Editor’s note: Despite its protected status, the forest of Peru Alto Mayo protected, a strip of the Amazon jungle twice the size of the city of New York, has seen the highest rates of the deforestation of the field. Since 2012, Conservation International has tried to stop the loss of forests by negotiating “conservation agreements” with local communities, which accept to stop cleaning forests in exchange for technical and financial advice.
To date, almost 1,000 agreements have signed the leg, reducing deforestation and helping the creature a culture of sustainable development.
Here, Abdías Vásquez describes his life in Alto Mayo and how his conservation agreement has changed. Read on other conservation agreements here.
I have lived in the redemin the high May forest protected for 14 years. Before that, I lived in Cajamarca, in the mountains, where it rained very little and it was very difficult to find water and firewood. My mother had to walk through miles to look for him. It was a great sacrifice, so I decided to move to the jungle. With a lot of work, I managed to buy a land patch and take my family to join me. I grew up coffee and reaped it a year later, but then a destroyed plague is complete. I had planted it using mountain techniques and did not realize that in the jungle it would have to be planted differently.
Around 2004, the authorities of the Government Protected Area Agency [known as SERNANP, its acronym in Spanish]He visited us and directed training workshops on the forest and protected areas. We were forbidden to extract wood, but nothing was offered in return. People did not agree with conservation speech. We thought they really intended to take our lands.
First we approached Sernanp and put in charge that we understood that registration was prohibited, but that we needed support or some son of technical assistance for our farms in return.
I made them understand that if we had come from now on in search of water and resources, we had to make sure to protect them. It was for that time that we are listening to conservation agreements. Wow, I thought, this is what we had my leg asking.
The first benefit package was the delivery of fertilizers, which I found that they were effective. Sernanp cools training on how to plant and how to take care of our crops. It is a leg three years as an outbreak, and I have been able to acquire a coffee dryer, an ecological toilet on my farm and a tank holder where I selected my coffee. I have also installed plumbing that comes from a ravine in the small forest.
But some friends and pressed me. Many people still did not sympathize with Sernanp’s vision and did not understand why it was important to stop using trees in the forest. They still suspected the authorities, and just although I have resorted to some threats to leave the conservation agreements, I know that I am not doing anything wrong, but quite the opposite.
I noticed a change in my feeling towards nature. My relationship with nature is good. I feel very happy and calm here. I am very grateful because engineers work hand in hand with us. I learned what plants attract hummingbirds, and when I feel to rest here, I see my birds and I stay to see them, feel happy. I am getting used to being here instead of in the town, but as my children have to go to school, they stay there with my wife. I live here far from everything, and when they come to see me, I share with them what I have learned. They also bring their friends: “My father lives in a paradise on the riverbank, planting their flowers, surrounded by their butterflies,” they say.
Currently, I am growing vanilla as part of the agreements, in addition to coffee. It is sold for a good price. Vanilla is a plant that we have always unfortunate because we did it. Pitahaya [dragon fruit]That a good price is sold with a good price, it has healing properties. For lack of knowledge, we did not eat the fruit; We consider it a herb. Some even burned it.
Now, I dedicate my life to natural resources. No one has convinced me or forced. I am in this because I endured the scarcity when I was in the mountains, and I know very well what it is to lose the subject because we are not taking care of them. Today, to build my house or my coffee dryer, I look for fallen wood, insult or cut a tree.
I want this place to become a tourist attraction. I have created a path that is now covered with trees and clear to walk. I am also building a ladder to the river where there is a beautiful beach. We already have a sanitary landfill and an ecological bath, Althegh we still need to solve things a bit. I have spoken with the Park authorities and international conservation, and I will tolerate them that after four years in a conservation agreement, I hope to have this place ready for ecotourism.
That is the dream that begins years ago, when they invited me to participate in a internship in tourism in the Ecological Reserve of Chaparrí, a model for ecotourism where the local population benefits from the conservation of their natural resources, in the dry forests of Lambayque. That beautiful place stayed with me, and I told myself that one day I would have an appropriate area for ecotourism. That dream is close to becoming a reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beturtugn6k
Abdías Vásquez is a subscriber of conservation agreement in the protected forest of Alto Mayo. This publication was translated into English by Daniela Amico, communications manager of Conservation International-Peru.
Additional reading
