Biodiversity is a collective term that describes the natural treasures that make it possible for us to live on our planet. The plants and animals that populate Earth’s terrestrial and marine habitats belong to an interconnected cycle of life that flourishes when protected, and breaks down when disturbed.
This symbiotic web also provides ecosystem services that supply humans with food, water, incomes and the tools to fight climate change. Yet these gifts from nature are now at risk as the world’s forests disappear rapidly to make way for the agricultural systems that are expected to feed a growing global population over the coming decades.
Photo: ANDINA/MINSA
09:00 | Lima, May. 12.
Tayta Operation, which provides protection to the most vulnerable population affected by COVID-19, does not stop and has recently reached three districts in the capital city and 15 in different regions across the country.
During the house-to-house visits, the operation provided COVID-19 tests and food support to senior citizens and people with comorbidities.
The multisectoral operation was conducted by health brigades and staff of the Armed Forces, the National Civil Defense Institute (Indeci), and National Police, with the support of different State sectors, as well as local and regional governments.
In the capital city Lima, the strategy was implemented in the housing association La Grama, located in Puente Piedra district, where it assisted 275 vulnerable citizens who were previously registered by the Amachay Network and the municipality.
Incorporating trees into farms can enhance biodiversity and strengthen the sustainability of agriculture: a message increasingly shared among government ministries in Peru. The country is a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and must report on progress in meeting targets for both.
Peru’s Biodiversity Strategic Plan, a requirement under the Convention on Biological Diversity, includes efforts to achieve Aichi Target 7: ‘By 2020, areas under agriculture, aquaculture and forestry will be sustainably managed, ensuring the conservation of biological diversity’.
However, the Plan pays no attention to trees in the agricultural matrix nor their contribution to biodiversity. Moreover, non-forest trees in these productive areas are ‘invisible’, that is, they are not counted in important national assessments, such as the National Forest Inventory and the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.
Last modified on Tue 6 Apr 2021 07.51 EDT
“We’re looking for you, dead or alive,” is one of the daily threats that Herlín Odicio receives on his mobile phone.
The leader of the indigenous Cacataibo people in Peru’s central Amazon has been forced into hiding for standing up to drug traffickers trying to steal his land. “We’ve reported coca plantations on our land so many times and nothing has been done,” Odicio said.
He said the threats against his life spiralled after he turned down an offer of 500,000 Peruvian soles (£96,500) for every drug flight leaving from a secret airstrip on his territory. “They’re coming after me,” he said by phone from a secret location in Peru. “I can’t walk freely in my community. [The narcos] are looking for me.”
Eight Indigenous leaders from Ucayali and Huánuco have received threats for months from narco-trafficking mafias, land invaders, and illegal loggers. Several days ago, they were in Lima demanding protection from the Peruvian government. They fear for their lives.
It couldn t have been a coincidence. A threatening message arrived on October 2nd in the afternoon. It was left in the front door of the offices of ORAU (Regional Organization of AIDESEP in Ucayali) in Pucallpa. That same day, only hours before, one of their office workers was shot in an alleged robbery.
The threat was directed at Berlín Diques, President of ORAU, and his advisor Jamer López. The organization, which represents 300 communities among 15 different Amazonian Indigenous Peoples of the Ucayali region in Peru, had denounced various mafias that operate in the rainforest. They filed charges, activating the Ministry of Justice s protocol for human rights defenders, and both received police protection. But this pr