Peru—Land Tenure and Property Rights Profile

The land provides a wealth of natural resources, including diverse forest products, a variety of minerals, and abundant water. Peru's formal laws recognize the autonomy and rights of the country's indigenous and peasant communities, which have the highest rates of poverty in the country. The rural communities struggle to retain control of the land and natural resources that they depend on for their livelihoods. Peru is distinguished by its efforts at agrarian reform. In the 1970s, the government acquired and redistributed a substantial portion of the country's agricultural land to landless and land-poor agricultural families. Beginning in the 1990s, the country undertook programs to develop cadastres and title rural and urban land. Roughly half the land was titled as of 2007, including formalization of informal rights in urban and peri-urban areas. A consolidated program plans to expand into more remote rural areas. Women have received an increasing share of rights to agricultural land over the last decades, but they often continue to lack the power to manage and control land and natural resources. Peru's natural resources are endangered by land degradation, deforestation, and water pollution. Most of the country's substantial water resources are located in the forest and mountain areas, which have low population densities. The populated coastal plains have chronic water shortages and are susceptible to El Niño floods. The government enacted a new water law that is designed to integrate the water sector, decentralize management of water resources to the river basin level, and provide for participatory community management. More than half of Peru's land mass is covered by forest. The government has been decentralizing the management of forestland, creating a need for capacity-building and institutional strengthening at local levels. Peru has a substantial and growing mineral, oil, and gas sector, which accounts for almost half of all export earnings. Subsurface claims to mineral rights extend over 10% of the country's land, and increased extraction has threatened both human and environmental health in mining communities. Land conflicts are common in Peru, with the most visible arising from exploitation of minerals and timber. The formal system of dispute resolution is not considered accessible by most of the population, especially the rural poor. Peru has a total land area of 1.2 million square kilometers. The country is home to 29 million people, including 14 linguistic families, and 44 ethnic groups. An estimated 45% of the population is indigenous, 37% mixed indigenous-European, 15% European, and 3% other. Twenty-nine percent of the population is rural. Annual GDP was US $127 billion in 2008, of which agriculture constituted 7%, services 55%, and industry 38%. In 2005, half of Peru's population was poor; 18% was extremely poor. The rate of poverty in rural areas was double the rate in urban areas. Approximately 17% of Peru's total land is used for agriculture, of which 28% is irrigated. Forests make up 54% of total land area, and protected areas make up 14% of total land area. Geographically, the country is divided into three regions: Costa (the long narrow Pacific coastal region); Sierra (the mountainous Andes region); and Selva (the Amazon rainforest region). The country's population growth rate is 1.1% per annum, and the population density is 22.5 people per square kilometer. The literacy rate is 89.6%, and the country has a significant number of protected areas, including national parks and wildlife reserves.