Datem del Marañón Wetlands Resilience Project — Peatland Carbon Baseline (Peru)

The Pastaza River Fan in Peru's Datem del Marañón province, near the Amazon town of San Lorenzo, holds one of the world's largest tropical peatland complexes — some 3.8 million hectares storing an estimated 3.1 billion tonnes of carbon, roughly half of Peru's above-ground forest carbon stock, with peat soils alone able to store up to 1,700 tonnes of carbon per hectare.

In 2015 the Green Climate Fund approved its first-ever project worldwide: a $9.1 million grant (of which $6.24 million from GCF, with the remainder co-financed), implemented by the Peruvian Trust Fund for National Parks and Protected Areas (Profonanpe), to help 120 Indigenous communities manage wetland resources sustainably instead of draining and deforesting them for cropland. The project established more than 410,000 hectares of new conservation areas and helped found an Aguaje Producers and Management Association in 2018 so households profit from sustainable palm-fruit harvesting instead of tree-felling.

A 2022 carbon-stock study by scientists from the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute (IIAP) and Profonanpe — published in 2024 — measured baseline soil and vegetation carbon, feeding a methodology now informing Peru's national peatland accounting policy. By the project's December 2024 close, the GCF reported roughly 1.31 million of a targeted 2.6 million tonnes of CO2e avoided, reaching over 20,000 direct beneficiaries across 131 Indigenous communities.

The project drew sustained criticism over its Free, Prior and Informed Consent process: Indigenous federations protested that the GCF approved the 2015 funding before adequate community consultation, prompting a formal Independent Redress Mechanism investigation opened in 2019. The case was closed only after the GCF Secretariat issued new FPIC guidance and completed a legal assessment of impacts on collective land rights.

Read the full analysis: https://www.greenclimate.fund/project/fp001