Government agencies in Peru are drawing on information published by CIFOR and its partners to draft new regulations for optimizing forest use and to plan policies and projects.

In December 2012, CIFOR and its partner Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental published a peer- reviewed information brief in which the authors illustrate the degree of overlap between different land uses in Madre de Dios, in Peru’s Amazon.

Through a series of maps and an accompanying analysis, they show that large areas of forest originally allocated for long-term extraction of timber and non-timber forest products are also being titled for non-forest uses such as farming and mining. These overlaps put livelihoods and forests at risk.

Among their recommendations, the authors call for stronger inter-agency coordination and they identify articles of Peru’s new Forests and Wildlife Law where implementing regulations can be used to rectify weaknesses.

During 2013, the publication was circulated among policymakers. Two of those policymakers, Gustavo Suarez de Freitas of the Ministry of Environment and Rolando Navarro of OSINFOR, a government agency in charge of supervising the compilation of forest regulations, described how they have used the information as they look for ways to encourage sustainable forest management in the Peruvian Amazon.

“This publication definitely helps with our consideration of all the factors that have to be taken into account when zoning an area and completing forest inventories.”

Rolando Navarro, Executive Director, OSINFOR

Promoting Multiple Forest Use in the Madre De Dios Region, Peruvian Amazonia

Funding partner

United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Publication

Superposición espacial en la zonificación de bosques en Madre de Dios: Implicaciones para la sostenibilidad del recurso castañero. [Spatial overlaps in forest zoning in Madre de Dios: Implications for the sustainability of Brazil nut harvesting]

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Peru

Overlapping land allocations in Madre de Dios

“These kinds of publications are very useful for understanding the technical aspects of key issues in the forestry sector. We thank CIFOR, and I hope to have more products of this kind, especially now that we (in the Ministry) are in the complex process of drafting regulations for the new Forests and Wildlife Law.”

Gustavo Suarez de Freitas, National Forest Program Coordinator, Ministry of Environment

Agency	Situation	Use of Information
Ministry of Environment	The government is drafting the implementing regulations for its 2011 Law on Forests and Wildlife, which promotes the sustainable use of forest resources.	Policymakers are referring to data in the Infobrief as they draft the new regulations.
Government of Madre de Dios	The regional government is drafting policies on zoning, land-use planning, forest management and allocation of rights to farmland and forest resources.	Policymakers are referring to the Infobrief as part of this process.
National Agency for Monitoring of Forest Resources and Wildlife (OSINFOR)	OSINFOR is developing processes for GIS analysis and monitoring via remote sensing, and validating the information with data from the field.	The Infobrief serves as a reference and shows how human activities put pressure on forested areas that cannot quickly recover.