Chipaota, Peru
Project Summary
The community of Chipaota is located in the buffer zone of a National Park in the Amazonian region of northern Peru. This region is home to the piassaba, a 30-foot palm that is only found in this part of Peru. Historically, the community has earned its primary income by selling the fibers of the piassaba palm in the local market, but as the population of Chipaota grew, more and more residents sought to make a living by selling the fibers. The number of productive trees in the area began to drop sharply, and residents were forced overexploit the piassaba, taking the fibers from younger trees and taking more than each tree could sustain.
In November of 2008, RP began working with the community of Chipaota to develop a sustainable management plan that would provide the community with a steady income without having to cut down more of their forest. In December 2008, the community decided to work with RP and each party signed an agreement to proceed with the project. Thus far, the project has helped create a management plan for the community-owned forest, aided in the construction of a broom making facility, and supported the community women in the artisan project they independently undertook.
The Partnerships
- CIMA (Centro de Conservación, Investigación y Manejo de Áreas Naturales) – CIMA is a conservation organization based in Lima that works in the area around Chipaota to protect the forests, educate the forest guards and to educate the communities about environmental issues. Since 2002, CIMA had been working with Chipaota to educate and raise awareness about natural resources.
- Municipality of Chazuta - During onsite meetings with the local RP team in May 2008, members of the community and representatives of Chazuta conveyed their strong desire to partner with RP to create a plan to sustainably harvest the palm and in return set aside community-owned land for conservation. On November 12, 2008, the municipality of Chazuta formally agreed to work with and provide institutional support to RP in pursuing this project.
Achievements
Forest Management Plan
In January 2009, the local RP team began working with the community to collect the data necessary for creating a management plan. The inventory verified that the forest contained 65,000 piassaba palms and discovered that with a new extraction technique that didn’t require cutting down the tree, the piassaba palm could regenerate itself every few years. This information led to a sustainable management plan with a potential market value of over USD 50,000 – far more than the villagers had ever earned before. In October 2009, the management plan was approved and now regional governments are promoting the management plan as a model for sustainable development to be replicated elsewhere.
ECOMUSA and the Broom Making Facility
In October of 2009, RP helped 40 families from the community of Chipaota create ECOMUSA, a communal business to harvest and market piassaba palm fibers. The local RP team provided ECOMUSA members with basic finance and business management training and in early 2010, ECOMUSA began selling sustainably harvested piassaba palm fiber in the local market. With their savings from the sale of the sustainably harvested fiber, the community was able to purchase a tract of land for a broom production facility, and in August 2010 after a summer of hard work, the community of Chipaota completed its new broom production facility. Since then, the broom factory has been running smoothly and filling orders, earning substantially more income than they did through selling the raw fiber.
Download “The Process of Creating a Basket”
Women’s Artisan Project
As the other projects in Chipaota developed, the women of the village, on their own initiative, identified an economic opportunity in their traditional forest resources-based handicrafts. Following their deliberations, they requested RP’s assistance for the development and implementation of such a project. The resultant Chipaota Artisan Project has acted as an agent of gender emancipation, given that it draws from the enterprise of the community women themselves.
In June of 2009, RP began training the women to produce high quality handicraft items, and helped design a studio to exhibit and store handicrafts made by the women. RP is also in the process of identifying potential markets and training the women in marketing skills. Currently, a group of 15 women is taking part in project workshops being conducted by Lucia, the RP Program Coordinator in Peru. They hope to create a product that buyers will recognize as being made in Chipaota and to ensure a competitive edge over others offering similar products.
