To solve this crisis, locals, international environmental organizations, local and regional governments as well as the water utilities treatment facility collaborated to find a solution that would work for everyone. They decided to create a tariff system whereby locals were charged one Peruvian sol (about $0.30) per month as part of their water bill, which would go directly into a special fund used to invest in watershed and rainforest conservation initiatives.
This system was one of Peru’s first nature-based solutions (NbS) projects directed at preserving watersheds and quickly became a model for the country. Using the Moyobamba experience, the national government has since developed several policies and mechanisms to scale up these NbS projects to a national level, which makes Peru a leader of scaled-up NbS initiatives in Latin America.
As agriculture expanded around Moyobamba and its three main water sources, the Rumiyacu, Mishquiyacu and Almendra basins, there were not enough trees to filter the water or regulate precipitation and control the water cycle, which periodically stopped flowing to the city.
There are several NbS initiatives unfolding in Latin America around watershed conservation. Echavarria says this could be considered a regional trend, as policy makers start to recognize that infrastructure needs to work with nature, not against it.
In Latin America, the World Resources Institute identifies 156 NbS projects at different stages of development in the region in 2021, but only 47% of these projects have been implemented. Mexico (31), Colombia (21), Brazil (17) and Peru (17) have the highest number of projects to date.
Peru leads the way for mainstreaming NbS and securing scaled investment, mainly because of laws that require water utilities to support NbS.