Sweet water.

• Author: Reinhardt, Erika
• Position: Brief Article

Ecuadorian agriculture is threatened due to the ever-increasing reduction of plant cover on the Andean hillsides and an alarming drop in water resources, aggravated by the illegal use of artificial agricultural inputs damaging the environment. The Canar River Rural Development Project (CARC) marked the beginning of IFAD's attention to the indigenous peoples in Latin America, with "the principal objective of ... a significant improvement of the real wages of the small agriculturists of the upper basin on the Canar River through the introduction of irrigation and adequate technology for a productive development of their farms".

The project was funded by the Government of Ecuador through IFAD, including contributions from The Netherlands. The Canaris, an ethnic group who are the original inhabitants of the southern highland region in Ecuador, would be the main beneficiaries of this project. From the start, CARC had close ties with the Union of Cooperatives and Indigenous Communities of Canar Province (UPCCC), the largest and most influential indigenous organization in the area. The success of UPCCC aroused fears and suspicion among some of the mestizo and white people living in Canar. Tensions exploded in 1994 when nationwide protests were organized against the introduction of new land laws, which were supported by the big landowners and were said to render agriculture more effective.

The ethnic and political violence that exploded was a terrible blow to the development process in the Canar valley. CARC went through a very tense initial phase, because the various communities were neither involved in the project design nor equally represented. One of the most important projects was the construction of Culebrillas dam, which would affect fourteen existing canals.

Even though the proposed dam had more than enough capacity to feed four irrigation systems, canal users feared that the introduction of a new canal to Suscal would cause El Tambo to lose much of its water. Opposition also came from people wishing to protect the archaeological vestiges and natural beauty of...