Ecobreves – COLOMBIA: High Plains in Danger

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

BOGOTA, May 19 2002 (IPS) - The ecosystem of the Andean high plains is in danger because the poverty of its residents forces them to engage in unsustainable farming practices, warned experts at the World Plains Congress, held May 13-18 in the southwest Colombian city of Paipa. Robert Hofstede, international facilitator of the Plains Group, stressed that “85 percent of the population living in the plains of Colombia and Ecuador live in extreme poverty, and even indigence.”

The plains, known in Spanish as 'páramos', are located 3,000 to 4,500 meters above sea level in the mountains of Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Peru, and plan an essential role in the storing and regulating much of the region's water resources.

Colombia and Ecuador hold nearly 90 percent of this type of plains, which are suffering the effects of urban and farming expansion and of global warming.