From: Hanna Tuomisto <hantuo@utu.fi>
Subject: Re: information on conservation-oriented politics please
Organization: University of Turku
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1a2
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 14:09:15 GMT

Matthew Weed asked about conservation-minded organizations in Latin
America.

In Peru there are several organizations dealing with conservation,
including both governmental and non-governmental ones. I have not been
really working with any of these, but have had some occasional contacts.

In the Ministry of Agriculture there are two sections conserned with
nature management. "Direccion General Forestal y de Fauna" regulates the
extraccion of natural resources, e.g. gives the permissions for timber
exploitation and biological collections. "Parques Nacionales" is
responsible for planning where nature conservation areas should be
established and how they should be managed. Under the latter one there is
at least one local committee for the management of a certain nature
reserve (Pacaya-Samiria) which has its office in the jungle city Iquitos.
Probably there are other committees for other nature reserves, but this
is the only one I know for sure. 
Some time ago there was a big disagreement about the future of this
nature reserve, because some oil company wanted to enter the protected
area to do oil prospecting. After several months of intensive propaganda
from the Peruvian conservationists, Peruvian government decided not to
give the permission and the area was saved.

There is at least one Peruvian journal dedicated to matters related to
conservation and sustainable development, called "Medio Ambiente". Its
address is
General Suarez 1330
Miraflores
Lima 18 - Peru
It is published by "Instituto de Desarrollo y Medio Ambiente" in
collaboration with the Peruvian organizations "Fundacion Peruana para la
Conservacion de la Naturaleza" and "Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y
Tecnologia", and the foreign organizations WWF and Conservation
International.

At the University of Iquitos there is concern about sustainable resource
use at least in the faculties of Forestry and Agriculture. Both have good
intentions but little resources to do anything.
Also the National Agricultural University, La Molina (situated in Lima),
has interest in these questions. They have recently started an ecological
monitoring program for the Pacaya-Samiria reserve mentioned above. They
also maintain a centre for information about conservation. In 1990 an
important book was published by a Peruvian agronomist and forester Marc
Dourojeanni: "Amazonia ?que hacer?". The book gives a thorough
introduction to the problems of resource utilization in Amazonia, and
critisizes many of the errors that have been made. The book was published
in Iquitos, Peru, by "Centro de Estudios Teologicos de la Amazonia" so it
may unfortunately be somewhat difficult to get hold of.

In several areas in the rain forest there have emerged movements for
communal reserves. This implies that the villages control the natural
recources in their area, e.g. fish, other animals and timber. Any product
that is exported from the community is taxed, and e.g. commercial
fisheries have to get a permission to fish from the village which is not
always easy. I do not know how many of these reserves there are, but some
of them seem to have been rather successful in avoiding overexploitation.

I hope this information is useful to you. If you wish more detailed
information on any of these aspects you are welcome to contact me.

Hanna Tuomisto
Department of Biology
University of Turku
SF-20500 Turku, Finland

e-mail  hantuo@utu.fi
Newsgroups: bionet.biology.tropical,bionet.plants