Today, as droughts become longer, Puno’s inhabitants are relearning ancestral practices of cooperative farming and water harvesting to cope with the challenges associated with climate change.
“We cannot wait for the regional or national government to help us solve our problems,” says Zenon Gomel Apaza, an agronomist and farmer. “The consequences of climate change are occurring now. We have to cope with what we know and have.”
The agronomist won a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2006 for helping 500 families in Pucara, 60 km (38 miles) north of Lake Titicaca, to widen the genetic variety of their crops to increase food security.
For the past two years, the Asociacion Savia Andina Pucara (ASAP), a nongovernmental organisation focused on agriculture and food security and founded by Gomel Apaza, also has been working to improve water security in Peru’s highlands. In April, the new venture garnered him an Indigenous and Traditional Peoples Conservation Fellowship from the US-based NGO Conservation International.
BUILDING RESERVOIRS
In the village of Quenauni Alto, 20 km (13 miles) from Pucara, Mario Arapa has constructed several cochas (small ponds) on his land under the guidance of ASAP.
Each cocha is no more than two metres by four metres in size (6.5 feet by 13 feet) and only one metre (3.25 feet) deep, but for Arapa and his eight children these traditional reservoirs make the difference between surviving in a harsh environment and capitulation to worsening conditions.
“Frosts are (now) more frequent and last longer. The sun burns harder,” says Arapa. “Before (washed) clothes took two days to dry, now just one day.”
Eddy Wilber Ramos, an agronomist and Gomel Apaza’s assistant, says tougher times mean “there are dozens of families who are migrating from these areas because they are no longer able to tolerate the climate conditions in which they must work.” More
