Documenting what regenerates
Historias Regenerativas gathers, in the first person, the work of the people bringing water and forest back to the Northern Andes: the region that runs from the páramos down to the valleys and the dry forests of Colombia.
A region, not a point on the map
In Colombia the Andes split into three mountain ranges. That geology shapes the climate, and the climate shapes the ecosystems that follow one another between 4,000 metres and sea level: páramos that exist almost nowhere else on Earth, interandean valleys, dry forests. The rivers born high up are the same ones that cross the valleys and the cities below. Water is what binds the region together, and it is also why no territory can be cared for on its own. A watershed cannot be divided: water runs where the slope sends it, without consulting the boundary of a hamlet, a municipality or a country. No territory is cared for well with maps that separate what reality has joined.
That is why these stories are not confined to one municipality. They begin wherever people are working, and follow the water as far as it goes.
Where we are now
The first chronicles come from the dry tropical forest of Santander, the most threatened ecosystem in the country: less than 8% of its original extent remains, broken into small, isolated patches. Restoring it is not a symbolic gesture. It is the difference between a mountain that holds water and one that lets it run off. The archive will grow towards other territories in the region.
Why we tell these stories
Regeneration is measured in decades, but it is done in concrete days of work: a nursery, an infiltration ditch, five thousand trees planted by hand. That work is almost never documented while it happens. These chronicles exist so there is a record, and so that other communities can recognise something they could repeat.
How we work
Every story starts with a visit and a long conversation on the land. We do not edit the testimony to sound more hopeful than it is: the difficulties (the lack of water, the costs, the time it takes a tree to cast shade) are part of the account.