The GEF-funded project “Promoting Integrated Sustainable Management of the Peruvian Amazonian landscape Madre de Dios” works to promote the conservation and sustainable use of priority ecosystems in the Madre de Dios Basin to help slow deforestation, prevent biodiversity loss, promote connectivity, carbon neutrality and productive conservation, ensuring the provision of ecosystem services and improving the quality of life of vulnerable local populations.
The target landscape includes the Madre de Dios River basin and the Madre de Dios, Cusco, and Puno regions in southeastern Peru. The landscape possesses extraordinarily rich biological and cultural diversity, with large proportions of standing tropical forest (11.7 million hectares, 15% of the Peruvian Amazon), a well-established network of natural protected areas, indigenous territories, and areas with forest-based economies, which together make up one of the largest and most intact tropical forest biomes in the Peruvian Amazon. The territory is home to approximately 2,500 plant species, 755 bird species and 1,588 butterfly species, and supports healthy populations of large Amazonian mammals such as jaguar, tapir, and giant river otter.
