Latin America & Caribbean

 

SA_Map

This region is an emerging area for the team. The region is already extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, in particular the Andes which face a number of climate change induced threats, such as warmer temperatures, uneven rainfall cycles, intensified El Niño events, and more severe natural extremes. These climate change threats pose a number of critical risks to the ecosystems and economies of the Andean region including accelerated glacier melt (a 25% loss on glacier surface area is a commonly quoted average for Andean tropical glaciers over the past 30 years), and increasing the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events (droughts and wildfires in Ecuador 2012, severe floods in Colombia 2010-2011 and floods and landslides in the Cuzco region of Peru 2011).

In the Andean region of Peru, families rely solely on agriculture for food security and income generation. Lack of knowledge of sustainable land management has led to overgrazing, the destruction of native forest vegetation on the Andean mountain slopes, and further diminished livelihoods. These factors combined have resulted in extreme poverty and malnutrition. With average monthly incomes of less than $2 per day, families are unable to meet their children’s nutritional and educational needs.

To meet the challenges faced by communities in the Andean regions of Peru, World Vision has begun implementing permaculture and community reforestation projects. The permaculture projects target communities at the household level implementing a range of activities including improved kitchens (improved cookstoves and ecological fridges), separating human and animal living areas, installing kitchen gardens and greenhouses, provide training on nutrition, promote farming of minor animals such as guinea pigs and chickens and reforestation of degraded grazing lands to provide firewood and timber. World Vision is also funding a forestry project that intends to reforest 1000 hectares of degraded land in Canas province within the Cusco Department. The project will also seek to access the voluntary carbon market to provide long term financing. The project will provide a source of timber and firewood, sequester carbon, provide conservation areas for native tree reestablishment and provide capacity building for sustainable farming practices.

Peru: Regenerating degraded landscapes through reforestation

The agroforestry and reforestation project in Canas Province is planting around 1.5 million trees across 1,000 hectares of degraded lands to mitigate environmental degradation and to sequester carbon into the landscape. Additional areas will focus on agroforestry by planting fruit trees to increase the income and food security of the communities. The project also includes community capacity building which will introduce sustainable farming practices, and improve community awareness of natural resource conservation and land governance issues related to the project. The project is also seeking to access carbon finance through the sale of carbon credits generated under the new Gold Standard A/Reforestation certification program in order to ensure long-term sustainability of the project. (read more)