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19 March 2003 | Intag | By Carlos Zorrilla
BIT BY BIT, HECTARE BY HECTARE, we are helping to
protect community water and biodiversity resources in the
degraded hills, and formerly forested landscape of the Intag
region of Northwestern Ecuador. The work is not easy, but
it is satisfying. The scale is small, some will say minute,
but the impact is nothing short of amazing.
For the past 18 months, Decoin (Defensa y Conservacin Ecolgica
de Intag), a local grass-roots environmental organization,
with support from Britain's Rainforest
Concern, has been helping communities in Intag buy and
protect the micro watersheds where they get their drinking
water, and at the same time, protect the area's extraordinary
biological diversity. The Intag area is right smack in the
middle of the Choco-Western Ecuadorian, and the Tropical Andes
Biological Hospots. There are only 25 of these biologically
diverse and threatened areas in the planet, together harboring
a disproportional portion of the Earth's biological diversity.
The reserves being purchased range from one to fifty-five
hectares; some are covered in Kikuyu grass for cows, some
are used intensively by small farmers to grow crops needing
constant pesticides sprays, and luckily, some still harbor
stunningly diverse native cloud forests. But all have one
thing in common -- they are the only source of drinking water
for all the communities of Intag.
During the past 18 months, DECOIN has researched the status
of 60 community micro watersheds, and we've discovered some
pretty startling and disturbing facts. For example, all but
a few have problems of contamination or severe water shortages
during the dry months. Many are being used by their private
owners to pasture cattle, or were being planted right up to
the streams edge with things like Tree Tomatoes, a product
requiring heavy spraying of pesticides. So far, we have not
found a single micro watershed collectively owned, nor protected
by any governmental institution. If you are wondering if parasitism
is a problem is this rural part of Ecuador, the answer is
a resounding yes -- not surprising given the state of the
micro watersheds. Our project is not large enough to try and
determine the other health problems consequence of unprotected
micro watersheds, but they are bound to be numerous.
In areas where the land is too degraded for the forest to
naturally come back, the project is helping the communities
to reforest with native species. You might grow tired of the
word community, but it's an essential part of the project
and the main reason for its success. The community is, first
of all, informed about the project; nothing proceeds without
their full approval. Once the project is accepted by the majority
of its members in community meetings, the land is demarcated
and measured with community members and the guidance of one
of our representatives. The negotiations to buy the land,
the actual purchase of the land, and the legalization of the
title is also undertaken by community members. Furthermore,
in the few cases where the joint project has not been able
to afford the total cost of the land, each member of the community
has collaborated with the balance. In the end, the community
is the sole owner of their watershed, and entrusted totally
to its care. We trust the communities to carry out this task,
because they all understand the importance of clean, safe
water.
What can a few hectares accomplish? Well, the average size
of the micro watershed is 16 hectares. Not much by many standards.
However, the value of conserving forest patches has been shown
in several studies -- especially in areas of high biodiversity
and high rates of endemism, such as the Intag area. Besides,
given that land is a scarce commodity here and that some people
depend totally on agriculture for their living, concessions
have to be made. However, in areas where a certain minimum
of land has not been agreed to between the owners and the
community -- the community has appealed to municipal authorities
to expropriate the land. This is the case of just two of the
10 micro watersheds we have helped purchased to date. In the
case of the other eight, the owners themselves have seen the
need to conserve and protect this very valuable resource.
What is that certain minimum? Much depends on the type of
land, soil type, vegetation cover and how it's being used,
but whenever possible we are going for a minimum of 100 meters
on each side of the watercourse, and from the point where
the water is collected in tanks, as high as feasible, beyond
the source of water whenever possible. It might not be very
technical way of doing it -- but it works -- works in the
sense that most owners are willing to sell and still remain
friends with the rest of the community, and that we feel enough
land is protected to guarantee safe and abundant water and
create important patches of native vegetation.
