Making a Difference in South America Villagers in the Cotopaxi region
Villagers in the Cotopaxi region. Image – Andrew Fenemor
An isolated rural region in South America could soon benefit from the skills of scientists from a small island nation half the world away. Staff from Landcare Research will spend the next three years participating in an NZAID project to try and improve the lives of people in the Cotopaxi region of Ecuador.
Cotopaxi is situated in central Ecuador, mostly in the high Andes above 2000 metres above sea level and is home to about 350,000 people. Seventy-three percent of the population is rural-based with 51% dependent on agriculture. The vast majority of landholdings are less than a hectare and correspond to poor, indigenous, farming households on marginal land.
The work aims to encourage rural inhabitants – especially highland indigenous communities – to develop more sustainable livelihoods based on better management of the natural resource base in ‘pãramo’ areas and associated watersheds, taking climate change into account and supported by their local government. The NZAID-funded project will be led by Dr Chris Wheatley of Nelson, and carried out with two European NGOs already working in Ecuador, who are already well connected with ‘second order organisations’ working at community level in Cotopaxi Province.
The pãramo ecosystem is located above the agricultural zone at 3,800–4,500 metres above sea level and sustains the local communities. However, it has been exploited and significantly degraded over the past 25 years. The pãramo regulates water supply for downstream users and water flows have decreased by 30% in the corresponding time frame at the same time that demand has risen. Erosion is also a major problem because it reduces soil volumes, fertility, crop yields and incomes. Sixteen percent of the land area is eroded or currently eroding and the effects of climate change will likely complicate this situation, while current trends in global food and fuel prices are likely to increase rural poverty rates as well as the pressure for agricultural intensification on marginal lands. It is issues like these that will confront scientists Ian Payton and Andrew Fenemor during their upcoming trips to South America.
Dr Payton, who will study pãramo ecology and investigate the possiblility of local communities earning carbon credits for allowing the pãramo to rest and recover, says the pãramo has very similar characteristics to iconic areas of the South Island.
‘The local people tend to do to their pãramo what we have done to our high country tussocklands here over the years; they burn them, graze and over-graze them and the resulting erosion problems are very similar to New Zealand but at a higher altitude.’
The paramo ecosystem underpins and sustains rural livelihoods indirectly through the provision of water for agriculture and other uses and directly through livestock pasture uses, collection of firewood and medicinal plants. Downstream enterprises and urban areas also rely on water supplies from pãramo areas.
The project has three main focus areas: pãramo conservation, rural livelihoods and improved water resource management.
Andrew Fenemor says water issues stem from problems as diverse as grazing cattle and cultivating steeplands in unsustainable areas, and extensive plantings of eucalyptus and pine trees that affect water yields.
‘From my point of view I want to bring some of the things we learnt in the Integrated Catchment Management programme on the Motueka River to the South American example – the principles, learning and knowledge,’ he says. And, it’s a big task; smallholder farming livelihoods are based on traditional crops and livestock and depend on soil and water.
The objective is for poor rural inhabitants and local governments in two areas to have tools, skills, knowledge and commitment to sustainably manage their natural resource base for improved production and livelihoods. And, to prepare communities for climate-change-related impacts in their pãramo areas and associated watersheds.
Andrew Fenemor
Ian Payton