Forging a New Path for Peru’s Regional Conservation Areas: From Cajamarca to Cusco

The historic city of Cajamarca, Peru, is known for being the last stronghold of the Incan emperor Atahuallpa against the Spanish, nearly 500 years ago. This August, the city was famous again for hosting a gathering of leaders from around the country who are standing together against deforestation and for the protection of Peru’s biodiversity and the communities that rely on it. 

Peru’s Second National Convention for the Exchange of Experiences Among Regional Conservation Areas, held on August 13-15, 2025 and organized by the Regional Government of Cajamarca, brought together over 200 environmental representatives from Peru’s 26 regional governments who are directly responsible for the promotion, creation, and management of the country’s Regional Conservation Areas (RCAs). The purpose of the gathering was to share their progress, concerns, and hopes for a more integrated country, with more opportunities for Peru’s citizens based on conserving nature.

▼ What are Regional Conservation Areas (RCAs) in Peru?

RCAs are the equivalent of state-level protected areas created through a rigorous process at the direction of the regional governors and approved at the national level by Supreme Decree. They safeguard biodiverse ecosystems and promote environmentally mindful economic development opportunities and form part of Peru’s National System of Protected Areas. 

Sergio Sanchez Ibarra, Regional Director of Natural Resources and Environment for the Environmental Authority of Cajamarca saw this unifying event as an opportunity “to strengthen the management, conservation, and sustainability of the areas and reach consensus on the set of proposals we can put forward from regional governments and their conservation areas.”

Currently, Peru has 36 regional conservation areas totaling 9,809,460 acres (3,969,748 hectares), protecting sections of almost all the country’s ecosystems over an area equivalent to 3.08% of the country’s national territory. While the majority of the RCAs are found in Amazonian regions (7,868,861 acres or 3,184,415 hectares), those located in the Andean (1,782,514 acres or 721,358 hectares) and coastal (158,083 acres or 63,974.2 hectares) areas also offer important nature protection and environmentally mindful economic development opportunities for those living near or within these protected spaces.

“The importance of this space is to exchange experiences, to learn about what other regions and other government administrations have achieved, and what we can learn from them. It’s important to stay connected as regional conservation areas in Peru because we are an important complement to forest conservation and other important aspects in the country” notes  César Alfonso Bardales Pizarro, leader of the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area in San Martín, Peru. 

Regional conservation areas have the particularity of having some areas zoned to allow low-impact productive activities that are compatible with ecosystem and species protection actions, which is the main objective for their creation. RCA managers, who work alongside regional environmental management authorities and the RCA management committees, are increasingly embracing the idea that there is no better form of development than one that combines environmental protection and social participation. An RCA possesses all these conditions; they are spaces that provide livelihood opportunities for people through biodiversity conservation and are managed by local actors.

Teresita López Díaz, the Executive Director of Natural Resource Management at the Regional Environmental Authority of Amazonas highlights the importance of her region’s participation in this convention as it “brings together all the teams from all the regional governments that have regional conservation areas, and we all learn from each other’s experiences in environmental education, monitoring and patrolling, social inclusion, youth leadership, capacity building, and countless other areas. We all have experiences, and from here, we gather them and emerge strengthened to replicate them in each of our regions.”

Over 230 people were in attendance at this year’s convention, including regional managers, RCA directors, park rangers, representatives from Peru’s National Protected Area Service (SERNANP), and international donors. The first convention was held in 2024 in the city of Tarapoto and was organized by the regional government of San Martín. On that occasion, it was determined that only by uniting efforts, beyond political boundaries, could greater objectives be achieved, which is why the RCA Network was created at that event—an interregional coordination network that seeks to strengthen RCAs throughout Peru, promoting common interests and establishing joint impact goals. In this year’s second convention, more ambitious challenges were established, such as the development of management tools for RCAs, commissions for reviewing current RCA regulations, promoting gender equity, developing landscape connectivity approaches, and promoting targeted financing mechanisms for RCAs.

Organized discussion groups among attendees yielded several significant outcomes, including identifying mechanisms for financially sustaining RCAs long-term through coordination with carbon initiatives, sustainable tourism, environmental funds, and adequate public resource allocation. Furthermore, participants underscored the imperative of strengthening intergovernmental coordination among regional governments and between regional and national entities, to harmonize policies and dismantle administrative obstacles for RCA management. Another key outcome was the commitment to integrate traditional knowledge from Indigenous and rural communities into management plans, ensuring their active participation in decision-making. Discussions also highlighted the importance of generating replicable best practices conservation actions, such as participatory ecosystem restoration and community monitoring, alongside the sharing of technological tools like satellite monitoring with artificial intelligence algorithms to enhance land oversight and management. 

At the end of the convention, after a round of exciting pitches from several regional governments, a vote determined that Cusco, another Incan stronghold, will provide the venue for the Third Regional Conservation Area Convention in 2026, hosting this important group of Peruvian environmental defenders as they continue to find greater strength in unity. 

Acknowledgements: 

We would like to thank all participants and supporters of the Convention for making this important event possible, including the Regional Government of Cajamarca as the host and Nature and Culture International for their support with the logistics. Andes Amazon Fund’s financial support for the Convention was generously provided by the Jacobs Futura Foundation.