Jeffrey Bury

Institutional challenges for mining and sustainability in Peru

Global consumption continues to generate growth in mining. In lesser developed economies, this growth offers the potential to generate new resources for development, but also creates challenges to sustainability in the regions in which extraction occurs. This context leads to debate on the institutional arrangements most likely to build synergies between mining, livelihoods, and development, and on the socio-political conditions under which such institutions can emerge. Building from a multiyear, three-country program of research projects, Peru, a global center of mining expansion, serves as an exemplar for analyzing the effects of extractive industry on livelihoods and the conditions under which arrangements favoring local sustainability might emerge. This program is guided by three emergent hypotheses in human-environmental sciences regarding the relationships among institutions, knowledge, learning, and sustainability. The research combines in-depth and comparative case study analysis, and uses mapping and spatial analysis, surveys, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and our own direct participation in public debates on the regulation of mining for development. The findings demonstrate the pressures that mining expansion has placed on water resources, livelihood assets, and social relationships. These pressures are a result of institutional conditions that separate the governance of mineral expansion, water resources, and local development, and of relationships of power that prioritize large scale investment over livelihood and environment. A further problem is the poor communication between mining sector knowledge systems and those of local populations. These results are consistent with themes recently elaborated in sustainability science.

Mining mountains: neoliberalism, land tenure, livelihoods, and the new Peruvian mining industry in Cajamarca

Peru has been transformed over the course of the past decade into a neoliberal, mineral-based, export-oriented, country. The author evaluates the neoliberal transformation of the country in three parts. First he examines the economic and political transformation of the country in the early 1990s, particularly in terms of how the Peruvian state and economy were rapidly restructured according to neoliberal principles. He then illustrates how, both through privatization and through transnationalization, the mining sector has become a key element for future development opportunities. This discussion is then contextualised by an examination of how mining activities are affecting land-tenure patterns and livelihoods in the Cajamarca region of Peru. In particular, drawing upon case-study research, the author evaluates how Minera Yanacochas transnational gold-mining operations are transforming land-tenure institutions, land values, and the spatial distribution of land-use patterns throughout the region. In addition, he evaluates how livelihoods are being transformed in response to Minera Yanacochas activities through an examination of changing household access to natural, human, social, and economic resources.

Climate Change and Tropical Andean Glacier Recession: Evaluating Hydrologic Changes and Livelihood Vulnerability in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru

Climate change is forcing dramatic glacier mass loss in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, resulting in hydrologic transformations across the Rio Santa watershed and increasing human vulnerability. This article presents results from two years of transdisciplinary collaborative research evaluating the complex relationships between coupled environmental and social change in the region. First, hydrologic results suggest there has been an average increase of 1.6 (± 1.1) percent in the specific discharge of the more glacier-covered catchments (>20 percent glacier area) as a function of changes in stable isotopes of water (δ18O and δ2H) from 2004 to 2006. Second, there is a large (mean 60 percent) component of groundwater in dry season discharge based on results from the hydrochemical basin characterization method. Third, findings from extensive key interviews and seventy-two randomly sampled household interviews within communities located in two case study watersheds demonstrate that a large majority of households perceive that glacier recession is proceeding very rapidly and that climate change–related impacts are affecting human vulnerability across multiple shifting vectors including access to water resources, agro-pastoral production, and weather variability.

New Geographies of Water and Climate Change in Peru: Coupled Natural and Social Transformations in the Santa River Watershed

Projections of future water shortages in the worlds glaciated mountain ranges have grown increasingly dire. Although water modeling research has begun to examine changing environmental parameters, the inclusion of social scenarios has been very limited. Yet human water use and demand are vital for long-term adaptation, risk reduction, and resource allocation. Concerns about future water supplies are particularly pronounced on Perus arid Pacific slope, where upstream glacier recession has been accompanied by rapid and water-intensive economic development. Models predict water shortages decades into the future, but conflicts have already arisen in Perus Santa River watershed due to either real or perceived shortages. Modeled thresholds do not align well with historical realities and therefore suggest that a broader analysis of the combined natural and social drivers of change is needed to more effectively understand the hydrologic transformation taking place across the watershed. This article situates these new geographies of water and climate change in Peru within current global change research discussions to demonstrate how future coupled research models can inform broader scale questions of hydrologic change and water security across watersheds and regions. We provide a coupled historical analysis of glacier recession in the Cordillera Blanca, declining Santa River discharge, and alpine wetland contraction. We also examine various water withdrawal mechanisms, including smallholder agriculture, mining, potable water use, hydroelectric power generation, and coastal irrigation. We argue that both ecological change and societal forces will play vital roles in shaping the future of water resources and water governance in the region.

Livelihoods, Mining and Peasant Protests in the Peruvian Andes

This paper explores the relationships between Andean Perus new mineral-based neoliberal political economy, protests against transnational mining corporations and the transformation of livelihoods taking place in the region. It evaluates how new transnational mining operations are dramatically altering livelihood resources in two case-study areas of the Peruvian Andes and in what ways they are linked to community mobilizations against mining operations. The paper argues that the utilization of frameworks based on resources and livelihoods can contribute to analyses of the spatial relationships between transnational mining corporations and local livelihood transformation. Through a comparative case study of two peasant protests that began in late 1999 and continue today in the Cordillera Huayhuash and Cajamarca, the paper illustrates how transnational mining corporations are transforming the environmental, social and economic contexts for livelihoods in the region and how these changes are linked to household engagement in protests against mining operations. Resumen Este estudio explora la relación entre la nueva economía política neoliberal del Perú, las protestas contra corporaciones mineras transnacionales y la transformación de los medios de subsistencia que tienen lugar en la región. Evalúa como las nuevas operaciones de la minería transnacional están alterando estos medios en dos áreas-caso en los Andes peruanos y de que manera están relacionadas con las movilizaciones comunitarias contrarias a las operaciones mineras. El autor argumenta cómo el uso de marcos basados en recursos y sustentos podría contribuir al análisis de las relaciones espaciales entre las corporaciones mineras transnacionales y la transformación del sustento local. A través de un estudio comparativo de dos protestas campesinas que comenzaron en el año 1999 y se continúan hasta hoy día en la cordillera Huayhuash y Cajamarca, el estudio muestra como tales corporaciones están transformando los contextos ambientales y socio-económicos de los medios de subsistencia dentro la región.

