By 2050, more than 68% of the world’s population will live in cities [1]. At global level, both the number of cities and that of their inhabitants have increased. After North America, Latin America is the second most urbanized region worldwide: 81% of the region´s population lives in cities [1]. This rapid growth in urbanization represents important challenges in terms of sustainability.

Urban expansion is considered one of the leading direct drivers of land use change and habitat loss, and is the most radical form of land transformation, deeply affecting biodiversity [2]. Urbanization alters the river´s natural flow regimes and water quality, ecosystem integrity and the sociocultural values of society, with a consequential loss of ecological services [3]. Other interrelated pressures, such as the loss or degradation of natural areas in watershed headwaters, soil sealing, spillage of contaminants, saline intrusion, deterioration in water quality, and the densification of built areas, pose additional challenges to the functionality of the ecosystem and, thus, for human well-being [4,5,6]. Currently, worldwide watershed degradation costs cities USD $5.4 billion in water treatment annually, and many city governments realize the importance of investing in the sustainability of their watersheds [7].

Urban growth also alters neighboring ecosystems by increasing the demand for resources such as water, food and energy, and for generating large quantities of waste. It is estimated that cities require the ecosystem services provided by areas 500 to 1000 times larger than the cities themselves [8].

Diverse watersheds’ ecosystems provide the primary ecosystem services for urban populations [9,10,11]. Traditionally, urban resilience has centered mainly on urban systems, such as the hydraulic infrastructure. In general, urban water planning and management are generally disconnected from planning and management at a watershed level [12]. However, urban-rural connections in the watersheds are critical for maintaining water supply [13]. In addition to the river flows, infiltration, recharge, sedimentation and pollution all depend on the land use present in the watersheds. As water links cities with their peri-urban/rural surroundings, watershed management is increasingly necessary to improve the resilience of urban water supplies [12,14].

A watershed is a biophysical unit of governance for water management in many countries, and a tool for hydrological modeling [15]. In recent years, studies regarding watershed governance have become relevant [16]. The approaches used and topics covered in those studies are wide ranging, considering, e.g., differences between urban and rural watersheds in different dimensions, highlighting sources of pollution, institutional complexity, and transaction and capital costs [17]. However, in most watersheds, these two conditions converge the urban and the rural, forming a complex geographic mosaic of physical, ecological, political and socio-economic diversity. In these territories, urban and rural processes and actors are interwoven with diffuse limits, for which reason only joint action can enable the provision and maintenance of ecosystem services.

In Latin America, the concern for activities of watershed management has historically been concentrated in rural areas. Mexico has broad watershed management experience in a rural context [18,19,20] emphasizing governance in the communities in order to improve the state of their ecosystems and productive activities. Currently, the main challenge is engaging the cities in the watershed management processes, which will require creating new spaces of collaborative governance [14].

In Mexico, water is a public good regulated by different levels of the government. Mexican cities face growing problems concerning water supply and sanitation problems, particularly for the low-income population [21]. In fact, municipal water utilities had limited technical and administrative capacity due to insufficient financial resources and the lack of skilled staff [22]. Currently, the watershed governance is fragmented between institutions of different governmental levels (federal, state and municipal) with jurisdictions and powers that are divided between the city and the rural part, ignoring their interactions. The performance of these institutions mismatches between ecosystem processes and management scales, for example, the rules, laws, policies, and formal and informal cultural norms, which govern the spatial and temporal extent of resource access rights and management responsibilities. Challenges related to temporality and scale can be seen as core governance dilemmas [23].

Mexico, similar to other countries in Latin America, is home to high biodiversity [24] and is almost the most unequal region of the world in terms of economic income [25] and land distribution [26], which generates strongly polarized social structures. In addition, extractive development has intensified over the preceding decades, resulting in deep socio-environmental conflicts, especially in territories that are home to indigenous people [27,28]. As a result, Mexico, as well as Colombia, Honduras, Brazil, and the Philippines, have had the highest homicide rate of environmental advocates and land defenders in recent years [29].

