Climate change threatens Quechua and their crops in Peru’s Andes

Fabiola Ortiz in IPS: In this town [Pisac] in Peru’s highlands over 3,000 metres above sea level, in the mountains surrounding the Sacred Valley of the Incas, the Quechua Indians who have lived here since time immemorial are worried about threats to their potato crops from alterations in rainfall patterns and temperatures.

“The families’ food security is definitely at risk,” agricultural technician Lino Loayza told IPS. “The rainy season started in September, and the fields should be green, but it has only rained two or three days, and we’re really worried about the effects of the heat.”

If the drought stretches on, as expected, “we won’t have a good harvest next year,” said Loayza, who is head of the Parque de la Papa or Potato Park, a biocultural conservation unit created to safeguard native crops in the rural municipality of Pisac in the southeastern department or region of Cuzco.

In the Parque de la Papa, which is at an altitude of up to 4,500 metres and covers 9,200 hectares, 6,000 indigenous villagers from five communities – Amaru, Chawaytire, Pampallaqta, Paru Paru and Sacaca – are preserving potatoes and biodiversity, along with their spiritual rites and traditional farming techniques.

The Parque de la Papa, a mosaic of fields that hold the greatest diversity of potatoes in the world, 1,460 varieties, was created in 2002 with the support of the Asociación Andes. This protected area in the Sacred Valley of the Incas is surrounded by lofty peaks known as ‘Apus’ or divine guardians of life, which until recently were snow-capped year-round.

“People are finally waking up to the problem of climate change. They’re starting to think about the future of life, the future of the family. What will the weather be like? Will we have food?” 50-year-old community leader Lino Mamani, one of the ‘papa arariwa’ – potato guardians, in Quechua – told IPS....

Ruined terraces near Pisac, shot by Martin St-Amant (S23678), Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

India and China farmers back new climate adaptation alliance

Sophie Yeo in Responding to Climate Change:  A network of 25 indigenous communities from 10 countries has come together to share traditional knowledge on how to adapt to climate change. Countries in the network include China, Peru, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Tajikistan and Papua New Guinea.

Seed sharing between the groups will ensure that farmers grow crops that are resilient and diverse enough to withstand major damage in the face of unusual weather. “We are from different communities but we have similar problems relating to climate change,” said Akylbek Kasymov, an economist at Kyrgyz National Agrarian University, and leader of the Kyrgyz delegation at a workshop for indigenous people in Bhutan.

The International Network of Mountain Indigenous People was created by communities from mountainous regions, speaking 22 languages between them, to swap ideas, information, and even seeds, so they can be resilient in the face of a changing climate.

These mountainous regions will face similar problems as the impacts of climate change become more severe, threatening the livelihoods and traditions of their indigenous communities. These problems include melting glaciers, changes in rainfall patters, failing crops and more pests and diseases.

For instance, in Papua New Guinea, agriculture is the largest economic activity, and its natural climate means that most of its crops are fed by the rain. At a recent meeting in Bhutan, Papuan farmers highlighted how changing rainfall patterns mean that the islanders have a growing need for irrigation to keep their crops alive. Local knowledge of this system is lacking. Through the network, indigenous communities will be able to help each other by sharing this kind of information....

Tajik craft customs, from an 1860 Russian image

Illegal logging widespread in Peru

Terra Daily via AFP: A 14-year-old policy to encourage sustainable logging in Peru's Amazonian forest has unwittingly led to large-scale plundering, a study said Thursday. In a paper published in Scientific Reports, researchers said illegal logging was a "plague" on the Amazon watershed -- a haven of biodiversity and precious hardwood species such as mahogany and cedar.

"Much of the timber coming out of the Peruvian Amazon is sourced outside of authorised concession areas," the researchers wrote. A team led by Matt Finer of the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington trawled through data kept by agencies meant to enforce Peru's 2000 Forest and Wildlife Law.

The legislation empowers the government to award concessions for up to 40 years on public land between 4,000 and 50,000 hectares (10,000 and 125,000 acres). These contracts come hedged with conditions: loggers must submit a five-year harvesting strategy, including a highly detailed, year-by-year plan that identifies each individual tree to be cut, with Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates.

