The heat on Ecuador

Paintings of Cotacachi from the turn of the 20th century show a massive glacier covering almost the entire mountaintop. By mid-century, the permanent ice cap had shrunk, but climbers still needed picks and crampons to scale the peak. Today, only the rare dusting of snow marks the path to the summit; otherwise, the mountain is completely bare.

Scientists refer to the line between a glacier's top half, where snow is accumulating, and its bottom half, where it is melting, as the line of equilibrium. In warming weather, the line of equilibrium may rise and the glacier can begin to retreat, giving off increasing amounts of water. Zapata believes that as Cotacachi's glacier retreated, the rush of meltwater cascaded from the peak into Laguna Cuicocha and the rivers and creeks below, providing an ample supply for the area's growing population. Other rivers that descended directly from the peak also swelled with the increased runoff.

When the glacier disappeared, however, that flow began to dry up, leaving residents more dependent on rainwater. It also made for harsher droughts. A glacier acts like a bank account, storing precipitation during the wet season to release later when the weather becomes dry. With the account drawn down and the glacier gone, Zapata believes, Cotacachi's farmers are no longer insulated against changes in rain patterns.

Ecuador's scientists often lack the resources to do basic research, so no glaciologist has specifically studied Cotacachi. But Cadier and his colleagues at the country's National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology find Zapata's hypothesis convincing. Cadier's team has been measuring glacial retreat on several mountains in Ecuador -- including Antizana, which provides drinking water and hydroelectric power to the capital -- and their research suggests that when a small glacier disappears, stream flow in the area can decrease by about a quarter.

"We could say that what is happening now in Antizana happened in Cotacachi a century ago," Cadier says. "And in countries like Peru and Bolivia, where there is less rainfall, the effect will be a lot worse."

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I meet Jorge Proaño, a tall, muscular mestizo, in the highland community of Imantag. It's a relatively wild place: Large plantations known as haciendas still control much of the land; boulders and thick vegetation clog the roads; and gang violence has killed a dozen people in the last few years. Proaño, head of the local water council, agrees to take me on a tour of the community's water sources. As our Jeep rumbles over the rutted road, he points to the parched riverbed we've just crossed, part of the river Alambi.

"I remember when I was little that river could make you deaf with its noise," he says. "My grandfather bought me a burro when I was 12. I used to send it over the river to get firewood. One day, while it was in the middle of the river, the water swept it away." Looking down at the stony ditch, with its trickle of water only 3 feet wide, the idea seems laughable.

I ask Proaño if he thinks the river will grow again to its previous volume. "Only if there is once again ice on top of Cotacachi," he replies. "And that is difficult or impossible."

Water councils in the communities face the daunting task of finding new water sources and meting out the precious supply to the area's subsistence farmers. It's but the latest chapter in the farmers' centuries-old struggle with the land and those who own it. Until the 1960s, virtually all the land in the county belonged to a few wealthy hacendados, and peasants traded labor for the right to graze their animals or plant a few crops.

After the government instituted land reform, indigenous farmers founded small, semiautonomous communities in the hills around the town of Cotacachi. But while land reform gave soil to the people, they lacked the legal rights to water, either for irrigation or drinking. Villagers in the community of Tunibamba tell of sneaking onto the local hacienda at night to collect water from the spring there. Only when they occupied the estate and won government support to purchase it from its owner did their situation improve. The occupation was part of a grassroots movement that brought basic services like sewerage systems to many of the communities and eventually elected the county's first indigenous mayor.

Today, 80 percent of the county's population lives below the poverty line. Indigenous people dominate the outlying communities, while mestizos make their homes in town, though a few mestizo farmers live side by side with indigenas and till the same land. Public works in the villages are performed by minga, a traditional system where women cook communal meals and each household head volunteers time to dig wells or plant trees. The two ethnic groups often view each other with suspicion, hold different outlooks on the world, and even speak different languages. But they share a need for the same precious resource -- el oro azul, as it is sometimes called in Ecuador: blue gold.

Higher up, the Alambi widens and we pass women leading their animals and catch sight of one-room houses with tin and tile roofs. We park at a grassy field and make our way past clusters of blue and purple wildflowers to the river's edge.

Hopping from rock to rock, Proaño leads me to the other side of the canyon where two irrigation canals meet and their contents mix. One delivers river water to Hacienda La Maria, one of the largest plantations in the area. The other is a bright blue overpass built by Imantag and two other communities, carrying water from two springs to the east that, according to Proaño, have been relatively unaffected by the glacier's disappearance.

In the summers, Proaño says, the Alambi dries up and virtually all the water in the joint canal comes from the communities' springs. But the hacienda continues to take the same percentage as before, water he claims rightly belongs to the villages.

"We were the ones who worked for 10 years to bring the water from so far," he says. "There were entire weeks when everyone left their jobs to go to the minga. By hand, with sticks and picks we cleared the rocks from the canal. Now they want to take advantage of our ingenuity."

The hacienda's administrator, Marta Camacho, argues that a legal agreement to share the canal established new water rights, with access to all the water divided between both parties.

"The scarcity affects everyone, not just Imantag," she says. "But the water councils have become very political. Water makes enemies of everyone."

Such clashes are not uncommon in the area, but locals say they have worsened since the glacier disappeared. Ecuador's National Council on Hydrological Resources reports that requests to renegotiate water concessions have grown in recent years, as droughts and glacial retreat put pressure on the country's water supply.

The hacienda itself, a sprawling patchwork of organic vegetable plots, eucalyptus stands and cornfields, suffers from a drought that has made half its land uncultivable. With little water for irrigation, workers must wait for the rain to plant. Camacho says she is spending thousands of dollars to convert from flood to drip irrigation, trying to squeeze as much as possible from her meager reservoirs.

"Agriculture is no longer profitable here," she says. "Investment is a Russian roulette. We never know when or how much it is going to rain."

Her problems do not move Proaño. "With the water that the hacienda is taking from us we could irrigate at least 250 more acres," he says. "That would mean more work and more economic resources so our families can eat."

On the way back down the mountain, we pass two men trudging back from work in the fields, hefting shovels and lunch pails over their shoulders. Arturo Galindo, the younger of the two, tells me that shrinking water sources in his community have forced many to work on large plantations instead of tilling their own land. That often means less control over their time and a smaller share of the profits.

"We had a good water flow," he explains. "But now it's drying up. Before you could keep the land moist, but now sometimes we lose our crops. We live off the land and water is a vital liquid for us, so it's a disaster." o

In an era when people in his town clamor for cellphones and the latest cumbia CD, Proaño talks about water like it's a hot commodity. "You could say," he remarks with a grin as we continue driving, "that [here] water for irrigation is a lot more popular than Coca-Cola."

Next page: "We are suffering the consequences of environmental problems that other countries are producing"