A new report from the Environmental Investigation Agency finds that procedural loopholes and violations of national law are enabling palm oil plantation expansion in the Peruvian Amazon at the expense of forests.
More than 49.4 million acres of Peruvian forest are at risk of being converted to agriculture use, like palm oil plantations, even though the government does not allow for the deforestation of land that is defined as a forest, according to “Deforestation by Definition.”
The contradiction, the EIA found, is rooted in how the country defines land use. Best land use capacity, or BLUC, is the classification system used in Peru. The system uses soil characteristics (inclination, texture, pH, etc.) and climatic conditions (precipitation, temperature, etc.) to classify land into five categories, including cultivation, forestry and protection.
If the BLUC is forestry, the land, under Peruvian law, cannot be used for agriculture. Land coverage, however, is not a factor in BLUC reports. Land that would commonly be called a forest because it is carpeted with trees will not necessarily be classified a forest, the EIA report said.
Therefore, the Peruvian forests that have not been BLUC classified—nearly 50 million acres—are at risk for being classified for cultivation purposes. The EIA also found that private investors interested in developing the land often pay for the BLUC studies.
“The Peruvian government is allowing corporations to destroy primary forest in violation of national law by using a skewed interpretation of the legal definition of forests,” said Julia Urrunaga, EAI’s Peru program director, in a statement. “The current practice of defining forests according to agricultural productive capacity, regardless of the presence of standing trees, is not only illogical, it’s illegal.”