Finer's team found that by September 2013, the authorities had scrutinised 388 of the 609 logging concessions. More than 68 percent of the 388 were found either to have committed "major violations", or were suspected of it....

Bamboo and ferns in in the Peruvian Amazon, shot by Tadd and Debbie Ottman, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Peru to ‘eliminate’ key environmental rule for oil and gas firms, says minister

David Hill in the Guardian (UK): The Peruvian government is planning a new law loosening the social and environmental checks on companies exploring for oil and gas, according to a controversial announcement by the Energy Minister.

Current law states that companies must research and write “Environmental Impact Assessments” (EIAs) of proposed operations before submitting them to the government for approval and then beginning exploration.

However, Energy Minister Eleodoro Mayorga Alba announced this week that oil and gas companies planning to explore by conducting seismic tests will be exempt from the EIA process. Speaking at an event in Lima, he said that Energy Ministry and Environment Ministry personnel are currently working on the law and had reached several agreements:

[One] agreement is to eliminate environmental impact assessments for seismic operations. The [oil and gas] industry has its laws, the industry has principles, it has well-established practices, and the idea is to move away from procedures and permissions to action. The companies know what they have to do.

Mayorga’s comments were reported by Peruvian newspaper Gestion which stated that the new law, according to the minister, is intended to “accelerate investment in the oil and gas sector.”...

An oil pump in Talara, Peru, shot by Maurice Chédel, public domain

Cusco, Peru receives help from World Bank in adapting to climate change

Via Andina in Peru This Week: The Andean city of Cusco in southern Peru has received assistance from the World Bank to strengthen local climate change adaptation planning. The World Bank’s disaster risk management team in Latin America and the Caribbean recently piloted a regional study and technical assistance initiative in Cusco and other four small and medium sized cities (SMSC) in the region.

The initiative’s main objective was to support SMSC with their adaptation planning for floods and landslides, two of the most recurrent climate-related hazards in the region. SMSC in the LAC region are diverse in location, topography and socio-economic and institutional make-up, yet many are struggling with similar challenges caused by rapid urban growth, weak capacities in urban planning and inadequate provision for public services and infrastructure.

SMSC are also less likely to have had access to climate change adaptation (CCA) training, financing or knowledge networks. The ultimate goal of the initiative was to strengthen local adaptive capacity and to increase urban resilience through mainstreaming climate change adaptation into current planning systems. The other medium sized cities selected were Castries, Saint Lucia; El Progreso, Honduras; Estelí, Nicaragua; and Santos, Brazil.

Over the course of one and a half years, the task team worked with these cities to conduct three assessments to evaluate their i) climate related risks, ii) institutional adaptive capacities, and iii) socio-economic capacities to adapt to climate change.

These assessments, in conjunction with a series of consultative workshops with city planners and decision-makers, resulted in the development of Strategic Climate Adaptation Investment and Institutional Strengthening Plans for each city. These plans identify priority investments and activities to strengthen institutional capacities for climate change adaptation....

Roofs in Cusco, shot by Colegota, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Spain license

Peru’s Manu National Park sets new biodiversity record

Robert Sanders at the UC Berkeley News Center: Peru’s treasured Manu National Park is the world’s top biodiversity hotspot for reptiles and amphibians, according to a new survey published last month by biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (SIU-Carbondale) and Illinois Wesleyan University.

The park, which encompasses lowland Amazonian rain forest, high-altitude cloud forest and Andean grassland east of Cuzco, is well known for its huge variety of bird life, which attracts ecotourists from around the globe. More than 1,000 species of birds, about 10 percent of the world’s bird species; more than 1,200 species of butterflies; and now 287 reptiles and amphibians have been recorded in the park.

Postdoc Rudolf von May discusses the reptile and amphibian biodiversity in Peru’s Manu National Park. Video by Phil Ebiner and Roxanne Makasdjian. Photos and video footage by Alessandro Catenazzi, SIU-Carbondale, and Rudolf von May, UC Berkeley.

“For reptiles and amphibians, Manu and its buffer zone now stands out as the most diverse protected area anywhere,” said study coauthor Rudolf von May, a postdoctoral researcher in UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

Despite the park’s abundant and diverse animal life, von May said, not all is well in the preserve. The devastating chytrid fungus has caused a decline in the number of frogs there, as it has elsewhere around the world, while deforestation for subsistence living, gold mining and oil and gas drilling are encroaching on the buffer zones around the park.

