Peru's First Environment Ministry

Peruvian President Alan Garcia said the new ministry would help protect the nation's Amazon rainforest. A scientific study has said that Peru is one of the three nations that will be most affected by global warming. Many Peruvians will see the foundation of the ministry as long overdue.
Peru's Andes mountains are the home of more than half the world's tropical glaciers, but it is estimated that in 25 years time they will be gone. The glaciers supply rivers which provide water for farms and people on the arid Pacific coast, where almost three-quarters of Peru's population live. On the other side of the Andes lies the biggest stretch of the Amazon rainforest after Brazil's, an area which Mr Garcia says - with the creation of the environment ministry - will be preserved for its important role in combating climate change.
Mr Garcia said European and Latin American leaders meeting in Peru this week should promote reforestation and carbon trading to cut greenhouse gases. He also urged world leaders to create a global reforestation fund financed by a fossil fuels tax. However, some say the new environment ministry has been hastily put together in time for the summit and because it was a requirement of a bilateral trade deal with the US.
Peru - a major minerals exporter - had been worried that a ministry could slow existing mining projects and deter investment in its vast reserves of copper, zinc and gold. But preserving the environment is now an economic concern. A recent study predicted that Andean countries could lose $30 billion in the next 20 years because of climate change.
The creation of this new ministry is a clear example of how international pressure has pushed the Peruvian government to create this new entity and how global ideas and concepts affect the day-to-day policy-making systems of Latin America.

Globalization: Ecuadorian Quechua Cacao Farmers enter the Global Market

On an island in the Napo River in Ecuador's Amazonian rain forest, in a tin-roofed hut on stilts, live some of the world’s most unusual chocolate entrepreneurs.

César and Magdalena Dahua grow cacao, along with pineapples, vanilla, avocados, cassava, coffee, oranges and plantains. As they hack off the football-shaped fruit of the cacao trees, their three youngest daughters run barefoot nearby. The girls stop to suck the sticky white pulp that envelops the cacao beans in the pods. It tastes like Sour Patch candies.

For Quechua people like the Dahuas, cacao has always been a treat But mostly, the beans were a commodity, sold for about 20 cents a pound to men who would bring them to the port of Guayaquil. From there they would be shipped around the world to be turned into mass-produced chocolate. Every once in a while the Quechua might even taste it.
But the Quechua grew tired of making such a meager living from so highly valued a product. With the help of volunteers they eliminated the middlemen and created their own chocolate. Now Kallari bars — named for the cooperative they formed — are being sold throughout the United States. People in the chocolate industry said they knew of no other cacao farmers who were making and marketing their own chocolate.
The cooperative uses an unusual blend of cacaos that grow on the Quichua land — fruity Cacao Amazónico, nutty Criollo, Forastero Amazónico, Tipo Trinitario and, most important, a rare variety that flourishes around their homes, Cacao Nacional.

“They have a certain smell and taste that is herbal, flowery but also savory, like black pepper,” Tomas Keme, a Swiss chocolate expert who consults for Kallari, said of the Cacao Nacional beans. The chocolate is smooth, rich and straightforward. To become chocolate makers the Quechua first had to decide to be more than just farmers. Logback said. Pozo said. Logback hired Dr. Jorge Ruiz, who had worked for a cacao cooperative on the coast, to teach the Quechua fermentation. Steinberg made a chocolate bar with Kallari beans and helped them present it at the Terra Madre conference of the Slow Food group in Turin, Italy. Pozo told Kallari elders that they should start making chocolate.
Pozo said. Alvarado, who had eaten only cheap commercial milk chocolate before he tried the Kallari bars. With Kallari’s permission and $250,000, Mr. McDonnell established the Kallari Chocolate Company, which lists him as the owner for liability and insurance reasons. All of the profits, though, go back to the Kallari cooperative.
McDonnell hired Mr. Keme to teach the collective about bean quality and techniques of Swiss chocolate making. Pozo. (The chocolate made in Salinas, less refined and slightly acidic, is sold in some health food stores as Kallari’s Sacha Bar.) (Paradoxically, Kallari does not have Fair Trade certification, since it would cost 8 cents per pound of beans and it seemed unfair for Kallari to pay a fee for its own beans.)
Plans for their own chocolate factory are in the works and Mr. Kallari farmers also hope to diversify to continue living sustainably off their land. Pozo said.