Sustainable productive alternatives
One of the best strategies to conserve the forest is to bolster its value as a means to prevent it from being logged. WWF Peru has been promoting productive alternatives that far from impacting the forest, aid to form barriers to stop other activities such as intensive agriculture and ranching.
In the southeast Amazon region of Peru, exactly on the Brazil-Bolivia border, the Interoceanic Highway poses a great challenge: to mitigate the serious effects projected by this project – such as colonization, ranching and biofuel crops - in some of the most biodiverse and fragile forests in the world.
Through local partners, WWF Peru works side by side with hundreds of families that have settled in degraded lands or others close to the highway, promoting agroforestry sytems with species such as the Brazil nut, the shiringa – or natural latex - and the copoazu that will simultaneously enable the recovery of deforested lands, generate productive opportunities for the local population and halt other activities that are incompatible with the conservation of the forest.
This has made it possible to promote productive and commercial activities that will jointly benefit over 5000 families. In order to guarantee the conservation of the forest, WWF also works with local authorities to consolidate a land zoning scheme that promotes sustainable activities along the highway as a means to incentivize the families that are now committed to the forest and prevent pressures such as migration and intensive agriculture from taking root along the highway. This experience is an example of how a combination of safe land use planning and productive alternatives can become a clear Amazon conservation strategy.
In the southeast Amazon region of Peru, exactly on the Brazil-Bolivia border, the Interoceanic Highway poses a great challenge: to mitigate the serious effects projected by this project – such as colonization, ranching and biofuel crops - in some of the most biodiverse and fragile forests in the world.
Through local partners, WWF Peru works side by side with hundreds of families that have settled in degraded lands or others close to the highway, promoting agroforestry sytems with species such as the Brazil nut, the shiringa – or natural latex - and the copoazu that will simultaneously enable the recovery of deforested lands, generate productive opportunities for the local population and halt other activities that are incompatible with the conservation of the forest.
This has made it possible to promote productive and commercial activities that will jointly benefit over 5000 families. In order to guarantee the conservation of the forest, WWF also works with local authorities to consolidate a land zoning scheme that promotes sustainable activities along the highway as a means to incentivize the families that are now committed to the forest and prevent pressures such as migration and intensive agriculture from taking root along the highway. This experience is an example of how a combination of safe land use planning and productive alternatives can become a clear Amazon conservation strategy.
La construcción de obras como la carretera interoceánica requiere de una ardua planificación para generar opciones de desarrollo sostenible en la población local.