“All of this is threatening the biodiversity in the park and the native peoples who live in settlements in the park,” von May said. At least four Amazonian tribes and a nomadic group of hunter-gatherers known as Mashco-Piro live within the confines of Manu National Park and its buffer zone....

A new species of stream-living lizard discovered in Manu National Park, Peru, by Alessandro Catenazzi. Catenazzi of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, UC Berkeley postdoc Rudolf von May and taxonomist Edgar Lehr of Illinois Wesleyan University have completed a survey of the park and its buffer zone, uncovering a greater diversity of reptiles and amphibians than any other protected area in the world. Alessandro Catenazzi image.

Data sharing and joint thinking urged for Amazonia

Zoraida Portillo in SciDev.net: Countries in the Amazon region need better data sharing and a more holistic view of development if they are to avoid conflicts and costs relating to key resources such as water over the next 50 years, experts warn.

A report making recommendations for a new, international security agenda for the Amazon, says the region’s nations should link-up and circulate data on water, energy, health and food security to ensure sustainable development and tackle challenges posed by changes in climate and land use. A failure to do so, it says, could lead to far greater economic and social disruption in the mid-term and create unprecedented challenges for South America’s political leaders.

“The data exist, but are very fragmented,” says Andy Jarvis, a programme leader at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and an author of the report released by CIAT and think-tank the Global Canopy Programme last month (17 December). The report was developed with input from science experts and political leaders from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

According to Jarvis, existing data on matters crucial for the region’s future security are out of date, and there is a lack of a consistent monitoring on issues such as access to water, energy and health. Where there are data, the links between these issues, or between data collected at a regional, national or international level, are missing, he adds.

Jarvis also laments the disjointed approach to development in the region, with resource extraction currently dominating the development agenda, instead of efforts to deliver sustainable and holistic progress....

An Orange-winged Amazon near Yarina Lodge, Napo Province, Ecuador. Shot by Geoff Gallice, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Peru blocks plans for new indigenous reserve as oil production starts

David Hill in the "Andes to the Amazon" blog in the Guardian (UK): Two key Peruvian state institutions are blocking plans to establish a reserve for indigenous people living in "voluntary isolation" (IPVI) between the Napo and Tigre rivers in the Amazon rainforest. Opposition to the proposal was condemned by national indigenous organisation AIDESEP after a meeting, held in December, of a cross-sector government commission set up to create such reserves.

In June last year Peru's vice-ministry of inter-culturality (VMI), the state entity responsible for indigenous peoples, officially recognised the existence of IPVI in the Napo-Tigre region and supported the proposal to create the reserve. According to the VMI's memo 190-2013:

This communiqué gives favourable qualification for the recognition of indigenous peoples in isolation, probably related to the Arabela, Iquito, Taushiro, Zápara, Waorani and Abirija peoples, and the categorisation of the Curaray, Napo, Arabela, Nashiño, Pucacuro, Tigre and Tributaries' Indigenous Reserve, details of which are in the attached documentation.

Memo 190 was sent by the then vice-minister of inter-culturality, Paulo Vilca Arpasi, to the then president of the cross-sector commission, Hernán Coronado Chuecas, together with 357 pages of reports, maps, letters and sworn testimonies principally supporting the IPVI's existence.

However, the proposed reserve is almost entirely overlapped by oil concessions including, most significantly, lot 39, run by Repsol, and lot 67, run by London- and Paris-based Perenco together with Vietnamese state oil and gas company PetroVietnam....

Bora people in Peru, shot by Jorge G. Mori, public domain 

Forging fire resilience on Amazon forest fringes in Peru

Barbara Fraser in Forest News: ...As forest conversion to agriculture and pasture lands are intensified in the Peruvian Amazon, so is the intentional use of fire. Because fields become overgrown quickly in the tropics, oil palm planters, farmers and cattle ranchers burn fields to clear weeds and set fires in pastures to eliminate ticks that annoy livestock. Problems arise when the wind whips a fire out of control and endangers the surrounding forest.

Although humidity generally stops fire from spreading beyond the edge of a field or pasture and into the forest, scientists fear that repeated burning could dry the understory vegetation (underbrush), making the forest more susceptible to burning in the future. Combined with climate change, survival of the forest could be at stake.

