The Role of Biotrade In Protecting the Peruvian Rainforest

In this session, Professor Silvia Maier and Professor Jens Rudbeck, Clinical Associate Professors at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU's School of Professional Studies, will discuss how the Peruvian government seeks to alter the dynamics of land use through the promotion of Biotrade. They will also share their research on how Biotrade impacts gender relations, income, and food security among farmers in Peru’s Ucayali region. Finally, they will address the potential of market-based solutions, such as Biotrade, to the climate crisis.
Over the past fifty years, biodiversity has declined at a pace and on a scale not seen since the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago. The loss has been particularly disconcerting in the Amazon rainforest where an estimated 1 million species are facing extinction. The destruction of natural habitat through land use - including logging, mining, and deforestation for agriculture - is the main driver behind the decline of biodiversity, and although a number of initiatives, including the 2006 soybean moratorium, temporarily slowed the speed of deforestation, recent years have witnessed a reacceleration of slash-and-burn agriculture and other forms of land use that threatens the vitality of the Amazon ecosystem.