From fluvial guardianship to fluvial governance: citizen action to restore the Machángara and San Pedro rivers in Quito - Ecuador

This project is supported by “CEDENMA”. In Quito, Ecuador, a growing citizen’s movement is emerging to defend and restore urban rivers that have been severely degraded by rapid urbanization, wastewater discharges, and weak environmental governance. Community organizations, activists, academics and local residents come together to rethink how the city interacts with its rivers and promote their recovery.

This initiative brings together collective efforts around the Machangara and San Pedro rivers, tributaries of the upper basin of the Esmeraldas river. Together, these processes form a citizen laboratory for the recovery of urban rivers in Quito.

This initiative strengthens the network of civil society organizations acting as Guardians of the Machangara River, which monitor and advocate for the implementation of a historic court ruling recognizing the rights of the river and mandating its restoration. At the same time, it is advancing a collaborative governance process in the San Pedro river basin, built through five years of community mobilization, environmental action and dialogue between various stakeholders.

By linking citizen monitoring, grassroots mobilization and multi-stakeholder collaboration, the initiative seeks to demonstrate how collective action can transform the relationship between cities and rivers, promoting new ways of living with the urban rivers of the Andes.