An in-depth analysis of the current situation in Manu and the controversial role of INRENA.

Text and Photos: Boris Gómez Luna

Twenty-three years ago I travelled to Manu for the first time on the back of a creaking, ancient logger's truck. In those days there was no commercial overland or river transport. For the region's only light aircraft to be able to land, we had to burn and clear the runway at Boca Manu a week in advance. 

Welcome flight of arrows
Much has changed since the days when a mere handful of explorers dared to make the almost one-week trip from Cusco to the rainforests of the Manu National Park. Most of them headed for the Cocha Cashu Biological Station, arriving without enough food or fuel to get back. 

Some years ago, a native hunting party from a non-contacted group fired several arrows at one of our boats. The anthropologists who inspected a piece of the enormous arrow which I have kept to this day identified it as belonging to the Mashco Piro ethnic group, a mysterious tribe who remain in voluntary isolation. 

Years later, my perception of the world would be changed when I found myself face-to-face with the Nahua people, who were fleeing, sick with the influenza they had contracted from the oil workers of Camisea. These were the same people who had welcomed President Belaúnde's helicopter with a volley of arrows and had not allowed it to land. 

Recognition and oversight
After working in Manu for 23 years and travelling all over the world to promote its attractions, I can say - without fear of contradiction - that tourism and its relative isolation have saved the Manu National Park from the degradation and destruction suffered by Peru's other "paperwork parks". 

Today, thanks to the efforts of a number of local entrepreneurs, there exists a "living frontier". In fact, Manu has been acknowledged by the Treaty for Amazon Cooperation as the best example of nature tourism management in the tropics, and a year ago the Brazilian government sent its best entrepreneurs to observe how tourism in Manu utilises just the periphery of the park's 1.8 million hectares (its occupies barely 0.1% of this enormous territory and generates approximately a quarter of a million dollars in payments to the park's administrators). All that with fewer than three thousand tourists a year. 

This incipient management model - imperfect, to be sure, but still the best we have - has been praised by publications as important as Time Magazine, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Anyone would think that the Peruvian state, delighted to have a first class tourism product, would work hand-in-hand with local companies. In any other country, perhaps, but not in Peru. 

INRENA on trial
A few months ago, during a tourism conference, a businessman thanked INRENA because after 15 years of trying, he had finally been granted an eco-tourism concession. He was sincere, but I could only listen ironically. Earlier, a confused university theorist had tried to demonstrate to an audience packed with young students and members of the business community how Peru's natural areas are a great opportunity for the tourism industry. 

Four years ago the majority of Manu's entrepreneurs found themselves obliged to take INRENA to court to defend themselves against efforts to put them out of business without any compensation at all for a lifetime of work. The results of six months of work and more than 600 pages of documents by the office of the General Comptroller of the Republic show in unequivocal detail how unscrupulous officials attempted to run Manu to their own advantage. Nevertheless, the report merely confirms the earlier findings of the Office of Judicial Consultants of the Ministry of Agriculture, as well as the opinions of the Cusco Lawyers' Association, the Lima Lawyers' Association and almost all the members of Congress with knowledge of the issue. 

But, despite all of the above, it would seem that this will be yet another year during which tourism in Manu will remain stagnated and lacking in investment. 

The Forest pie
This awful experience has led Manu's entrepreneurs through the courts in three regions of Peru and obliged them to face INRENA's team of 20 lawyers. During this time, they have also witnessed how some conservation organisations contribute to the creation of new protected natural areas and receive significant sums of money for doing so, and - as a corollary to the process - they not only receive more funds to draw-up a Master Plan, but also benefit from concessions to run areas the size of the department of Lambayeque for 20 years. The boards of directors of these organisations are often comprised of the same individuals. 

Another issue is that of security: On the highway between Cusco and Manu there exist five police stations. None of them has a single commanding officer and they are therefore unable to go out on patrol. And even if they could, there is not a single patrol vehicle in the entire region. In the wake of a recent assault, the reaction of the police was to ask the local business community for money to cover the costs of their logistics and "investigations". 

Brilliant minds 
During the "management" of INRENA's officials, who the General Comptroller of the Republic's office found responsible both administratively and criminally, a network of three lodges was constructed with funds from the European Union (through the Pro-Manu Project) derived from European and Peruvian contributors. 

To date, as far as we are aware, none of the lodges has received a single guest and one of the establishments, which began life some 80 metres from the riverbank, is now located almost on the river's edge. This is explained by the well-documented phenomenon of meander migration which occurs as rivers meander across their floodplains, particularly in their lower courses. 

