A standard was elaborated to evaluate farmer's adaptation to climate variability, mainly to drought in watersheds in Central America. The process covered six phases: recompilation of information, development of a preliminary standard, interviews with experts to evaluate the preliminary standard, design of the evaluation's standard with expert inputs, assessment of the standard usefulness under real conditions, and standard valuation in the Aguas Calientes sub-watershed, Nicaragua. This sub-watershed was selected because of periodical droughts and clima-te variability. The standard consists of five general principles, ten criteria, 26 indicators and 51 verifiers, The principles include regional and national policies and institutionalism, and particular watershed conditions. The standard's testing process in the Aguas Calientes sub-watershed determined an average degree of applicability for the standard (3 in a scale from 1 to 5). Nonetheless, the general principles were considered of high applicability (4). This methodology can be used in other fields and other territorial management units.