A thousand trees for each year of La Paz's independence

April 8, 2010 - PRLog -- In recent years, landslides such as these have become a tragic fact of life for residents of the Bolivian capital. Deforestation is a major cause of the problem: where roots once bound the soil together above the city, now there is nothing to keep it from sliding during heavy rainfall, putting thousands of lives at risk.

Despite being the world’s highest capital city, La Paz lies in a deep canyon formed by the Choqueyapu River, about 430m below the Altiplano plateau. As the population has expanded to around 1.6 million, the city has spread up the sides of the canyon to the edge of the plateau, with people building “barrios” or settlements in the hillsides and cutting down trees to use as fuel and building materials.

But the Bolivian late summer, the very start of spring in the UK, is a time of particularly high landslide risk. As water accumulated in the months of heavy summer rain starts to loosen the soil on the sides of the canyon.

In response to these problems, Trees for Cities will be working with the Municipal Government of La Paz to reforest the city slopes, thereby stabilising the soil and reducing the risk of future landslides. As part of celebrations of La Paz’s bicentenary of independence from Spain, the London-based charity and the Bolivian authority intend to plant 200,000 new trees.

Trees for Cities’ Chief Executive Sharon Johnson visited La Paz, meeting with the city’s Mayor, Juan Del Granado, known locally as ‘Juan the Gardener’, and visiting the proposed planting sites.

As the project progresses, the hillsides above should become more stable, with landslides less frequent, and a greater ability to react to changing pressures of climate change.

She said: “Trees for Cities heard about the Mayor of La Paz, Juan the Gardener, and the impressive gardening projects he has implemented to bring colour and beauty throughout the city centre.

"His ambitious new project to plant 200,000 new trees, which have been lost over the years through deforestation, will be important not only in helping to combat pollution levels in the city and to stabilise the soil to prevent landslides which are devastating for the city's residents, but also for raising awareness, among the thousands of local people who will be mobilised to take part in the project, about the importance of their natural environment.  

"Through this project, we will be working with the Mayor and the city's municipal government to encourage the planting of native species to maximise opportunities for biodiversity and long-term environmental sustainability.”

On 16 July 1809, the insurrection that would free La Paz burst out. During the procession of the Carmen Virgin through the city, revolutionaries overthrew the Governor Tadeó Dávila and Bishop Remigio de la Sánta y Ortega.

On 27 July, the proclamation of the independence of the colony, said to have been written by Priest Medina and the first proclamation of that kind, was released and sent to the other main cities of the colony, hoping they would support the uprising.

Although the viceroy of Peru and the viceroy of Río de La Plata sent royalist forces to quell the revolutionary troops, the revolt of La Paz was never extinguished, the part of Bolivia once known as Upper Peru was never controlled by Spain again.

An irrepressible city, the highest in the world and one of the most threatened, La Paz has come close to total devastation and struck an unsettling resonance with that of the Nasca people’s fate over a thousand years before. The Peruvian civilisation cut down the huarango trees which bound and fertilised their grounds, and so, when floods struck, were lost.

# # #

An independent charity which plants trees and landscapes public spaces in urban areas, to impact on global warming and beautify the urban landscape, encouraging greater social cohesion through the active participation of local people.