Peru

Climate change worsens the already precarious situation for agriculture in Peru. Aside from unpredictable weather patterns, floods and droughts, unsustainable farming practices have degraded the soils’ richness, multiplying the challenges.

We can change this course by working with communities, sparking collaboration through cooperatives, accessing finance and markets, and combining knowledge about agroforestry systems, renewable energies and sustainable and regenerative practices.

The result is more resilient farming, and not only from an economic point of view. By improving productivity, we can make farming a more reliable livelihood that is also compatible with the environment. Farmers harvest better produce and better soil quality, ensuring that they can continue to work in the area; with the trees stopping the rain, there are no more landslides, ensuring that they will not lose their crops. Through green businesses, the diversified plots can be farmland for other ventures that ensure local food and the resilience of farmers.

With years of experience creating high-impact solutions that work for people and the planet, Practical Action is scaling up these approaches and influencing national policies to ensure a thriving future for farmers within Peru’s unique ecosystems.

Energy plays a crucial role in our lives. It can power up better education and nutrition for thousands of children living in the border areas of Peru. It can spark new businesses for farmers, transforming their crops into higher-value products or making agriculture viable when water is scarce by using it efficiently. It can ensure better health access, preserving vaccines and accessing health records, among many benefits.

While overall energy access in Peru shows progress, people living in rural areas, particularly near the borders, are being left behind. Off the grid, renewable energy has proven to be the path towards enabling brighter futures for all. Yet, how these are implemented has to be embedded within the communities, building their sustainability as they create opportunities.

Practical Action has long-standing experience with clean and affordable energy, working in schemes that provide electricity for homes, schools, clinics and farming plots, bringing together the public and private sectors, rural communities and research organisations.

Learn more about how this experience is being scaled up, multiplying its learning and successes, in our Brighter Futures project.

With its diverse climates and landscapes, Peru is affected by different climate and seismic hazards such as floods, landslides and earthquakes. These events risk lives and livelihoods, and many people are even more vulnerable due to socioeconomic and gender inequalities. Climate change intensifies the variability and extremes that multiply risks and challenge how we forecast and address them. Identifying the gaps, building resilience and reducing the risk of disasters in Peru need to be major priorities as extreme climate events become more frequent and intense.

Practical Action has decades of experience working with vulnerable communities; building capacity, developing forecasting systems, developing plans to manage risk, applying technologies for prevention, mitigation and response. Anticipatory action and early warning systems are at the heart of our disaster preparedness approach, working closely with local and national authorities to find solutions that meet communities’ needs and build on their existing knowledge.