- Heavy rains likely caused by El Niño began flooding Peru’s Ene River at the beginning of March, with waters reaching around 2 feet high and spreading across 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of land occupied by around 300 Indigenous Asháninka families.
- Families in five Asháninka communities lost their homes as well as years of work on successful and sustainable agroforestry projects for cacao, coffee and timber, among other products.
- The flood waters have only recently receded, so a long-term or even mid-term plan for recovering their agroforestry projects hasn’t been developed yet.
- The Asháninka have faced many other setbacks over the years, from drug trafficking groups to unsustainable development projects, but have often overcome them to defend their territory. This flood marks the latest setback.
Flooding caused by heavy rains in central Peru in March displaced hundreds of Indigenous families and destroyed their sustainable agroforestry projects, raising concerns about how they’ll recover and what steps need to be taken to protect against future extreme weather events.
Heavy rains likely caused by El Niño began flooding the Ene River the first week of March, with waters reaching around 2 feet high and spreading across 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of land occupied by around 300 Indigenous Asháninka families. The flood destroyed their crops and forced them to relocate to nearby communities.
It represents a major setback for an embattled Indigenous group that has managed to develop sustainable agroforestry projects and protect surrounding natural habitats.
“Many of us have had our products affected, our crops,” said Ángel Pedro Valerio, resident of the Asháninka Central Indigenous Organization of the Ene River. “We have to start over again from scratch.”
The Ene River, a tributary of the Amazon River, hadn’t flooded for nearly 16 years, catching the communities off guard despite the increasing frequency of extreme weather events caused by climate change and El Niño.
Five Asháninka communities have been most affected. Many lost their homes as well as years of work on the agroforestry projects, which included cacao, coffee and timber, among other products.
For more than a decade, their cooperative, Kemito Ene, has been working with the NGO Rainforest Foundation UK to sustainably produce cocoa and transform their plots into agroforestry systems. The communities were also developing land use plans to strengthen tenure rights.
The agroforestry program looked to be a huge success, with 180 metric tons of cacao sold annually before COVID-19. Although it dropped to around 40 metric tons per year after the pandemic, in 2023 the cooperative signed an agreement to produce 400 metric tons annually for international buyers.
The Asháninka have faced many other setbacks over the years but have often overcome them. In addition to defending their territory from drug trafficking groups, they’ve fought to prevent investment in oil drilling. They also successfully fought a dam that would have flooded the Ene River, impacting around 17,000 residents.
The fight against the dam earned leader of the local Asháninka organization, Ruth Buendía, the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, awarded for grassroots efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment.
The Kemito Ene cooperative, which has around 462 members, was created to help organize across different communities in the face of these challenges as well as to take advantage of tax exemptions and other public benefits. It also allows them to support each other in emergencies such as flooding. Right now, victims of the flood are staying in community centers that weren’t affected.
The flood waters only began to recede during the second week of March so a long-term or even mid-term plan for recovering their agroforestry projects hasn’t been developed. They will likely need to clean up the area, purchase new seeds and create new nurseries, among other things.
“We currently don’t have a plan for the medium and long term,” Valerio said. “What we’re going to start working on is making a recovery plan for their plantations.”
He added, “[We have] talked with the chiefs, with the authorities, with community members, that this time we have to be prepared. Affected communities have to build more secure houses. They have to put them on higher ground so that the river can’t reach them.”
Rains have hit South America hard this year, with more than 50 people reported dead from storms and flooding across Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Thousands of families have seen their houses damaged or destroyed, while cases of dengue have spiked. Hundreds of local governments have declared states of emergency.
In Peru, the military helped relocate the Asháninka families during the flood but there hasn’t been much response from other government bodies, Valerio said, especially on the national level. Right now, the victims need basic goods such as food, water, blankets and tools, the money for which is being raised by Rainforest Foundation UK.
The NGO told Mongabay it wants to support the communities but also help them move toward becoming financially independent, in which they aren’t relying on outside funding from international groups to get by.
At the same time, it’s important to recognize there isn’t a lot of support for hard-to-reach groups like the Asháninka, especially when there are extreme weather events, said Joe Eisen, executive director of the foundation. As another example, he mentioned the Congo River, which flooded this year and displaced thousands of people in rural areas.
“What is needed is to increase support to very remote and disenfranchised communities,” he said.
Banner image: Relief effort during the Ene River floods, March 2024. Image courtesy of CARE.
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