Photo credit: The Field Museum |
CHICAGO--The Field Museum has received $5.2 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to work with its partner, Centro de Conservación, Investigación y Manejo de Areas Naturales – Cordillera Azul (CIMA) and other Peruvian and international organizations, to develop ecologically compatible opportunities for communities neighboring the huge new Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul in Peru.
"In addition to protecting a spectacular region with rich biological diversity, this park offers a unique opportunity for its neighboring communities in the Huallaga Valley," says Debra Moskovits, PhD, Director of The Field Museum's Environmental and Conservation Programs. "The park will generate long-term investments that engage local residents in activities that both support the park and improve their quality of life."
Creating income and job opportunities through the sustainable use of natural resources advances U.S. government objectives to create ecologically, politically and economically viable alternatives to the cultivation of illicit crops, according to Tim Miller, USAID/Peru's Chief of the Office of Environment and Natural Resources. "That's why our offices of environment and alternative development have joined forces to address common problems in Peru's coca-growing areas."
In April, USAID signed a cooperative agreement with the Museum for the program, Economic and Environmental Opportunities in Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul and its Buffer Zone, Huallaga (Coca) Valley, Peru, over the next four years. In the role of technical support for the implementation of the park, the Museum will work with CIMA to develop opportunities that are ecologically compatible with the park and culturally compatible with the local human communities.
The USAID grant will create jobs for local residents, reforest abandoned coca fields, and promote long-term stewardship of natural resources. These projects will be managed through conservation contracts with pilot communities around the park. The contracts will specify technical assistance and employment in return for the communities' commitment to deliver the work and maintain pro-conservation efforts. Local authorities and nongovernmental organizations with a history of success in the Huallaga Valley will play primary roles in planning, implementing and coordinating the programs.
"This is a huge opportunity to create a new model for park management in Peru, involving surrounding human communities in the process," says Lily Rodriguez, President of CIMA. "From the start, we have included Cordillera Azul's neighbors in the goals and vision for the park, in the zoning, and in the efforts to make the park benefit its neighbors, directly and indirectly."
Through participatory "asset mapping," researchers understand the cultural and organizational strengths and capabilities in communities surrounding the park. These assets then serve as the building blocks and entry points for effective work with the communities, based on local needs and wishes and compatibility with long-term survival of the park.
"The social asset mapping we did with the communities around the park revealed their commitment to conservation and their innovative strategies for managing their own natural resources," says Alaka Wali, PhD, John Nuveen Curator and Director of The Field Museum's Center for Cultural Understanding and Change. "Drawing on their existing capacities and engaging them from the very beginning should give us a head-start on building their sense of ownership of the park."
Cordillera Azul will be the first park in Peru managed primarily by the private sector, something that USAID is interested in assessing. This will be done through a monitoring system that will keep track of progress in management capabilities and the health of the ecosystem, Miller says. Agroforestry models to generate income and job opportunities will also be of special interest to USAID.
Park holds promise, regionally and globally
At about 5,225-square-miles, Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul is larger than Connecticut and one of the largest national parks in the world. It includes the last intact expanse of lower montane forest in Peru. The huge diversity of habitats in the park has a remarkable richness of plant and animal life and natural communities of global importance.
Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul was created in 2001 with the help and scientific expertise of The Field Museum. A rapid biological inventory found more than 1,600 species of plants, 71 of mammals (13 of which are endangered), 500 of birds, and 82 of amphibians and reptiles. The inventory generated substantial interest in the region and in the government, and led to the creation of the park.
Although the park is virtually uninhabited, more than 70,000 people live around it, most of them in the valley of the Huallaga River, to the west. The Field Museum and CIMA propose a range of activities--including community-based park management as well as landscape restoration and agroforestry on abandoned or eradicated coca plantations and denuded lands--to promote local support for the park and to provide ecologically compatible activities that improve the quality of residents in the region.
Note: Digital images of Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul are available upon request.