In Peru’s high Andes, restoring ancient ecosystems could help protect water security

Villa de Arma, a roughly 600-person community high in Peru's Huancavelica region, has watched glacial ice give way to bare rock as climate change has erased about 56% of the country's glacier mass over six decades. That ice once fed a watershed supplying both the highlands and the arid Chincha Valley below, and its disappearance threatens agriculture, livestock, and a textile company's dyeing operations downstream.

In response, ECOAN and Global Forest Generation launched the Yaku Pacha project in 2025, restoring a 16-hectare wetland and planting 30,000 polylepis seedlings meant to trap moisture the way glaciers once did. Textil del Valle, a textile company at the valley's dry end, co-funds the effort partly to offset its own water use.

Outside scientists note the restoration won't undo the underlying problem: overgrazing and logging are damaging the wetland directly, and rising temperatures could accelerate evaporation faster than new plantings can compensate. Polylepis reforestation is expected to take about a decade to show results, a timeline that offers little comfort to a community already suffering through longer dry seasons now.

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