Acción Andina

Supporting on-the-ground leadership and local communities

To bring impact to scale, Acción Andina works with an expanding network of on-the-ground conservation practitioners. Their decades of experience forging enduring community relationships as well as with project management make them the backbone of the initiative. With the support of Global Forest Generation, Acción Andina is also embracing a new generation of effective, dedicated on-the-ground leaders.

Long lasting ties to indigenous communities in the Andes are essential for effective large-scale ecosystem restoration. Our leaders earn the trust of the people who are integral to every step of forest regeneration and protection.

Protecting Forests While Ensuring the Viability of Indigenous Cultures

Acción Andina's partner organizations are responsive to the needs of the remote mountain communities and committed to helping improve their quality of life. This support includes dentist and doctor visits, access to medicine, solar panels (which bring electricity to villages), and clean-burning clay stoves. (Exposure to toxic fumes from traditional cooking practices is one of the world's biggest and least well-known killers. Frequent exposure to smoky, open fires causes cataracts and is the leading cause of blindness in developing countries.)

Conservation partners can provide alternative fuels for the clean burning stoves so that native trees are not destroyed for firewood. They also provide assistance with improved grazing management. And their technical and financial support for sustainable agriculture, ecotourism and microbusinesses help preserve the indigenous cultures of the Andes.

Land Titling

Conservation partners enable communities to secure title to their lands, which provides legal protection from exploitation by timber, mining, oil companies, etc. The process of designating a PCA (private conservation area) in Peru, for example, generally takes three years. It includes resolving land disputes and establishing a land use agreement, which may be multi-use, allowing sustainable agriculture in addition to land conservation.

The people of the high Andes consider the prime benefit of restored native forest to be restoration of their watersheds. As they watch the glaciers disappear, they are acutely aware of climate change. And they know that without actively regenerating watersheds, they will not have sufficient water in coming decades. Seedlings grown in community nurseries from seeds collected from nearby Polylepis forest, are planted on land set aside by communities to expand existing forests and to create new ones.

Acción Andina's communities, comprised mainly of Quechua-speaking Inca descendants, value and practice the ancient tradition of 'Ayni', shared community service for mutual benefit. Community assemblies come together to decide which communities and watersheds will benefit from each year's communal planting. Everone - from children to the elders - climb steep mountain trails to plant saplings together. During a community's annual Polyepis tree planting festival of Queuna Raymi. 60,000 to 100,000 trees can be planted in a single day. (Polylepis is locally known as queuna.)