Bolivar
Altitude preserved páramo ecosystems that agricultural expansion threatened; 2024 saw 105,978-acre conservation area protecting water for 500,000 people. By 2026, ecosystem payments and sustainable agriculture determine whether preservation funds development.
Altitude creates poverty but also preservation—Bolívar's 2,800-4,250m Andean terrain limited agricultural options while protecting fragile páramo ecosystems. The Kichwa communities of Simiatug practice subsistence farming (potatoes, cattle, sheep) in conditions too harsh for commercial exploitation. This marginality became conservation opportunity.
By 2024, Bolívar had lost 4,000 football fields' worth of páramo annually to agricultural expansion. In response, the province created a 105,978-acre (42,888 ha) conservation area protecting high-mountain wetlands that provide water storage for 500,000 people. The April 2024 celebration marked a rare provincial-level commitment to ecosystem preservation over development.
Guaranda (the capital) sits at the crossroads of sierra and coast, but neither connection generated prosperity. The province lacks the mining wealth of southern neighbors or the agricultural productivity of coastal lowlands. What it possesses—biodiversity, water sources, ancestral farming knowledge—only recently acquired economic value through conservation payments and ecotourism potential.
2026 trajectory: Conservation area implementation tests whether protection generates alternative income streams. INIAP agricultural research partnerships explore sustainable intensification of traditional crops. The province bets that páramo preservation can fund development that farming expansion cannot.