Coping without water in Peru

Maria Maldonardo doesn’t have a good word left to say about the Peruvian government and the country's President Ollanta Humala. "The president doesn’t do anything for us, we have to take care of everything by ourselves," she complains.

A truck has just brought her new water supplies. A water and wastewater system doesn’t exist here in Pachacutec, a town one hour's drive north of Lima. Instead, Maria, 69, has to pay 12 soles, approximately three euros, for one cubic meter of water to be delivered. This is a lot for her and her husband, who tries to make a living as a fisherman.

The driver of the water truck delivers the water into big barrels outside Maria's house. But it cannot stay there: Dogs would get to it or others might steal it. So Maria gets a pipe to fill the small tank inside her house, where the precious good is safe.

Around 160,000 people live here in Pachacutec, and many face similar problems as Maria. While world leaders try to combat climate change at the ongoing climate summit in neighboring Lima, here in Pachacutec, the effect of climate change is already being felt by citizens in their daily lives..

No glacier, no water

The water that Maria pumps into the tank in her house once flowed down the Chillón River. Its starting point is a glacier 4,000 m high up in the Andes. “But this glacier lost 23 percent of its volume between 1997 and 2007,” says Christof Wünsch, Lima office head at aid organization Bread for the World.

“The rainy season becomes shorter every year. A couple of decades ago, the rainy season went on for six months, whereas now it is just three months, from December to January,” he says. “It hardly ever rains down here in the desert environment next to Lima, so the fight for water gets tougher.

Wünsch supports the local environmental group Alternativa, which tries to mitigate some of the effects of climate change. Some families have formed collectives: They share water and store it in better tanks – some have even built a simple, small sewerage system. But still, the water doesn’t reach the town through a pipe. Instead, it has to be delivered by truck. The complicated transport multiplies the price: Maria has to pay around five times more for her water than a wealthy citizen in Lima.

A long way to go

On its way down from the Andes to the ocean, the Chillón River supplies one million people with water. Industrial companies and farmers help themselves, using the river’s water in anyway they want, so water supply companies have a hard time keeping up hygienic standards.

But the situation is especially tough for people like Maria. The water she uses has traveled a long way: From the river to the water treatment plant to the tanks, and then on to the water trucks. Then it goes into the barrels in front of Maria’s house, and finally into the tank inside her house. Each step brings with it the risk of water contamination, and so infectious diseases are widespread in this area.

Despite there having been some progression, the future doesn’t look promising, says Oswaldo Caceres, of Alternativa. “We still do have some water left, but if glaciers disappear completely in the coming years, we will only have water during the rainy season. I have no idea how we are going to cope with that.”

What are his hopes regarding the climate summit in Lima? Wearily, he replies: “Well, that is such a slow, tedious process and nobody talks with the locals here anyway.”