Building a Future to Stay: Curingue's Fight for Water

Water, Climate Migration, and Resilience in Curingue, Ecuador

For many rural communities facing the effects of climate change, the decision to leave their ancestral homes and emigrate begins long before anyone decides to pack a bag; it begins when the resources needed to stay become more difficult to access. Ecuador’s rural Andean region hosts beautiful landscapes as well as hard-working people who depend mostly on agricultural activities, such as growing potatoes, fava beans, and miyoko. Curingue is an indigenous community in the rural area of the province of Cotopaxi, with a population of about thirty families, dependent on agricultural activities to sustain their livelihoods. In rural communities such as Curingue, water is necessary not only for drinking and sanitation but also for agricultural and livelihood necessities. Lately, as a result of climate change and reduced rainfall needed for the planting season, communities have been forced to migrate to places both within the country and abroad in search of work and further opportunities. When essential infrastructure cannot keep pace with rising climate change pressures on local communities, migration becomes less of a choice and more of a necessity. For communities such as Curingue, whose livelihoods depend on the land, the ability to stay is often determined by something as fundamental as whether there is enough water.

How a Changing Climate Is Drying Up Curingue's Fields

For Curingue, employment opportunities outside of agriculture are limited, with community members dependent on unpredictable water sources such as rainfall and wet seasons to grow crops. As the climate changes rapidly, Curingue’s usual rainy and dry seasons are no longer predictable. Instead, the seasons have become mixed and unstable, making it difficult for community members to grow crops. Crops depend heavily on rainfall, and with less water available for agricultural activities, community members have reported being able to farm primarily only potatoes, leading to less variety in crops produced and less ability to produce higher quantities, directly impacting their livelihoods. With a combination of less rainwater, poor and drier soil, and erosion, farming in Curingue has become increasingly difficult, making it harder for families to sustain their livelihoods and remain in the community.

When Water Disappears, So Does the Community

As community members have found it more difficult to make a living locally due to these infrastructural changes, many community members have left to find work elsewhere, sometimes even internationally. Community members have reported a reduction in the size of their community, crediting it to a lack of water and drought and the corresponding impact on crops and agricultural activities. While some community members have returned as a result of new water access, the decrease in population emphasizes that water scarcity does not just threaten crops but further threatens a community’s ability to remain a community.

EWB-USA's First Response: Bringing Spring Water to Curingue

EWB-USA began working with Curingue in 2012, developing a project focused on water intakes, pump stations, and a storage tank. Before the system, the municipality provided water by tanker to Curingue approximately once a week. Today, residents have access to spring water through the system. Residents have observed a considerable impact as a result of the project, citing that before the implementation of the project, community members were forced to walk up to two hours for water, with water collection sometimes taking an entire day and animals dying from a lack of water. After the project’s conclusion, water is now available diretly in homes, and the community has reported feeling happier and more secure as a result of this increased water access. The improved water access is further shown to have impacted migration, as community members reported believing that with newly gained water access, they may return to their ancestral homeland.

Beyond Drinking Water: The Sanitation and Household Irrigation Project

While the initial project has addressed a vital need for household drinking water, agricultural livelihoods remained vulnerable because they continued to depend heavily on increasingly unpredictable rainfall. Reliable infrastructure can provide a foundation not only for daily life, but also for long-term community resilience. For Curingue, addressing the pressures that contribute to migration requires going beyond drinking water to infrastructure that can support agricultural livelihoods and make better use of the water the community already has. To respond to this challenge, EWB-USA then began working on the Sanitation and Household Irrigation Project, which focuses on reusing the water Curingue already has to support long-term agricultural productivity. Rather than relying on a new water source, the project looks at how wastewater can be treated and reused for household-scale irrigation. This second project was also grounded in community participation. Community members have played an active role through mingas, or collaborative community work, and participated in the project's implementation, maintenance, and their own capability-building efforts.

Staying Rooted: Martha Ugsha's Story

Together, these contributions reflect a partnership in which technical expertise is combined with local knowledge and leadership. The goal is not simply to bring infrastructure to Curingue, but to work alongside the community to develop solutions that can support its agricultural livelihoods over the long term. One community member, Martha Ugsha, a member of the community board and secretary of the water board, has lived in Curingue her whole life and inspires her neighbors to stay in Curingue, rather than abandon farming these lands. Martha wants her children to experience the richness of Curingue’s culture and traditions during their childhood, so that even if they one day have to leave, they will never lose their identity. For Curingue, building resilient infrastructure is ultimately about creating the opportunity to stay connected to the land, to livelihoods, and to the community that calls it home.