Summary
The dry forest of the Peruvian south coast has undergone an almost total process of deforestation. Populations here have increased exponentially through immigration supplying labour to urban coastal development, and demonstrably unsustainable agro-industrial expansion for export markets. Society has become dislocated from local traditions of environmental and resource management whilst still retaining a wealth of Andean agricultural expertise. Indigenous communities still hold on to vestiges of traditional knowledge. Relicts of natural vegetation, traditional agriculture and agrobiodiversity continue to sustain ecosystem services. Moreover, offer livelihood options and resources for restoration. These aspects reflect a long cultural trajectory, including famous extinct cultures such as Nasca, that evolved within an ever-changing riparian and agricultural landscape influenced by external forces and which incorporated important processes of plant domestication and adaptation to climatic oscillation.
Here, we present an ecosystem approach to vegetation restoration and sustainable resource management in Ica, Peru, based on wide interdisciplinary biodiversity inventory and study, where school, community and agro-industry engagement is seen as a prerequisite for success. The approach demonstrated significant plant establishment in this hyperarid region using appropriate low-technology techniques of planting and irrigation with minimum watering. Restoration of a highly degraded environment built upon vegetation relicts followed a strategy of cultural capacity building and environmental engagement, including the development of sustainable forest products, festivals, schools programmes, didactic publications for local use, and collaboration with local communities, landowners, agribusiness and governmental authorities. Plant conservation must re-engage people with their natural heritage by dissemination of information for vegetation restoration and management integrated to dynamics of ecosystem function within its wide local cultural and historical context.
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Notes
The Convention to Combat Desertification has been applied on the North coast of Peru (CCD/INRENA 2002), and while it does not specifically use the term ‘ecosystem approach’, it nonetheless embraces many of its principles to work in drylands (CBD 1995), including participation by local communities and the importance of alternative livelihoods. The CCD, however, is yet to be applied in Ica, or anywhere else on the South Coast.
We follow, herein, a convention of using ‘Nasca’ to connote the Early Intermediate Period archaeological culture, and ‘Nazca’ to mean the place name today.
Some authors (Ponce del Prado & Otte 1984) have postulated the possible existence of an undescribed coastal subspecies of guanaco.
The local name ‘Tintillo’ attests to its use to produce an intense blue dye, although through a particularly obscure and unpredictable process, which local people interviewed no longer recall or use. Indigofera truxillensis found in Ica is endemic to Ecuador and Peru and often confused with the more widespread and better-known dye plant I. suffruticosa (Whaley et al. 2010b).
Algarrobo tree (Prosopis juliflora (Sw.) DC. and P. pallida) pods are processed in Northern Peru, Piura region supporting thriving cottage industries visited by the project during capacity building (www.kew.org/icaperu/).
The consequences of Tamarix invasion on soil salinity and riparian biodiversity are disastrous here as they have been elsewhere in the Americas (see for instance Brock 1994). These lie beyond the scope of this paper, suffice to say that continued planting of Tamarix is indicative of the dissociation between ecology and culture.
See Page 41 at http://www.kew.org/icaperu/Restauracion_libro.pdf
Under the Project MOU, the fundo is committed to designation of the habitat restoration area as an Área de Conservación Privada (ACP), which confers long-term protection under a government scheme.
Fizzy drink bottles of any brand widely available in Peru.
See page 47 of http://www.kew.org/icaperu/Restauracion_libro.pdf
Species vouchers can be accessed from the new herbarium set up by the Project in UNICA faculty of sciences.
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Acknowledgments
The Project was funded largely by the Darwin Initiative (DEFRA) through the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. We thank also other funders, local sponsors and participants: the Asociación para la Niñez y Medio Ambiente (ANIA); Bettys and Taylor, Trees for Cities UK; the Bentham-Moxon Trust; Grupo de Aves Perú (GAP); Agrícola Chapi S.A; Sociedad Agrícola Drokasa S.A.; Fundo Chanca, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge; Susana Arce and the Museo Regional de Ica (INC-Ica); Rio Tinto; the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (UNALM); the Universidad Nacional San Luis Gonzaga de Ica (UNICA) and Alberto Benavídes, Aniceto Daza, Carlos Reynel, Julio y Julia Sanchez, Olivia Sejuro, and many more. And most importantly all the Project’s dedicated team in Ica especially: Helver Álvarez, Consuelo Borda, Ciro Gómez, Stefania Grimaldo, Clauda Lüthi, Marco Mendoza, Octavio Pecho, Evelyn Pérez, Félix Quinteros, Flor Salvatierra, Miguel Soto and Mario Tenorio.
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Whaley, O.Q., Beresford-Jones, D.G., Milliken, W. et al. An ecosystem approach to restoration and sustainable management of dry forest in southern Peru. Kew Bull 65, 613–641 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12225-010-9235-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12225-010-9235-y