Severe effects of climate change, e.g., drought, heavy rain, flooding, and pest, stress watershed ecosystems and make watershed management more critical in the country.

In these territories, the absence of the state leaves open niches that can be occupied by CSOs [30]. The analysis of the role of CSOs in different areas has been present since 2000 [16]. Several authors have analyzed the role of CSOs in specific themes, such as agriculture [31,32], or their role in municipalities [33]. Other research has focused on evaluating the role of CSOs indirectly in political outcomes such as governance [34,35,36,37]. However, participation by CSOs in the political sphere has been the object of broad discussion in the academic milieu, especially because there has been an additional growth in the number of these organizations and the list of their types and functions has lengthened as well [30]. In this sense, [38] identify some CSOs’ limitations to create an effective long-term partnership, because partnerships between the state and CSOs may distort the very nature of these organizations as representative of interests of the society. Besides, the main reason for CSOs to exist is to do with the belief that they act for collective objectives, which may occasionally be excluded from ordinary public policy formulation procedures [30].

Although these studies explored different aspects of CSOs’ effects in the political sphere, very little research has measured the feedback effects of CSOs in urban watershed governance. On this subject, we would like to contribute with our research questions.

In many cities, Civil Society Organizations (In the context of this article, we refer to Civil Society Organizations (CSO) as all local groups related to the local environmental stewardship) have focused on the conservation, restoration, administration, monitoring and defense of natural richness, as well as educating the public on a wide range of topics related to the maintenance of the local environment. They also form a crucial component of the structure of urban environmental governance by establishing networks with other local groups and governmental agencies [39,40]. These organizations fulfill a particular role since they can provide access to grant funds, scientific research, technical support, and trained personnel with which to implement restoration projects [17]. Moreover, they have the potential to compile additional information, obtain new perspectives of problems and develop more creative solutions, which could increase the legitimacy of decision-making, leading to a more significant appropriation of the resulting decisions, less litigation and better activities implementation [41].

Diverse experience shows that it is necessary to develop and strengthen collaborations among stakeholders at different scales to improve water management in the territory [42]. In the cities, cooperation between the institutions responsible for the managing of watersheds and the water services administrators continues to be an important challenge for the sustainable management of urban water resources [42].

The role of CSO as a key actor, providing bridges between rural and urban environments, has been widely studied and recognized, particularly in terms of their critical role in achieving a balance among sectors of government, businesses, and civil society [39]. This bridging function can improve ecosystem management, influencing the quantity and quality of ecosystem services for urban areas [43]. It can also counteract technocratic culture, short-term political cycles or the human tendency to resist change, which constitutes some of the main barriers to non-traditional water management approaches, including blue-green infrastructure [44].

The experience of local environmental groups (CSO) working together with governmental agencies and the private sector strengthens watershed administration [45], as well as fortifying social participation and increasing government transparency and accountability, which is essential to the achievement of adaptive watershed management [41]. From this governance, it is possible to achieve sustainable development goals (SDG) directed towards the cities (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/es/cities/ (accessed on 18 August 2020) that recognize the need to support positive economic, social and environmental links among urban, peri-urban and rural zones, strengthening regional development planning (SDG 11.A), as well as increasing the capacity for planning and participative management (SDG 11.3).

The Watersheds and Cities Program of the Fondo Mexicano para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (FMCN) funds local CSOs to protect and recover the watersheds that supply water to the cities. It is achieved through capacity building, technical assistance, funding and inter-institutional synergies (https://fmcn.org/es/programas-proyectos/bosques-y-cuencas (accessed on 17 July 2020). Since 2001, the program has been applied in 12 watersheds of medium-sized cities in Mexico.

The FMCN program establishes an alliance with a local partner, in each selected watershed, leading watershed management through planning, resources investment, and institutional collaboration. This social leadership results from local support, experience in nature conservation, multi-actor work and linkages with local stakeholders. It has created decision-making spaces for watershed management and provision of water, reaching beyond administrative limits and electoral cycles.

3. Development and Findings