Indigenous communities face colliding crises as the Andes’ largest lake dries out and chokes on waste, but many are taking action and sharing solutions.
For our grandparents, the cycles of nature were predictable. It rained when it was supposed to rain, and the frost fell when it was supposed to fall. Everything was very orderly, and that gave them confidence,” recalls Gonzalo Pusari, a community and tour leader in Yumani, a village on the southern shore of Bolivia’s Lake Titicaca.
Shared between Peru and Bolivia, Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world, and the largest in South America. It is located more than 3,800 metres above sea level, and its surface of over 8,500 km² is as large as the cities of London, Paris, Los Angeles, Bogota, Madrid and Mexico City combined. More than 3 million people depend on its waters for their livelihoods.
The lake was a ceremonial, commercial and productive centre of the Inca Empire and, prior to that, of cultures such as the Tiahuanaco and the Chiripa. Today, however, the Aymara, Kichwa and Uro Indigenous communities that inhabit its shores are seeing its waters dwindle, the flora change and fish die. The climate crisis and pollution threaten not only the lake, but also its inhabitants and their way of life, traditions and livelihoods.
Pusari lives on the Isla del Sol, an island in the southern part of Titicaca, where he manages the community’s waste collection and, alongside his neighbours, the responsible use of water for household and irrigation purposes. Since the area lacks a centralised garbage collection system, they take it upon themselves to collect, recycle and clean the land, and aim to limit plastic use. He says the island is suffering: “But we fight on. It is our mission to take care of this ancient legacy.”
Scientists’ diagnosis
The main tributaries of Titicaca have been polluted with various materials linked to industrial activities, mining – often unregulated – and poor management of other wastes: the Huancané river, with boron, copper and manganese; the Ilave river, with aluminium and arsenic. Meanwhile, the Suches and Coata rivers carry mercury and other heavy metals. All contain faecal coliforms, linked to sewage discharge.
Titicaca’s water levels are also suffering the consequences of the decline in snow and ice atop the nearby Illimani mountain, close to La Paz, the country’s administrative capital.
The lake is located within the Titicaca-Desaguadero-Poopó-Salar de Coipasa (TDPS) endorheic system, a set of interconnected basins, explains Marco Limachi, a water resources researcher.
Endorheic systems typically retain water and allow no outflow. But the system faces severe alterations due to climate change, contamination, meteorological, climate and hydrological factors.
Shorter and less intense rainy seasons, combined with rising temperatures, have led to the proliferation of microalgae that reduce water clarity and decrease oxygen. As a result, both native fish, such as the ispi (Orestias ispi), carachi amarillo (Orestias luteus), mauri (Trichomycterus rivulatus) and suche (Trichomycterus rivulatus), as well as introduced species such as trout and pejerrey, have decreased in number. This has reportedly been compounded by pressures exerted by market demand for fish, which in many cases leads to overfishing.
Even the sun seems to burn more harshly than before. Cojata Island, in the municipality of Huarina, appears more wasteland than lake: where the vast blue of Titicaca once reigned, the parched ground is now whitish and cracked. “Our skin hurts, rashes and diseases are appearing,” explains Javier Apaza Flores, an agronomist and local fisherman.
Rainfall, which used to reach 50 millimetres annually, now does not exceed 15 millimetres, notes Limachi, who adds that this has led to the degradation of soil and transformed land use in the surrounding areas. For example, in both the bay of Cohana and Cojata Island, where there used to be water, there is now grass. One can still see boats, vestiges of another time, grounded on the mainland, surrounded by cows: livestock farming, in some cases, has replaced fishing.
The lack of vegetation cover has aggravated evaporation, as bare soil concentrates more heat and causes greater water loss. Limachi stresses the urgency of coordinated action between Bolivia and Peru to assess the situation accurately, to generate investment and to adopt long-term projects such as water regulation and storage, as well as pursuing reforestation with plant species that consume less water.
Xavier Lazzaro is a specialist at the Autonomous Binational Authority of Lake Titicaca (ALT), which manages the lake’s water and resources. He has been studying the area since 1979, and has observed how changes that “should take centuries” were precipitated “in just a few decades”.
Many coastal areas of the lake are experiencing a phenomenon known as eutrophication – a process in which nutrient buildup, mainly from phosphorus and nitrogen, fuels excessive algae growth. In freshwater lakes, eutrophication is a natural occurrence that unfolds over centuries or even millennia. However, in Lake Titicaca, the rapid discharge of untreated wastewater has drastically accelerated this process, especially since the 1990s, triggering massive blooms of phytoplankton. As a result, human activities and population growth have fast-tracked the aging of the lake.
Lazzaro points to the discharge of sewage from El Alto – the second largest city in Bolivia, located on the Altiplano highlands south-west of Lake Titicaca – through the Katari River as one of the main causes. The sewage situation has been exacerbated by the poor state of the few treatment plants that exist. Sites such as the bay of Cohana on the southeastern shore, where spaces once filled with water are now used as grazing land, are among the worst affected.
Although the outlook is bleak, there are proposals that could make a difference. Scientists from the ALT, the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and other institutions have been working on methods that use the totora plant (Schoenoplectus californicus subsp. tatora) to filter pollutants naturally, as well as constructing wetlands in the form of floating islands. Pilot wastewater treatment plants have also been set up under the “phytoremediation system” using totora, which is a native aquatic plant.