REFORESTATION, ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND BIODIVERSITY
CONSERVATION
The project has a strong biological diversity conservation
component -- we try and purchase as much native forest as
possible. So far, however, we've discovered that about 40%
of the land is in need of reforestation. This part of the
project involves using only native trees that are grown, by...
you guessed it -- the communities. We purchase the trees and
the community does the reforestation. We are lucky here in
Intag that a few communities have participated in the creation
of tree nurseries, making it a bit easier to find trees in
the vicinity. In some cases, tree-production contracts have
had to go to individuals, but we prefer giving the work to
the community groups whenever possible -- some of which are
led by women.
The reforestation is done on a volunteer basis -- yet everyone
is expected to give a hand. In the Penaherra-Cristal micro
watershed, all members of both communities took place in reforestation
"mingas" (work parties) -- including all grade school kids,
and the local high school. Quite impressive to see 7 year
old girls and boys carry bagged trees for 20 minutes over
steep terrain to help reforest "their watershed." You can
do a hell of a lot with this kind of energy and commitment
to make our world a lot better, no? In all, nearly 177 families
will benefit from just this single micro watershed purchase.
After living in this region for 24 years, and intensively
participating the past 10 in several environmental organizations,
I learned early in the game that conservation is a tough sell
for small farmers that, in many cases, live from day to day.
The project's activities, including reforestation, opens the
door to talk about conservation -- making it much easier for
most people to make the connection between healthy forests
and safe water; and the importance of conserving not only
one or two small reserves, but all forests -- for they help
create the humidity and rain that is stored in the land. Once
people see with their own eyes and once they can benefit directly
from a "conservation" project -- by drinking cleaner water
for example -- then they are open, and it's much easier for
them to understand the whys of conservation. If we can achieve
even this goal with this project, we will have won a major
battle to conserve Intag's highly threatened natural resources.
Management Plans and Monitoring Water Quality
The next step is designing a management plan for each of the
watersheds. For this, workshops are being prepared to discuss
the importance of protecting all the pieces of this ecological
puzzle -- and the ways to achieve it. Working with a limnologist,
a biologist and a reforestation expert, two or three members
from each community will learn the basics of land use and
conservation techniques for each area, and will be trained
in ways to test and monitor the quality of the water, and
its biological diversity. With the valuable support from a
student from a nearby university working on her thesis in
using aquatic insects to monitor water quality (bio indicators)
, we hope to set up a simple and inexpensive system so local
people can gauge the quality of their water. In addition,
we are also testing the water in some communities for potability
using a standard water testing kit. For most communities --
incredibly enough -- this is the first time their water has
ever been tested.
The project is still new -- we have only been going at it
for nine months -- and only six of these full time. One of
the things we confirmed, more than discovered, was the overwhelming
support and interest shown by ALL communities to protect their
sources of water. The operating word here is overwhelming.
Our small NGO is swamped by requests from communities to carry
out the project in their community. And though the project
is small at its present stage -- only five watersheds per
year, totalling approximately 80 hectares, in some cases we
have been asked to help purchase much larger areas -- which
was actually an expected by product of the project; that is,
the creation of much larger collectively owned protected areas.
It is a principal tenet of the project that active community
participation is by far the best way natural areas will be
protected in places like Intag, and countries like Ecuador.
In some ways, it was set up to be a pilot project to see how
feasible it was to protect water and biological resources
using water as a central point of concern. Judging by the
response to date, it has been, and will be, phenomenally successful.
Its important to highlight that previous to the start of the
project most communities, as I mentioned earlier, had been
having problems with the quality and quantity of their water
sources. In addition, the environmental consciousness of many
of Intag's inhabitants was more advanced than many rural areas
in Ecuador, due to threats presented by mining projects. In
effect, I believe these factors are contributing to the projects
success, but likewise, I strongly believe everyone's concern
about the quality of their water is an essential factor.
Bit by bit and hectare by hectare. For some, too slow, too
little, too inconsequential. For the people drinking safer
water and learning first hand the value of conservation, it's
amazing. For me, these areas are nothing less than amazing:
areas of hope, regions of true commitment to conservation;
and the start of the true greening of these tired, and misused
hills, forests and streams.
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