institutions that are linked to water use, the necessary instruments to guarantee the adequate integrated management of water resources with the objective of favouring economic, social and environmental development, equitable for the entire national territory for the benefit of the population and its environment, guaranteeing the right to water for all, with improvement of quality, quantity and supply."
