Peru

In September 2014, Peru, Germany and Norway entered into a partnership to support Peru’s efforts in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the Peruvian Amazon. 

The partnership was launched through the signing of a Letter of Intent at a joint press conference in New York held by the President of Peru, Ollanta Humala, the Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, and the German Minister for the Environment, Dr. Barbara Hendricks.

Peru will take immediate and decisive action to reduce its forest related emissions towards making the forest- and agriculture sector carbon neutral within 2021 and recognize millions of hectares of indigenous peoples’ land claims. Norway commits to pay for verified results with up to 300 million USD for the period up until 2020. Germany will continue its current extensive support to Peru on climate and forest issues, and consider further contributions on the basis of Peru’s delivery of results.

The Letter of Intent outlines important efforts by the Government of Peru within three main areas areas:

• Transparency, accountability and multistakeholder participation
• Land rights and land use
• Carbon emission reductions

With more than 68 million hectares of forests, Peru has the forth largest, most diverse and best preserved tropical forest areas in the world. It is also estimated to be one of the world’s four largest tropical forest carbon stores. Although the deforestation rate is relatively low, deforestation accounts for about 71 million tons of CO2 emissions every year.

The Peruvian Amazon is under increasing pressure from agriculture – mainly small scale cultivators-, extractive industries and infrastrucure projects. Subyacent causes includes weak governance, insuficient land and forest zoning, as well as the low economic value people perceived for the forest. To deal with these challenges, and to counter looming future threats of conversion of forests to large-scale agriculture, Peru commits to set of policies to lead to a trasnformational change in terms of land use in the Amazon, including low carbon agriculture and sustainable forest management under a landscape and ecosistemic approach.

350.000 indigenous people live in the Peruvian Amazon, including several uncontacted tribes. In the Letter of Intent, Peru commits to:

• Give all relevant stakeholders, including local communities, indigenous peoples, civil society, and women, the opportunity of full and effective participation in REDD+ planning and implementation.
• Respect the rights and proposals (as REDD Indígena Amazónico) of indigenous communities to give or withhold their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) – in relation with any  operations on lands to which they hold legal, communal or customary rights, and ensure those tenure rights are respected.
  • Increase by at least 5 million hectares the land areas titled to indigenous peoples.
  • Include at least 2 million hectares in the payment for conservation performance of indigenous communities.

Germany will continue its current extensive support to Peru on climate and forest issues, and consider further contributions on the basis of Peru’s delivery. Until 2017, the funds from Norway – up to 300 million NOK in this phase – will be devoted to the implementation of key reforms and institution building necessary to reach the phase with payments for reduced emissions. In the period 2017-21, Norway will contribute up to 1,5 billion NOK for results on reduced deforestation.

The measures to be implemented by Peru in the initial phase includes:

• ending the conversion of soils under forests and protection categories to agricultural use;
• taking measures to reduce deforestation from logging, natural resource extraction and mining;
• establishing the key instruments to implement the new forest law;
• establishing a public private coalition with multilateral companies committed to ambitious zero deforestation policies;
• • developing appropriate measurement and reporting systems for reducing emissions from forests, as well as for environmental and social impacts.

Joint Declaration of Intent between the Government of the Republic of Peru, the Government of the Kingdom of Norway and the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany (pdf)

Read the press release from the signing ceremony here.