Good Luck Chuck: A blog from Peru.

Another month, another dry spell in posts.  My apologies.  I recently moved to a new apartment in Lima and my arrival coincided with a halt in Internet service.  If you want a sure fire way to aggravate of gringo, turn off their Internet access.  So, I have spent the past week as a wireless refugee, and when I do have access my time is prioritized to emails and research.  Additionally, speaking of personal developments, I have begun an affiliation with a NGO here in Lima that employs adaptive strategies to climate change.  This means that, for the first time, I might make meaningful progress with my Fulbright project.  It only took two months to accomplish.  Don’t stress it though, right?

Now onto a developing issues related to the environment and Peruvian-U.S. foreign relations.

In addition to a temor in Lima yesterday, there are new rumblings emerging over president Alan García’s environmental policies before the U.S.-Peruvian Trade Promotion Agreement (FTA) takes effect in January 2009.  The U.S. trade representative has voiced concern in a confidential communication about the recent backward trend of environmental measures in Peru.  This contradicts what the FTA was supposed to accomplish in terms of promoting environmental responsibility in such free trade agreements.

This past spring and summer, the Peruvian Congress passed 99 measures to bring the country into accord with the FTA.  In August, a showdown occurred between García and Congress over Decree 1064, which had eased restrictions on oil exploration in indigenous land.  Congress would eventually vote to revoke the measures after an intense lobbying campaign over the summer by Indian rights groups.  Now the issue is the protection of Peru’s Amazonian forests, which are second only to Brazil in area.  Decree 1090 effectively excludes 60% of Peruvian jungle from the national forest protection system, and U.S. trade officials are asking that such forest issues be returned to the authority of a public forest conservation body, as had been the case previously.

A laundry list of objections to 1090 have been offered up by opponents, including concerns for weaker protection for sustainable forest use, increased threats for the development of virgin forests, and the legalization and sale of illicit lumber from the Peruvian rainforest.  Additionally, there are questions about the constitutionality of 1090 in respect to the jurisdictional power over forests between the national and regional governments.

There may be yet further revisions made to the 99 decrees as 2009 approaches.  As Milagros Salazar writes in an article covering this issue for IPS News, “Peru’s new Prime Minister Yehude Simon has recognised that some of the decrees should be reviewed. The orders for implementation of decree 1090, which the executive branch is drawing up, could be just the time to do so.”

If that is the case, it should be interesting to see how García reacts.  The president was adamantly opposed to the congressional vote in August, and it would be reasonable to assume that he is of the same mind this time around.  Now, however, both the U.S. and the prime minister are advocating reforms and more environmental sensitivity.  Still far from popular, García may be forced to keep quiet.