Unfortunately, because INRENA's officials were unversed in this phenomenon, the best solution that occurred to them was to alter the course of the Manu River! To this end they proceeded to cut down all the vegetation facing their curious tourism project. When this did not work they decided to create an artificial palisade, which was, of course, eventually swept away by the river. Finally, in an effort worthy of Ripley, they filled thousands of plastic bags with sand to create a gigantic barricade which tourists now look at and photograph with great curiosity as they venture into the interior of one of the most important tropical parks in the world. 

Serious and equitable plans
In Manu, local travel companies have paid US$9,000 for an annual concession of half a hectare, as well as a charge of $50 per tourist. Meanwhile, in Tambopata eco-tourism concessions have been granted which are equivalent to an annual payment of half a dollar per hectare. This is, shall we say, less than fair. 

All of these incongruities pale when compared to the concessions which grant hundreds of thousands of hectares to conservation organisations, whose interest and motivation we applaud, but which seem rather exaggerated considering that two-thirds of the department of Madre de Dios - the equivalent of two provinces - are already protected. If the justification for this is basic biological research, then one might ask if enough has not already been done during forty years of research at Cocha Cashu. These private concessions have the appearance of personal projects, difficult to justify socially.

The future of Manu 
What is needed for Manu and Peru's other protected areas is documented management by top professionals without commercial conflicts of interest. These plans should comply with legislative norms, which in turn need to be improved in order to correct the previous failures caused by the ambitions of controversial individuals and organisations. 

An improved Protected Natural Areas law ought to give more control to organised local and regional society, and to interests that are intimately linked with the future and the conservation of enormous and important areas like Manu. 

The "Management Committees" proposed by the current law are risible; they do not have the power to manage or to decide anything at all and, with their lax regulations, might as well be comprised of members of a local circus. 

Our coca
We will also have to forget about continuing to create private natural areas in Madre de Dios which do not offer a tangible return, not only in environmental terms but also in fundamental economic terms - both in the short and medium term. We need more companies involved in tourism and schemes for sustainable use, and fewer areas that have to be protected with rifles. 

Once again, it is an open secret that the Kosnipata Valley, the only overland route connecting Manu with Cusco, has been occupied by drug traffickers and that the number of hectares dedicated to illicit coca growing has increased exponentially. Local media have reported the capture of shipments of cocaine paste. We have a serious problem just six hours from Cusco. 

The Commission for the Promotion of Peru (Promperu), recently absorbed by Prompex, must cease to ignore Manu and its businesses, and include them in its efforts to promote Peru's biological diversity and tourism. 

Native tourism: a fiasco
The indigenous tourism project in the Manu National Park is a fiasco. It was the idea of anthropologists and biologists whose training does not qualify them to create a tourist destination. The principal error is the fact that a group of indigenous people has been uprooted and moved far from their community and families, where they cannot hunt, plant manioc or make their traditional masato. The project assumes that this group of natives should dedicate itself to the routine work typical of urban areas. It would have been much better to have included them as majority stakeholders in a scheme linking them with specialist business concerns already experienced in the development of tourism products. The result of this error today is the fact that the community makes 100 soles per visitor, in a tourism initiative with the lowest returns in the market. 

The Peruvian state needs to admit that INRENA, ever since its creation, has shown itself incapable of developing tourism as a conservation tool and a source of economic development. Good initiatives have not been encouraged by INRENA, but rather stifled. 

One of the rewards that tourism entrepreneurs ought to be receiving from the government (for their contribution in taxes, the generation of foreign reserves and direct payments to protected areas) is the contracting by the government of staff capable of promoting investment and producing joint plans that would make us more competitive. This is not happening. Generally speaking, staff members have very little experience - or none at all - in tourism management, and their relationship with the private sector is, therefore, conflictive and uncooperative. 

In general, Peru does not have a plan to promote an industry that is currently being carried on the shoulders of the private sector, and which is the third most important source of foreign reserves as well as the country's most environmentally sustainable economic activity. 

All of the above may seem to suggest a dark future: Nevertheless, I believe that there is hope, and that corruption - Peru's greatest problem - will not prevail as long as there remains a moral reserve of honest men and women committed for life to their region. 

Boris Gómez Luna is from Cusco and is a pioneer in tourism to Manu and Tambopata, the founder of Ecotur Manu, the Association of Tour Operators in Manu National Park, Finland's Honorary Consul in Cusco, Apurímac and Madre de Dios and current President of the Cusco Regional Chamber of Tourism (CARTUC).  

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