Living in Peru : your everyday companion

by
Nicholas Asheshov

The last time global warming came to the Andes it produced the Inca Empire.  A team of English and U.S. scientists has analyzed pollen, seeds and isotopes in core samples taken from the deep mud of a small lake not far from Machu Picchu and their report says that "the success of the Inca was underpinned by a period of warming that lasted more than four centuries."

Translation:Vanessa Castro Chesterton -Living in Peru

It is a Monday and Minister Brack greets us in an office full of maps. It is only Monday but he is astonished at the number of meetings he has booked for the week. His plans include a trip to Canada in a few hours, a date with a mining company in two days time. He says that if he had not gotten a direct flight he would have had to cancel. In spite of his busy week he warmly greets us to explain the new rules in place designed to deal with biodiversity and the patents that have generated a stir lately as well as addressing an issue which has been on everyone’s lips lately: transgenic products.

by Nelly Luna Amancio - El Comercio 
Translation: Vanessa Castro Chesterton - Living in Peru

By Diana P. Olano

Peru's rainforest residents are not happy. Leaders from the regions of Ucayali, Loreto and San Martín will meet mid-February to decide their official stand on and when to protest a new law President Garcia has cooked up. If approved by congress, Law Nº 840/2006-PE, also known as "La Ley de la Selva" (The Law of the Rainforest), would supposedly guarantee jobs for those living in the area, but in turn, rob them of their right of possession of land.

By Diana P. Olano

Surf-lovers new to Lima take notice. Your favorite pastime is on the verge of becoming just that: the way in which you spent your time in the past. The erosion and disappearance of the Costa Verde's shoreline and waves is bringing heartache to surfing enthusiasts who live and breathe these beaches throughout the year.

(written in German by Rosmarie Kayser, published at Bethlehem Mission Immensee, Switzerland)

translated by Wolfy Becker

At the beginning of January, Swiss solar energy engineer Simon Rüegsegger is flying to Peru and staying there for the next three years. On behalf of the Bethlehem Mission Immensee (-link-), he will participate in a project that will introduce simple solar energy techniques to the population high up in the Andes.

Until roughly a year ago, leaving his home country for an extended time period wasn’t in Simon’s plans at all. In July 2002, Simon, who has a degree in heating engineering, founded his own alternative energy business in Niedermuehren (Swiss region of Fribourg), and the business had just started to take off.

Then he traveled to Peru for a 3 week vacation and to visit his acquaintance Thomas Kläy who worked for the Bethlehem Mission on a solar energy project at Lake Titicaca, the highest commercially navigable lake in the world.

“On the last day of my visit, Thomas asked me if I would be interested in working on such a project“, Simon said. “My first reaction was "no way". I am doing really well in Switzerland, the business is just starting to grow, and I cannot leave here”.

Text: Elise van der Heijden - Photos: Helard Aguilar Centeno, Antitesis

A new day breaks over Puerto Maldonado in Peru's Amazon jungle

The Amazon! The lungs of the world, with its seemingly endless supply of trees, filtering the carbon dioxide that we are massively projecting into the atmosphere.

I’ve had the pleasure of living in a part of this astonishing bio-mechanism for 5 months, in the southern Peruvian part of the Amazon, in a small city called Puerto Maldonado.

In this article I highlight my impressions of this area, how it has developed, and where its future lies.

History

Puerto Maldonado is the capital of Peru's Madre de Dios region, named after its most important river on whose banks the city itself is located. It was founded in 1902 during the rubber boom, but after the interest in rubber faded, the town’s growth slowed down, only attracting colonists interested in its tropical wood, Brazil nuts or the gold on its riverbanks.

Not very surprising when you consider that in those days the town was only accessible by river, a long and treacherous journey down from other settlements on the river system.

The Candamo Dilemma

The Amazon’s landscapes are breath-taking at any hour of the day.

(LIP-jl) -- Few areas on our planet have escaped humankind's destructive touch. Peru is home to one of the last of these areas, the Candamo forest. But man´s struggle for survival in the modern world endangers the future of this ecologically untouched zone.

Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard explored the notions of freedom and choice in his famous book Either/Or. The title of his work reflects the heart of the debate concerning the Candamo Reserve, one of the world´s last areas of untouched splendor.

Will the area become a national park, or will it be turned into an oil field? Candamo’s fate hangs in the balance as history, politics and legal technicalities meet head on in the southeast corner of Peru.