After two years of ‘COVID-DPhil’ – biting myself through satellite data and literature reviews - I took a last-minute opportunity to fly out to Peru in August and visit the breath-taking ecosystems that I have been studying and the people who live amongst them. My goal was to explore through interviews how forest restoration is being done in the Peruvian Andes and what we can learn for successful restoration in developing countries around the globe.
Let me take you on a journey to the highest altitude forests on Earth, the cultural vibrancy of the Andean mountain communities, and the many lessons learnt to help restore these peculiar ecosystems and all the essential services they provide to humanity and biodiversity.
Our fieldwork starts in the mountain community of Kiuñalla, (3,000m above sea level) a scenic farming community West of Cusco where an NGO has helped restore and protect forests. Here we begin our interviews, talking to people who have participated in forest restoration and are keen to share their wisdom. The village is rugged with dirt tracks and adobe houses. We find a lovely family to host and feed us the maize and potato-based diet. We must adjust our schedule to the Andean way of life – early mornings and early evenings centred around farming duties. Hence we seek our interviewees at sunrise and after sunset, not to inconvenience them. We also learn to connect with the community in their traditional ways, and grasp opportunities as they arise. We help with the communal work of digging a basement and get to share a glass of Chicha, a fermented maize beer, with fellow workers.
Our interviews go well, and the insights are astounding – people are noticing a decrease in water availability and want to conserve their forests to improve their agriculture. But the forest is also valued to for many of the medicinal species and the wild animals such as the condor and the Andean spectacled bear.
A few weeks later we travel to the community of Challabamba – conveniently also the home region of my fabulous research assistant Isaias. Here, we see the forest degradation with our very own eyes. The forests are fragmented, many have been burnt by wildfires and the few trees we see around are mainly exotic Gum Trees. But by involving community members, especially women in the greenhouse work and offering paid restoration work, a local NGO is on a mission to restore hundreds of hectares of burnt down forest. We learn how forest restoration must provide tangible benefits to communities and that providing alternative livelihoods is on top of the priority list.
