Identifying Priority Ecosystem Services in Peru
Authors: Lopez-Plana J. O. , Nyul H. , Watson A. , Parham E. , Garcia A. , Howard P. , Santamaría C. 
Published: March 2016

The Company aims to implement best practice, and as such adheres to the IFC's Performance Standard 6 (PS6) and IPIECA guidelines to better understand the environment where activities take place and to mitigate potential impacts in the early stages of a development, proactively and effectively. The international NGO and the Company worked together to identify priority ecosystem services defined by PS6 as (i) those services which a project's activities are likely to impact and therefore could affect local communities, and (ii) those services which the project directly depends on (e.g., water) in a pipeline development project located in the sensitive Peruvian Western Amazon. The driver for this study is the aim to widen the current risk management approach to include an ecosystem approach. This concept includes considerations of human dependency and impacts on ES alongside conservation objectives highlighting the interdependence of humans with the environment.

The Ecosystem Services Review (ESR) methodology was adapted from the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Ecosystem Services Review and IPIECA's Ecosystem Guideline. This methodology required input from the social and environmental baselines and grounding through the amalgamation of experiences from social and environmental teams in the field. The information was gathered through desk top reviews and in a workshop that was facilitated by FFI and brought together the Company staff including the construction project team, the Safety and Environment team, the Community Relations team and successfully engaged the Company Peru's executive board.

The review of documents and baselines highlighted issues relating to the alignment of habitats and ecosystem services provision that both the company and the communities depend on. Without this information it was difficult to map the source and flow of ecosystem services across the landscape and therefore determine the impacts that a pipeline development might have on the provision of ecosystem services. The workshop however, produced important and interesting results that allowed for the identification of impacts that were not always captured within baselines. Participants also identified mitigation options related to impacts through the application of the mitigation hierarchy.

The main conclusions are that biodiversity baselines need to better integrate considerations of ecosystem services and that the social baselines need to provide more clarity with regards to communities’ dependence on natural resources before an effective impact and risk assessment of type (i) and (ii) ecosystem services can be completed. The key strength of this project was the communication and multidiscipline approach including the construction and engineering project team, the Safety and Environment team and the Community Relations team. From this process, mitigation actions were identified and are going to be part of a BES action plan. For the oil and gas industry, this study provides a framework to integrate an ecosystem approach into business management.