“These nature-based solutions have proven effective on a small scale, but their mass implementation faces social and political challenges,” warns Lazzaro. He also suggests the need to create advanced water filtration and care systems, including ozone and ultraviolet injections that can disinfect the water. For him, a paradigm shift is needed that combines technological solutions with regulation and environmental education from early childhood. And here is where the local population has begun to organise.
Guardians united
Rosa Jalja, an Aymara woman from the Sampaya community, is a filmmaker and leader of the community radio station of Copacabana, one of the main cities on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. She is also a member of Mujeres Unidas en Defensa del Agua, an organisation that unites women leaders from 14 municipalities in Bolivia and Peru in a bid to save Titicaca. They propose that their sacred lake be considered a subject of rights. “We women have to be guardians,” says Jalja. “I have to teach my daughter, my granddaughter, not to pollute the lake. I have made this responsibility my own, and now I must pass it on.”
At 70, she understands that caring for the lake is not just an act of resistance, but a legacy that must be passed on. On Fridays, together with her other women colleagues, she leads litter clean-up and community education days. Week after week, they collect bags full of plastics, diapers, clothing and other discarded items. Equipped with drones and equipment to measure mercury and pH levels in water, they visit other communities to teach and exchange knowledge on protecting rivers and the lake.
“Here, on the edge of the lake’s shore, I used to look for my little fish,” says Jalja, looking out from the Copacabana shore. “There were frogs and even trout. Now you have to go to the bottom to look.” She says there are species that are no longer present in the waters, such as the boga (Orestias pentlandii).
As her elders taught her, she makes offerings and participates in different rituals dedicated to the earth and water. To these traditional practices, she adds the empirical knowledge gained from workshops with NGOs, in which women are trained to use monitoring equipment, and from gatherings with other communities across the basin and beyond.
A daughter of the water
“I am an Uro woman, daughter of the mama qota [goddess of water],” declares Rita Suaña, an activist, community leader and weaver. The Indigenous Uro people are part of a pre-Inca culture, one of the oldest on the continent, and which has always settled around Titicaca, mostly on the Peruvian side.
Suaña boards her boat and heads towards one of the floating islands that, for thousands of years, her people built on the lake. They are artificial, and their creation depends on layers of totora reeds, which must be constantly renewed. Yet they are organic, largely coexisting harmoniously with the ecosystem. The Uro people live on dozens of islands, inhabited by different families: women give birth there, children learn trades such as fishing and weaving, and they establish a relationship with the water, the flora and fauna.
The Uro people feel the transformations taking place in the area first-hand. In Lake Titicaca, refuge and sustenance seem to be becoming elusive. The coastline is receding, complicating access and isolating families. To navigate the shrinking waterways and prevent boats from becoming stranded, they are forced to dig their own channels.
“This is dry now, but it used to be water,” exclaims Rita, pointing to the landscape. To leave Puno, a Peruvian city on the eastern shore of Lake Titicaca, and reach the floating islands, she boards her motorboat. However, for several metres, she must manually push the boat forward with a pole, as part of the route is through muddy, shallow water.
Pollution further aggravates the effects of climate crisis. In Puno, one of the biggest problems is sewage, which flows from the city into the lake after scant treatment in outmoded and defective plants. The turbidity of the water and putrid smell on the shore epitomise the problem.
The changes along the coastline have also affected the availability of fish and raised the threat to the Uro economy. Fishing areas have shifted, leading many islands to establish small fish farms.
Tourism has become the main economic activity, transforming traditional ways of life. Many families now rely primarily on boat tours and selling handicrafts, leaving them with limited financial resources.
And this is not the only consequence.
The totora reeds, which are the primary material for building islands, houses, traditional boats, and handicrafts, are drying up at an increasingly rapid rate. “We used to cut it nearby, but now we have to travel miles to find it,” says Rita. The roofs, which used to be able to last a year, now no longer last more than four months. “We used to sit outside all day working on handicrafts, but now the sun hurts us – it makes us sick,” she continues. She speaks of rashes, blisters, burns, and sore skin.
The white, bottom part of the totora – the chullo – is also a traditional food for the Uro people. However, drought, pollution, and shifting climate conditions have also taken a toll on this. “Once refreshing, big and sweet, today it is small and scarce,” says Suaña.
It is a far cry from her childhood, which she recalls with a smile: “We were in the water all the time. We would eat the chullo, fish, and then go swimming again – it was all joy!”
Faced with this tense situation, Titicaca is fighting against its own destiny, and its inhabitants are demanding answers from governments to help them continue adapting and organising themselves to preserve life in this sacred mantle of water on the Altiplano highlands.
Rita denounces NGOs that she claims profit in the name of the lake without benefiting the communities. “They present reports, take photos, but we receive nothing. It is our people who take the initiative to protect the water.” As an example, she points to a raft built from thousands of recycled plastic bottles.
More than once, she has marched alongside her neighbours to the municipality, demanding the construction of a wastewater treatment plant. She has even participated in politics, reaching positions of community leadership.
And despite all the struggles the Uro people face living around the lake, Suaña says they cannot imagine living anywhere else. “We are reluctant to disappear. We have always lived in the middle of Titicaca. When I go to a community without water, my body asks for it, I need to see it. When I can embrace it, I am happy,” she says.
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