Building climate adaptation capacity in water resources planning: ‘Ríos del páramo al valle, por urbes y campiñas’

This fact sheet describes a $1.5 million project (2012-2015) funded by USAID and implemented by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) to enhance climate adaptation capacity in Colombia's water resources planning. The initiative focuses on the coffee-growing region and the Magdalena-Cauca basin, utilizing the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) model to support local Corporaciones Autónomas Regionales (CARs) in managing water allocation and ecosystem health under climate uncertainty.

• The project aims to strengthen Colombia's national climate change response by improving water resources management adaptation in the coffee-growing region and other areas, with a specific focus on the role of high-elevation páramo ecosystems (3,000 to 5,000 meters above sea level) in regulating water supply.
• In the Río La Vieja watershed, SEI is collaborating with three regional autonomous corporations (CARDER, CRQ, and CVC) and three research centers (EIS, CIDERA, and CINARA) to develop WEAP models. These models cover hydrology in the upper headwaters of the Río Otún, water distribution in Pereira, wastewater discharge to the Río Consota, and water quality from Pereira to Cartago.
• For the Huila 2050 Climate Action Plan, SEI is deploying an analytical toolkit using the RAND Corporation’s XLRM framework to identify uncertainties and management strategies. This is followed by the creation of a WEAP model that incorporates climate trajectories and non-climate variables such as population growth and regional economic development to test the robustness of different management options.
• The project is implementing technical enhancements to the WEAP software for the Magdalena-Cauca watershed, including the ability for multiple software instances to pass information dynamically across different spatial scales, new floodplain inundation functionality, and a link to the Nature Conservancy's Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA) software.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2013). Building climate adaptation capacity in water resources planning: ‘Ríos del páramo al valle, por urbes y campiñas’. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/SEI-USAID-FS-2013-Colombia-Water.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Building climate adaptation capacity in water resources planning: ‘Ríos del páramo al valle, por urbes y campiñas’. 2013. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/SEI-USAID-FS-2013-Colombia-Water.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Building climate adaptation capacity in water resources planning: ‘Ríos del páramo al valle, por urbes y campiñas’ |date=2013 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/SEI-USAID-FS-2013-Colombia-Water.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2013building, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Building climate adaptation capacity in water resources planning: ‘Ríos del páramo al valle, por urbes y campiñas’}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2013}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/SEI-USAID-FS-2013-Colombia-Water.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }