RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Through a new government intervention strategy, the Peruvian Ministry of Environment (MINAM) will seek to monitor the entirety of its forests by 2030, said Rudy Alberto Valdivia, head of MINAI’s Technical Unit of the National Forest Conservation Program for the Mitigation of Climate Change as part of the International Day of Forests, celebrated every March 21st.
He explained that this strategy also aims to preserve 10 million hectares, thus benefiting over 1,000 native communities, peasants and small producers in the country.
“Forests are an asset for development and our task in preserving them is not only to ensure their maintenance, but also their contribution to the sustainable development of the communities,” said Valdivia.
In Peru, where forests cover approximately 57% of the national territory, the Forest Program has successfully monitored around 78 million hectares of Amazonian forests since its creation in 2010 and now expects to expand its monitoring of dry and Andean forests over the next decade to reach a total of 82.5 million hectares of forest in the country by 2030.
Dry and Andean forests
In particular, the program will incorporate, using the Geobosques platform, the monitoring of 3.4 million hectares of dry forests in the northeast until 2022 and, by 2025, the monitoring of 808 hectares of Andean forests.
“Our monitoring system allows us, with the use of modern technology, to determine the current distribution of the forests,” which enables him “to identify where the changes are occurring” and, consequently, allows the authorities to “take quick action,” explained Valdivia.
He said that this is a “dynamic task,” since it is not only subject to actions such as illegal logging or the development of invasive crops, but also to fires or natural phenomena such as El Niño.
Since the goal of this initiative is to monitor all of Peru’s forests, during its first 10 years of implementation, 78 million hectares of Amazonian forests have already been monitored.
“This made it possible to prepare annual deforestation reports and also to issue early warnings every 15 days, directed to all public and private organizations in the country linked to forest management,” said Teresa Velásquez, coordinator of the Forestry Program, in a press release.
According to the latest MINAM report, deforestation in Peruvian forests in 2019 covered some 147,000 hectares, an area larger than the surface of Hong Kong.
1,000 communities benefited
In addition to enhancing forest cover monitoring, the new strategy also seeks to benefit more than 1,000 peasant and native communities in the country with the preservation of 10 million hectares of forests.
In the last decade, the Forestry Program has promoted the conservation of 2.9 million hectares of community forests through the “conditional direct transfers” mechanism.
As a result, agreements were signed with a total of 274 communities for the delivery of a grant that benefited some 22,000 families in 9 departments of the country in their development of forest-based productive activities, food security, improvement of community monitoring and strengthening of community management, according to the Ministry of the Environment.
“With the coordination with regional and local governments, we want the program to support local development initiatives,” which contribute to both the preservation and “use” of the forests, Valdivia said.
“We have improved our intervention in this respect, by recognizing that preservation is not only about how much you can preserve, but also about the existing opportunities to use the forests and promote sustainable development,” he said.
He added that, as a result of the impact of the pandemic on the country’s employment rate, many native and peasant communities experienced an “important” transformation process in 2020, insofar as several members returned to their native communities, leaving behind the cities where they worked.
Thus, “there was an increase in pressure on the forests” and even some communities “needed to strengthen their ability to buy food in the short term.”
Source: Gestion