Public Services Improvement for Sust. Territorial Development in the Apurimac, Ene, and Mantaro River Basins

This project directly benefits 23,000 poor rural families living in the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro river basins of Peru. In total, more than 50,000 rural families living within the project area indirectly benefit from investments that enable municipal and provincial governments to join with rural development initiatives and enhance the quality of the area's natural resources.

The environmental components of this project help smallholder farmers adapt to and mitigate climate change effects, building their capacity to manage natural resources sustainably. More broadly, this project supports the creation, development and consolidation of organizations of smallholder farmers, whose aim is to improve livelihood strategies and help farmers participate more fully in goods and services markets. New economic opportunities include proving access to rural financial services.

The project areas face several additional challenges: namely, deteriorating rural roads, scarce communication services and limited irrigation resources. This project creates jobs by setting up community-based microenterprises for routine road maintenance and provision of irrigation and water collection infrastructure at the community level.

Twenty-seven municipal districts in seven provinces in the departments of Apurímac, Ayacucho, Cusco, Huancavelica and Junín are included in the project area. The area also encompasses diverse ecosystems, ranging from low Amazonas rainforest to high Andean cordillera. In the past, these municipalities have been excluded from the country's development and are highly affected by poverty. Of the total population in the municipalities covered, 76.5 per cent are rural, 66 per cent are indigenous and 74 per cent live below the poverty line.