NICARAGUA:
Plant Trees, Harvest
Water
By
José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, (Tierramérica)
- More than six years
ago, the residents of
the rural community of
Lomas del Viento, on
Nicaragua's Pacific
coast, took up the task
of recuperating the 10
flowing springs that
were drying up as a
result of logging in the
surrounding forests. And
they succeeded.
Lomas del Viento is a
200-year-old village of
small farmers in the
hills 22 kilometres
south of Santa Teresa
municipality in the
south-western department
of Carazo.
The area was always
forested, with mountains
filled with a variety of
plants and animals and
abundant springs and
rivers. But about 12
years ago everything
began to change.
Little by little, the
farmers began taking
over the forests in the
hills, and burning off
the vegetation to clear
the land to plant
grains, María Margarita
Carmona, who was born in
the area, told
Tierramérica.
Other families, faced
with poverty and the
impossibility of
obtaining loans to
improve their farms,
sold their land to
livestock and logging
companies, who extracted
the valuable lumber and
cleared the land for
cattle, she said.
"We were scared when the
rivers began to dry up
and we had to travel
kilometres up the
mountains to get water,"
said Carmona.
Of the 10 springs that
quenched the thirst of
many generations in
Lomas del Viento, by
2001 only two were
available to the 40
families living in the
area, community leader
Marcial Umaña told
Tierramérica.
The other eight had
dried up and were filled
with rubble from the
construction of a
highway to carry
tourists to the
Chacocente wildlife
refuge on the Pacific
beaches.
"People began to worry
because every day it was
more difficult to find
water and there was very
little rain. We had to
climb the hills to look
for water in the wells,
but almost none of them
had any," recalled Umaña.
Faced with this crisis,
a community committee
asked for help from the
Santa Teresa municipal
government to build a
well, he added.
The local government had
no resources but did
have information that
led them to the
non-governmental
organisation Tierra y
Vida (Land and Life).
According to Reinerio
Mongalo, a technician
with Tierra y Vida, a
team of experts made
three discoveries in
Lomas del Viento: its
tourism potential, the
flow of water in layers
deep underground, and --
the most worrisome -- a
rate of environmental
destruction that would
soon leave the hillsides
usable only for
livestock.
Either change the
methods of agricultural
production, or say
good-bye to the last
forests and rivers, the
experts said.
"The people were shocked
by that choice. It is
difficult to accept the
disappearance of all the
forests where you grew
up, those giant trees
and roaring rivers,"
Marcial Jáenz, a young
man who now administers
the Lomas del Viento
community tourism
project, told
Tierramérica.
After receiving the
warning, the Lomas del
Viento Cooperative of
Community Tourism was
organised.
Of the area's 40
families, half
immediately joined the
project and began to
apply the environmental
management plans; they
no longer burned off
fields and they replaced
chemical pesticides with
organic farming
techniques.
The other 20 families
took the wait-and-see
approach, and promised
to join the effort once
they saw that it works.
While some of the locals
involved in the
cooperative have planted
20,000 trees in areas
destroyed by logging,
others cleaned out the
springs, reforested the
watersheds with local
plants.
After six years, the
community has seen the
eight springs once
filled with mud and
garbage now produce
water.
The giant trees they
managed to preserve have
seen the return of
howler monkeys (Alouatta
palliata) and bird
species that had
disappeared from the
area years ago. No
longer are there dark
clouds of smoke from the
annual burnings of
fields in preparation
for planting.
Since the official
launch of the rural
tourism project 16
months ago, 1,560
visitors from within
Nicaragua and abroad
have hiked the hills and
have seen the miraculous
resurgence of the
crystalline waters.
This year the Health
Ministry certified that
the water coming from
Lomas del Viento's
springs is suitable for
human consumption.
But not all of
Nicaragua's rural
communities have had
such an opportunity. In
May, a study by the
non-governmental
Alexander von Humboldt
Centre found that 70
percent of the country's
surface water sources
are contaminated by
household and industrial
waste.
The Human Development
Report for Nicaragua,
presented this month by
the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP),
states that more than 70
percent of Nicaragua's
five million people lack
access to potable water.
The National Potable
Water and Sanitation
Commission recognised in
an August 2006 document
that only a quarter of
Nicaraguan families had
access to clean water.
This Central American
country will have to
ensure safe water and
sanitation services to
at least 2.5 million
people before 2015 if it
is to meet its target
under the eight
Millennium Development
Goals, adopted by the
international community
in 2000.
In Latin America there
are some 100 million
people who live without
any sanitation services
and 50 million without
potable water.
Worldwide, there are
more than one billion
people who lack safe
water for drinking,
according to the United
Nations.
(*Originally published
by Latin American
newspapers that are part
of the Tierramérica
network. Tierramérica is
a specialised news
service produced by IPS
with the backing of the
United Nations
Development Programme
and the United Nations
Environment Programme.) |