[Victor] Gutiérrez, a Colombian-born research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York, is working with scientists with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) to study the relationships among humans, fires and forests in Peru’s Ucayali region.

“We want to see how climate
, land-cover changes and social processes influence the occurrence and spread of fire. We also want to understand how the management of different types of vegetation in the landscape could be used to control or reduce fires while increasing the ability of secondary forests to grow and provide ecosystem services, such as wildlife habitat, carbon storage and water regulation.”

...“Fire is becoming more pervasive in the Amazon, but the ecosystem is not adapted to fire conditions,” Gutiérrez said. “Fire harms human health, damages crops, and it also has important impacts on ecosystem processes. If we can keep fire out of areas where the forest would otherwise regenerate, then those areas could develop enough to reduce the likelihood of fires and to provide those ecosystem services.” ....

Seen from a NASA satellite, fire and smoke in the Amazon

Climate prediction tools show role of oceans in Amazon drought

Barbara Fraser in Forest News: The best place to look for clues about potential drought in the Amazon forests of Peru is on the other side of South America, off the shores of Brazil in the Atlantic Ocean, according to scientists.

During the past 10 years, rising sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic have corresponded with lower-than-normal precipitation in the western Amazon, enabling scientists to predict droughts about three months ahead of the July-to-September dry season.

That knowledge can provide enough advance warning for farmers and local government officials to take steps to prevent wildfires and avoid serious damage to forests, property and crops, said scientists working with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

“People in the Amazon use fire every year to clear the land for planting,” said Katia Fernandes, an associate research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University in New York who is working with CIFOR on a study of climate and fire in Peru....

A tree boa in the Amazon jungle of Peru, shot by Amarumayo, public domain 

Climate change adaptation takes root in Peruvian coffee farms

An article by Fairtrade in the Guardian (UK)'s sustainable business partner zone: Climate change is a big risk for small farmers around the world and Peruvian coffee producers are no different. Lower rainfall, higher temperatures, and the rampant spread of disease are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

This year, in particular, has proved challenging as coffee farms throughout Latin America have been devastated by the spread of coffee leaf rust known as "La Roya". Farmers are looking for technical and financial support to be better prepared to tackle climate change along with all the new challenges it presents.

Thanks to the support of Lidl, a German-based chain of grocery stores, farmer members at the Sonomoro Cooperative in Pangoa, Peru, are receiving training to cope with the effects of climate change. In the first phase of this programme, 10 lead farmers – or promoters – were trained by the organisation Twin Trading to conduct risk and opportunity assessments in their communities. A demonstration farm was established where farmers can learn about best practices, including shade and weed management, composting, treatment of waste water and more.

...These promoters are now training farmers in the region in best practices to create more resilient and sustainable farms. A contest during the first phase of the programme recognised the three best farmers implementing adaptation measures.

Along with the need for improved farm management, the promoters identified reforestation as one of the priorities for the region. The search for farmland and timber has left many of the hills in the region barren, exposed to severe erosion, heightening the impacts of unpredictable storms. Lidl is now supporting a second phase of the project to provide additional training on climate change adaptation and supporting reforestation efforts....

Peruvian coffee beans, shot by Annerella, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Amazon forest loss risks water security across South America

Paul Brown in the Ecologist: ... The combination of industrial and agricultural pollution and droughts is creating a once unthinkable vulnerability for the five countries of Amazonia. The continued destruction of the Amazon to exploit its resources for mining, agriculture and hydro-power is threatening the future of the South American continent, according to a report by campaigning groups using the latest scientific data.

Five countries - Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru - share the Amazon, and for all of them the forest area occupies more than 40% of their territory. All face threats to their water supply, energy production, food and health.

In addition, the report says, because of the over-exploitation of the region rainfall will fall by 20% over a heavily-populated area far to the south of Amazonia known as the La Plata basin, covering parts of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Last month it was reported that deforestation in Amazonia had increased by almost a third in the past year, with an area equal to 50 football pitches destroyed every minute since 2000. The report, the Amazonia Security Agenda, authored by the Global Canopy Programme and CIAT, the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, says the prosperity of the region is based on the abundance of water.

