Heredia started charging users an additional US$0.01 per cubic yard of water to protect the “watershed services” provided by the lush cloud forests that covered the slopes of the Barva Volcano. In March 2000, however, that all changed. While cities, towns, governments and donors were happy to invest heavily in water purification, treatment, and distribution infrastructure, when it came to protecting Latin America’s “Water Factories”-the upstream forests where water actually comes from-investor interest, like a raincloud above Heredia on a sunny day, used to evaporate away into nothing. The town of Heredia, a few minutes drive from Costa Rica’s capital San José, is a world away from rural Bolivia, but Luis Gamez from Heredia’s Public Services Company used to wrestle with the same problem as Serafin Carrasco. I will conserve my forest in order to protect our water and I will ask the people downstream to help me do so.” “Every year the rains fail and every year there is less water in the river. “No one will tell me what I can and cannot do on my land” he declared, pounding on the table. Although alone in his determination, Serafin was in no mood to give up. “We should wait a few months for the tension to disappear,” the four others had agreed. That morning, one of Serafin Carrasco’s cows had been killed, the neighbors angry that Serafin and his four colleagues were starting a watershed forest conservation program. Trouble had been brewing in the Bolivian village of Santa Rosa for weeks. Downstream irrigators work on maintaining the channel.
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