Peru

Peru’s forests are under siege. Throughout the Peruvian Amazon, illegal and destructive ‘legal’ loggers are engaged in large-scale and destructive extraction of remaining high value caoba: “mahogany” (Swietenia macrophylla) and cedro: “tropical cedar” (Cedrela odorata). Recent estimates suggest that as much as 90% of timber extracted in the Peruvian Amazon is illegal. Official figures report that most Peruvian hardwood timber is exported to Mexico, the USA, Canada and Belgium. Much of this timber is imported in violation of international environmental agreements (like CITES).

Camisea is the greatest energy project in the history of Peru. This project involves the extraction of natural gas in an area known as Lot 88, located on both sides of the Camisea River, one of the richest biodiversity areas in the world. The cost of building the whole project amounts to 1,600 million dollars, including the exploitation and processing of gas and the construction of gas pipelines that will pass by the Andes Cordillera before reaching the coast for distribution.

In Peru, the Departments where mining prevails show the highest levels of poverty in the country. Such is the case of Cajamarca, the location of the Yanacocha Mining Company -with 51.35 per cent of its shares belonging to the US transnational Newmont Mining Corporation; 43.65 per cent to the national group Benavides; and 5 percent to the World Bank's International Finance Corporation.

In 1990, the Peruvian state established the Kugapakori/Nahua Reserve to protect the lives, rights and territories of indigenous peoples in South East Peru avoiding, or strictly limiting their contact with national society. Despite safeguarding these territories on paper, since its creation the Reserve has been continually threatened by illegal logging and two years ago it was opened up for extraction of natural gas as part of the Camisea Gas Project (See “Camisea gas project undermines the rights of indigenous peoples”, WRM bulletin No. 62, September 2002).

In the city of Cajamarca in northern Peru, thousands of peasants, students and social organizations are struggling against the plans of the Yanococha mining company (its main shareholder is Newmont, a US mining company, together with the Peruvian Buenaventura company and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation) to carry out exploration in Cerro Quilish, whose streams feed the Grande and Porcon rivers.

The Ashaninka indigenous peoples community of Churinashi in the Atalaya province in the Amazon region of Peru is being subject to violence and threats of forced eviction from their lands, territories and resources, over which they possess ancestral rights, recognized in the Peruvian Constitution, in conformity with the ratification by Peru of ILO Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal peoples, incorporated into national legislation in 1993, through Legislative Resolution 26253.

Pachamama is a Quechua term, which stands, basically, for Mother Earth. The Quechua, an Indigenous People living in a large part of the Andes, believe that the Earth is a mother which cares for people as if they were her children.

The Greater Amazonia that stretches over approximately 7,8854,331 km2 (*) possesses the largest rainforest in the world, with flora and fauna that constitute, on their own, over half the world’s biota, comprising hundreds of thousands of plants and millions of animals, many still unknown to western science. At the same time, its waters represent between 15 and 20% of the planet’s total fresh water reserves, and the great River Amazon alone empties 15.5% of the non-salt water into the Atlantic Ocean.

High in the Peruvian Andes a unique initiative in indigenous-run conservation is being pursued to preserve the huge variety of domesticated potatoes that are one of the most significant elements of the region’s biodiversity. The ‘Parque de la Papa’ (Potato Park) is the brainchild of an indigenous-run organisation called the ‘Asociacion Andes’ (Quechua-Aymara Association for Sustainable Livelihoods – ANDES) and is being implemented by an association of six Quechua villages in the mountains south of Pisac in the Sacred Valley of the Incas.

The Ministry of Agriculture of Peru has recently stated that the illegal logging of timber, particularly of mahogany, operates like drug trafficking or smuggling, with an organised and powerful network threatening the process of forest planning that the Government has launched. According to the ministry, the problem is rooted in the fact that a firm decision had never been taken to struggle against illegal logging and that controlling the marketing chain --the financial support to the activity-- had been overlooked.

In December 2000 the Argentina-based company Pluspetrol won the concession to extract natural gas from the Camisea basin in South East Peru. However, Pluspetrol’s intention to conduct seismic and drilling operations within the Nahua/Kugapakori state reserve has attracted controversy because of potential impacts on its indigenous inhabitants living in voluntary isolation and initial stages of direct interaction with national society.

Only available in Spanish Publicación de Censat-Agua Viva en ocasión de la Cumbre Mundial de Johannesburgo. Amazonía: Selva y Bosques diez años después de Río