"Amazonia's abundant natural resources underpin water, food, energy, and health security for the economy and people of the region and far beyond", the report states. "At the heart of this nexus of securities is water. So abundant in the region, but now under increasing threat as industrial pollution increases, and unprecedented droughts reveal a once unthinkable water vulnerability."...

A river boat on the Amazon, shot by Pontanegra, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license 

Innovative report calls for a new security agenda for Amazonia

Digital Journal via PRWEB UK:  In a report released today, the Global Canopy Programme and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture call for a new security agenda for Amazonia and its countries. One that focuses not only on national security in a traditional sense, but acts to strengthen the fundamental underpinnings of a flourishing society: sustained access to water, energy, food and good health for all.

Manuel Pulgar, Minister of Environment for Peru (host country of the UNFCCC Climate Change Summit COP 20 – December 2014) said, “Climate change is a global problem, but one that will multiply local and regional problems in unforeseeable ways. In Latin America, we have taken Amazonia and its seemingly limitless water and forests as a given. But recent unprecedented droughts have shown us just what happens when that water security falters: it impacts food and energy production, it affects the wellbeing of entire populations, and it leaves governments and businesses with a big bill to pay. The science is clear, so we cannot afford to miss the opportunity for positive action now.”

The report, developed with input from science experts and political leaders from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, lays out initial recommendations as building blocks for dialogue and action in each of these countries. Since Amazonia’s ecosystems are shared between countries, there is also a need for governments to collaborate on coordinated responses to these shared risks.

Carlos Klink, Brazil’s National Secretary for Climate Change and Environmental Quality, said: “We are understanding more and more how interdependent water, food, energy and health security are across our continent. There is also interdependence between the countries that share the Amazon, which recycles trillions of tons of water that all our people and economies rely on. The challenge that we are just beginning to recognise and act upon is one of transitioning to a more sustainable economy - one that values the role of a healthy Amazonia in underpinning long-term security and prosperity.”...

A NASA image of the Amazon River near Manaus. You can see Fitzcarraldo!

Why climate change threatens Peru's poverty reduction mission

Dan Collins in the "povertymatters" blog at the Guardian (UK): The Peruvian Amazon became a net emitter of carbon dioxide rather than oxygen for the first time in 2012, according to the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) latest human development country report. The reversal of the rainforest's usual role as a carbon sink is a direct result of the droughts in the western Amazon in 2005 and 2010 – and a stark reminder, say scientists, that this mega-biodiverse country is highly vulnerable to climate change.

Peru, which has four of the five geographical areas most vulnerable to climate change – ranging from fragile mountain ecosystems to low-lying coastal areas – will host the 20th UN climate change conference in 2014.

The 2013 UNDP report warned that Peru's climate change vulnerability could undo the advances it has made in channelling economic growth into sustained poverty reduction. Peru's poverty rates have been more than halved over the past decade, dropping from 48.5% of the population in 2004 to 25.8% in 2012, according to the World Bank.

"If we disregard [environmental] sustainability, whatever progress we have made in poverty reduction or improvement of human development will just be erased due to climate change," cautioned Maria Eugenia Mujica, one of the UNDP report's authors.

Peru has already lost 39% of its tropical glaciers due to a 0.7C temperature rise in the Andes between 1939 and 2006. But, the report noted, with a predicted temperature rise of up to 6C in many parts of the Andes by the end of this century, there will be "harmful impacts on human development"...

Quelccaya Glacier located in southern Peru in the Cordillera Vilcanota, shot by Edubucher, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Extent of Peruvian Amazon lost to illegal goldmines mapped for first time

Dan Collyns in the Guardian (UK): The area affected by illegal gold mining in Peru's south-eastern Amazon region increased by 400% from 1999 to 2012, according to researchers using state-of-the-art mapping technology.

Using airborne mapping and high-satellite monitoring, researchers led by the Carnegie Institution for Science also showed that the rate of forest loss in Madre de Dios has tripled since the 2008 global economic crisis, when the international price of gold began to rise to new highs.

Until this study, thousands of small, clandestine mines that have boomed since the economic crisis went unmonitored, according to the research team, which was led by Carnegie's Greg Asner and worked with Peru's environment ministry.

Crucial technological differences, such as the use of the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System-lite (CLASlite), meant the team was able to map both large and small mining operations.

"The gold miners are working in thousands of small groups, so it takes our high resolution techniques to map their activities," said Asner, who developed the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO), technology that uses algorithms to detect changes to the forest in areas as small as 10 square metres (about 100 square feet), allowing scientists to find small-scale disturbances that cannot be detected by traditional satellite methods....

This CLASlite map shows the areas along the Madre De Dios river damaged by small, clandestine gold miners between 1999 and 2012. Photograph: CLASlite Team

Repsol to drill for oil in Amazon rainforest in Peru

David Hill in the Andes to the Amazon blog in the Guardian (UK): Repsol has been given the go-ahead by Peru's ministry of energy and mines (MEM) to explore for oil in one "protected" and one proposed reserve in the north of the country in the remote Amazon rainforest bordering Ecuador. According to an environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the company's plans initially submitted to MEM in 2011 and approved this month, exploration will involve 3D seismic tests across a 680sqkm area and drilling at least 21 wells.

Although Repsol doesn't acknowledge it, all the tests and 20 of the 21 wells fall within a proposed reserve for indigenous peoples who live in what Peruvian law calls "voluntary isolation" and are extremely vulnerable to any kind of contact with outsiders. The creation of this reserve was proposed by regional indigenous organisation ORAI in 2003 in order to protect the region and prohibit loggers, miners and oil and gas companies - like Repsol - from operating there.

Last December the Inter-American Development Bank agreed to give $1m to Peru with the stated aim of protecting the country's "isolated" indigenous peoples – some of which was scheduled to be spent on turning the proposed reserve in this region into a real one.

In 2007 national indigenous organisation AIDESEP appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to help stop Repsol, but Peru's ministry of justice and human rights is casting doubt on the "isolated" peoples' existence and urging the IACHR to close the case...

A floating island on Lake Titicaca in Peru, shot by http://veton.picq.fr, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

Peru spares Amazon rainforest from oil and gas push

David Hill in the Andes to Amazon blog in the Guardian (UK): Peru has announced a bidding round for new oil and gas concessions but, contrary to what was initially expected, none of them are in the Amazon rainforest. Nine concessions are to be auctioned, energy company Perupetro declared recently, but all of them are offshore along Peru's Pacific Ocean coast.

This constitutes a significant change of plan by Perupetro which last September issued a statement that before the end of 2012 36 new concessions would be established. According to a presentation made to the World Heavy Oil Congress in Aberdeen in Scotland the same month, 27 of these concessions – totaling millions of hectares – would be in the Amazon.

...Perupetro's new chairman, Luis Ortiga Cuneo, who took over from Ortiz in December, told Peruvian press the reason for the postponement was a 'prior consultation law' approved by Congress in 2011. The law's stated aim is to give "indigenous or native peoples" the right to be previously consulted about development projects or "administrative or legislative" measures affecting their collective rights to their "quality of life, cultural identity or physical existence."

...Amazon Watch's Andrew Miller, currently in Peru, says the "sustained campaigns of local indigenous communities, their federations and international allies appear to have changed the government's calculus. Whereas in the past they promoted the oil rounds to international companies without advising communities, now they have to comply with the consultation law."

But others remain extremely skeptical. "The government has been granting concessions without doing consultations for 40 years and it'll be difficult to change now," says Jesus Castro Suarez, from Lima-based NGO Eco-Dess. "I suspect they'll find some legal device to avoid consulting people. This can't or shouldn't be described as a civil society victory."...

Amazon Rainforest, seen from the Alto Madre de Dios river, in Peru, shot by Martin St-Amant (S23678), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Canadian oil company threatens the survival of Peru’s ‘Jaguar people’

Sarah Gilbertz in the Ecologist: The Yaquerana River in the Amazon rainforest marks the border between Peru and Brazil, but to the Matsés tribe, who live on both sides of it, this international border is meaningless. To them the streams, floodplains, and white-sand forests make up an ancestral territory that is shared by the entire tribe.

Today they are at risk of losing their land to a Canadian oil company which plans to cut hundreds of miles of seismic testing lines through their forest home and to drill exploratory wells.

There are around 2,200 Matsés living on the Peru-Brazil frontier in the Amazon rainforest. They hunt, fish and grow crops in their gardens; little is imported into their communities and most of what they need for survival comes from the rainforest. These communities live close to the riverbank, and every morning before the children go to school, they will join their parents and to catch the day’s fish.

....In 2012, the Canadian oil company Pacific Rubiales began to explore for oil on part of the Matsés’ ancestral land. The $36 million project will see hundreds of seismic lines cut through 700 sq km of forest, and wells drilled in search of oil, affecting the headwaters of three major rivers that are essential to the Matsés’ livelihoods.

The Matsés are worried about the future of their forest and their own survival. In a rare interview with Survival International, Antonina Duni Goya Nesho, a Matsés woman, said “Oil will destroy the place where our rivers are born.  What will happen to the fish?  What will the animals drink?”...

Short of water, Peru's engineers 'make our own'

Terra Daily via AFP: The message emblazoned on a billboard outside the Peruvian capital sounds almost too good to be true: drinkable water for anyone who wants some in this arid village. Even more intriguingly, the fresh, pure water on offer along a busy road in this dusty town some 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of Lima, has been extracted, as if by magic, from the humid air.

Within the enormous, raised, double-paneled billboard inviting all takers is concealed a tube, wires and mechanical equipment that draws the water from the air and purifies it. Inhabitants from far and wide who flock here toting liter bottles and buckets say this purified water is a wonderful alternative to the stagnant well water that used to be the only water source for many in this town.

...The United Nations on Friday marked its World Water Day initiative which aims to cut water-borne diseases like cholera, dysentery and diarrhea around the world. It is a perennial problem in Lima and the surrounding area, where about one million of the more than eight million people lack reliably clean water.

Faced with the ongoing water shortage, some innovators at Peru's University for Engineering and Technology hit upon the novel idea. "If the problem is water, we'll make some," said Alejandro Aponte, one of the people who worked on the project, which was both an engineering feat and a marketing challenge. Enough water is sucked from the air by this huge contraption located on the edge of a busy highway in Peru to fill a 100-liter tank each day.

The system required a location where the humidity was at least 30 percent -- not a problem in Lima, where the dewpoint sometimes hits an unbearably sticky 98 percent, despite the barren landscape where there is very little evident vegetation and not very much actual rainfall...

Lima, shot by Michael Reeve in 2001, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Preserving biodiversity can be compatible with intensive agriculture

Penn State Live: Preserving genetically diverse local crops in areas where small-scale farms are rapidly modernizing is possible, according to a Penn State geographer, who is part of an international research project investigating the biodiversity of maize, or corn, in hotspots of Bolivia, Peru and Mexico.

Hotspots are areas where cultivation of peaches and other non-traditional crops has exploded over the past decade, noted Karl Zimmerer, professor and head of the Department of Geography, and where small-scale farms are often female-run and have been previously regarded as marginal to mainstream agriculture.

"Peach-growing in central Bolivia is a vitally important income-generating strategy, even while farmers also desire and succeed in producing their Andean maize, both for eating and seed, as well as some sale," said Zimmerer, whose findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researcher analyzed small-scale farm, or smallholder, landscapes and their farming and livelihood practices, including labor migration and irrigation issues, from 2000 to 2010 over three areas within Bolivia's Valle Alto region. Farmers had low-to-moderate incomes by national standards.

Zimmerer and his colleagues surveyed land use among 174 smallholder households to assess production inputs and outputs of maize and peach crops. Among the factors they examined were farm-level management, varietal choices and water and soil management. Zimmerer designed this data collection and analysis to use with high-resolution satellite imagery and Geographic Information Systems. These techniques enabled him to create geographic models, maps and estimates of the areas devoted to intensified peach- and maize-growing.

Zimmerer also interviewed diverse groups of land users and officials to determine similarities and differences of perspectives on biodiversity in changing farming and food systems. In addition to determining the compatibility of traditional plants, or landrace, diversity and intensified agriculture, Zimmerer also addressed important links between migrant communities and smallholder farms.

"Many of these farmers rely on money sent back home from relatives abroad, primarily in the United States and Spain," he said. "This money is key to the farmers' ability to run successful smallholder farms and grow high agrobiodiversity maize."...

Terraced farms in Bolivia's Cordillera Central, shot by Christopher Walker, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license