Project team
- Joy Singarayer, University of Reading (UK)
- Nicholas Branch, University of Reading (UK)
- Martin Timaná, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Peru)
- Andrew Wade, University of Reading (UK)
- Fernando González, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Peru)
- Kevin Lane, Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina)
- Frank Meddens, University of Reading (UK)
UN Sustainable Development Goals addresssed
- Goal 1: Zero Poverty
- Goal 2: Zero Hunger
- Goal 13: Climate Action
Abstract
The current and future impact of climate change on agro-pastoral farming systems, and their water supplying ecosystems, remains poorly understood in the Peruvian Andes. This is a significant issue given the known vulnerability to climate variability and extreme weather, which is already having a significant impact on agricultural productivity, compounded by chronic poverty in many rural areas and the need for better government-led strategic planning.
To address this challenge, our project aims to gain a better understanding of the difficulties faced by rural farming communities living with climate change, the opportunities afforded through appropriate adaptive strategies, and the inherent resilience of people and mountain environments to natural shocks and disasters caused by climate variability. We will also develop a model that integrates agro-economic data with climate change scenarios, and water and ecological resource quantification and analysis.
These approaches will enable us to plan sustainable management practices that enhance climate resilience in conjunction with positive economic outcomes for farmers, aiding decision-makers to better understand and debate future adaptive strategies. We will undertake a fully integrated study that is collaborative and interdisciplinary drawing upon methodologies developed in the humanities, and social and natural sciences, with expertise provided by local communities, NGOs, government personnel, and academic staff from the fields of archaeology, hydrology, ethnography, economics, ecology and climatology.
The research will involve workshops and interviews with stakeholders, interrogation of secondary datasets, assembling climate models and meteorological data, the survey of the water management infrastructure, and the collection and analysis of hydrological and ecology data from tributary rivers and peatlands. Building upon our previous research, we will focus on Ancash (Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Negra) in west-central Peru, and undertake a comparison with Ayacucho-Apurimac (Sondondo and Chicha-Soras) in south-central Peru, where the impact of climate change is already being felt by rural communities.