Awajun indigenous communities

We are working with Awajun Indigenous communities and migrant farmers to become effective stewards of the Alto Mayo landscape’s natural resources.

 

The Alto Mayo Landscape

 

© CI/ Marlon del Águila

Nestled in the foothills of the Andes and sloping down into the Amazon, lies the Alto Mayo landscape, one of Peru’s most biodiverse regions. The landscape is home to approximately 230,000 people, including 14 Awajun indigenous communities living in titled territories in the north and migrants from the Peruvian Andes dispersed throughout.

 

The area is a biodiversity hotspot and an Alliance for Zero Extinction site with record-high numbers of endemic bird and orchid species, and provides habitat for Peru’s three endemic monkey species. Covering 780,000 hectares, the landscape is threatened by increasing deforestation, with approximately 15% of the landscape’s forests lost since 2001. The deforestation frontier is expanding into the mostly intact Awajun territories, which comprise 19% of the landscape. This deforestation is driven by unsustainable farming practices, much of which stems from migrant farmers who rent land from the Awajun and use practices poorly suited to the region’s tropical soils.

 

 

THE PROJECT

 

CI seeks to deter deforestation and increase production while conserving critical natural capital in this globally important landscape, and working with local communities while also improving their livelihoods.

 

© CI Peru/ Marlon del Águila

 

 

 

To do so, the Project will increase and diversify income sources for Awajun and migrant farmers (e.g. coffee and cacao, aquaculture and medicinal plants), and restore and conserve forest ecosystems in Awajun territories and enhance connectivity between these lands and existing conservation areas in the landscape through community incentives, land-use planning, and improved governance.

 

 

© CI Peru/Marlon del Águila

 

 

By helping Alto Mayo’s Indigenous and farming communities achieve economic self-sufficiency based on the region’s biodiversity, the project will support Indigenous communities and migrants to become effective stewards of the landscape’s natural resources and help secure the future of the Amazon.

 

 

With the funding of BHP Foundation over four years, CI will be able to improve the livelihoods of 9,000 indigenous people (6,000 direct beneficiaries and 9,000 indirect beneficiaries) and 5,000 migrant farmers, and reduce the current deforestation rate by at least 25%.