Ecotechnologies for Mayan Communities

Since 2020, CReW+ in Mexico has joined efforts to provide ecotechnologies to Mayan communities in the Yucatan Peninsula. This plan consists of collaborating with these communities in the design and construction of simple water supply and sanitation technologies, adapted to local conditions. 

These ecotechnologies promote the socio-economic sustainability of a very poor and marginalized region. But the need to apply these technologies is especially strong due to the geological peculiarity of the peninsula. The area has a karst system, in which there are no rivers on the surface, but rather, underground. One of the objectives of the ecotechnologies is to prevent wastewater from reaching these groundwaters, since drinking water is extracted for the communities. Polluted waters not only pose a serious risk to human health in rural Mayan communities and cities, but they can also disrupt the environmental health of extensive coastal wetlands, freshwater bodies, and marine ecosystems, including the coral reef.

Important steps of this GEF CReW+ activity are already finalized: the socio-environmental diagnosis of the communities, the design of adapted technologies, the development of a strategy to strengthen the active participation of community members in the management of water, and socialization with the communities. 

"You could say that the involvement of the communities was very positive, for example, there is an Association of mothers belonging to the school of a community where the ecotechnologies are going to be built that has provided a lot of support to the project," says Sophie Müller, technical advisor at Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Mexico.

Once the administrative issues have been concluded, the construction of ecotechnologies will begin. Meanwhile, the materials that have been completed are already being used in projects other than GEF CReW+ in the Yucatan Peninsula, replicating the impact of the activity.