Mining Migrants: Transnational Mining and Migration Patterns in the Peruvian Andes*

Abstract This article evaluates the linkages between transnational mining corporations and local migration dynamics in Peru. Changes in migration patterns in the Cajamarca region of Peru over the past decade are examined via a case study of the gold mining operations of Newmont Mining Corporation. The study considers household migration behavior in communities surrounding the mine as well as transformations in regional, national, and international migration patterns. Also examined are the temporal nature of these changing patterns across short, medium, and long-term time periods. *This research was conducted with the support of a National Science Foundation Regional Sciences DDRI (BCS-0002347) and the United States Fulbright Commission. All opinions, data, omissions, and errors are the sole responsibility of the author.

Migration Amidst Climate Rigidity Traps: Resource Politics and Social-Ecological Possibilism in Honduras and Peru

According to dominant narratives about adaptation to climate change, those facing worst-case scenarios, without means at their disposal to adapt in situ, face an ineluctable set of adaptation strategies that ultimately includes the permanent abandonment of geographic spaces rendered uninhabitable and unproductive for human use. Yet environmental stress and adaptive capacity are distributed unevenly, and power structures play a role in fashioning them. It is argued here that when access to land and water are impacted by environmental stress, the structures that mediate their access are reinforced, even as the adaptive alternatives for smallholders are undermined. In this way, dominant resource regimes set up migration as the primary viable alternative for adaptation among a dwindling set of choices. This framework is applied to two early analogues of climate change impacts: flooded Garífuna villages of Hondurass North Coast and communities enduring glacier recession and shifting hydrologic regimes in Perus Cordillera Blanca. In both cases, stress motivates new forms of migration that reinforce dominant power structures. In Honduras, migrants from wealthier social strata are moving on a more permanent basis, and in Peru, the once historical pattern of labor migration is becoming a practical necessity. These cases underscore the role of political economy in adaptation to climate change and adaptive migration in particular.

New geographies of tourism in Peru: nature-based tourism and conservation in the Cordillera Huayhuash.

Abstract This research examines new tourism networks, conservation, and social and economic changes in Peru. In doing so, the article illustrates how current political and economic change, global tourism and new forms of conservation are contributing to new geographies of tourism in the country. Through a case study of the Cordillera Huayhuash, the article evaluates the nature of recent increases in tourism in the region, the ways in which these new tourist-related activities are interfacing with new conservation areas, and how they are contributing to local environmental, economic and political change. Based on a mix-methods qualitative approach, the articles major findings illustrate the magnitude and composition of recent increases in tourism to the Cordillera Huayhuash and the economic and social impacts of these activities on communities and households in the region. The article concludes with a set of questions for further geographical research concerned with the ways in which tourism is related to these changes in the Andes.

Adapting to Uncertain Futures

Throughout the tropics, glaciers are receding at a rapid pace and during the latter half of the 20th century a number of tropical glaciers vanished completely due to melting. As harbingers of a warming planet, the recession rates of tropical glaciers will likely continue to increase in the near future according to leading scientific research that indicates global greenhouse emissions are growing faster than even the worstcase scenarios considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Raupach et al 2007) and that abrupt and irreversible impacts from climate change may occur over shorter time scales than previously predicted (IPCC 2007). As the recession rates of tropical glaciers have increased, discharges from glacier-fed streams have also been increasing. However, once glacial replenishments disappear, streams and rivers throughout the tropics will have smaller dry season flows and will exhibit increasing hydrologic variability (Mark and Seltzer 2003). Since glacier-fed discharges currently provide a continual supply of meltwater that serves as a buffer during the tropical dry season and drought years, accelerating glacial recession and its impacts on the hydrologic regime are predicted to lead to significantly diminished water supplies during these periods with potentially grave consequences for the people of the region (Bradley et al 2006).

Best practices: social research methods to inform biological conservation

ABSTRACT Social factors play a critical role in almost every conservation problem. There is a pressing need for conservation researchers and practitioners to understand both the ecological and human dimensions of their systems in order for projects to be successful. At the same time, many conservation professionals come from a natural science background with little training in or limited access to social research methodologies. The purpose of this article is to review the principal methods of social science field research relevant for biological conservation: archival research, key informant interviews, oral histories, surveys, focus groups, participant observation, discourse analysis and participatory research. Our goal is to provide a scaffold of knowledge for those unfamiliar with these methods, outlining each approach and providing examples of how they have been applied to conservation problems. We emphasise social research designed to advance conservation objectives, particularly in the case of the conservation of biodiversity on islands internationally, where high endemism and risk of extinction combine with diverse human needs, values and belief systems. Based on the literature reviewed, we contribute a timeline suggesting when to implement these social methodologies during conservation efforts on inhabited islands.