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70. Resource Degradation in the Andes

70. Resource Degradation in the Peruvian Andes

Full Title:

Socio-economic and technical considerations to mitigate land and water degradation in the Peruvian Andes

Project Summary:

The Andean basins face three major challenges: rural poverty, land and water degradation (LWD), and weak institutions. More than 50% of the land in the Peruvian Sierra is degraded or severely degraded. LWD threatens rural livelihoods that are overwhelmingly agriculture-based. While over half the Peruvian population is poor, poverty is concentrated in the rural Sierra with 30% of the population of which 81% is poor. In the Jequetepeque basin poverty varies between 50 and 100%. Adoption of sustainable land and water management technologies (SLWMT) is crucial for increasing the returns to land and labor, the main assets of poor rural households. Though some known SLWMT are able to reduce LWD, adoption has been limited due to a number of constraints, including inadequate access to technical assistance concerning profitable SLWMT. However, many other constraints are complex and not well understood. The Project will study the conditions required for widespread adoption of SLWMT in the Jequetepeque basin while ensuring relevance of the results for similar micro-regions in the Sierra. The research will adopt a demand-driven approach and work closely with local governments, communities, and farmers' and technical assistance organizations. It will utilize results of community focus groups and household survey data analysis, and draw upon technical research being conducted by the IFPRI-IDB project. The Project will also analyze the profitability and risk of specific SLWMT and test a limited number of best practices under farmers' conditions. The Project is highly complementary to the on-going IFPRI-led project "Priorization of Investments in the Sierra of Peru" (funded by IDB and the Government of Peru) and as such will benefit from its institutional and technical frameworks. The Project will produce:  

(i) Typology of microregions. The Project will use existing GIS data already collected by the IFPRI-IDB project in the Jequetepeque basin including indicators on geography, land quality, water availability, poverty and inequality, gender, production, and infrastructure and markets. Factor and cluster analysis techniques will be used to develop a typology of micro-regions from which a random sample in the Jequetepeque basin will be selected. The typology will be replicated for all the Sierra to identify similar regions to which the results obtained for the Jequetepeque basin can be scaled up.

(ii) Detailed analysis of LWD within each selected microregion to identify major bottlenecks in water and land management through surveys (community and farm level) and community focus groups with key informants.

(iii) Review of existing SLWMT to identify best practices for selected micro-regions. This consists of matching best practices with LWD constraints from the previous step.

(iv) Analysis of the determinants of adoption of best practices. For a limited number of best practices and in close consultation with local governments, farmer organizations and technical assistance organizations, pilot projects that implement these best practices under actual farmers' conditions will be carried out to identify major adoption bottlenecks. Methods include cost-benefit analysis, trade-off analysis and qualitative and quantitative analysis of the biophysical, socio-economic and institutional environments impacting adoption.

(v) Local capacity building in prioritizing best practices and developing local support for the replication and upscaling of successful pilot programs based on the typology of micro-regions.

Project Proposal:

Technical Submission (XLS 121Kb)
Annex A: CVs (PDF 102Kb)
Annex B: Bibliography (PDF Kb74)
Annex C: Objective Tree (XLS 24Kb)
Annex D: Gantt Chart (XLS 26Kb)
Annex E: Project Team (PDF 62Kb)
Annex F: Stakeholders and Beneficiaries (PDF 59Kb)
Annex G: Environmental Impact (PDF 45Kb)