Peru's Satellite-Verified Conditional Transfers for Indigenous Forest Conservation (PNCB)

Peru's Ministry of Environment created the National Forest Conservation Programme for Climate Change Mitigation (Programa Nacional de Conservación de Bosques, PNCB) in 2010, using conditional direct transfers (Transferencias Directas Condicionadas, TDC) to pay indigenous communities holding legal land titles for protecting standing Amazon forest, tying payments to forest patrols and community-defined sustainable-development plans.

Compliance and forest-cover change are tracked through Geobosques, MINAM's public platform, which has produced Landsat-based deforestation alerts at 30-metre resolution every 16 days since 2016/2017, letting authorities, researchers and communities monitor specific areas and receive automated email alerts.

With co-financing including a €4.99 million commitment implemented by Germany's GIZ (2014–2019), the scheme was institutionalised by five regional governments — San Martín, Loreto, Ucayali, Amazonas and Madre de Dios — and covered 188 indigenous communities and more than 1.8 million hectares of tropical forest.

A September 2024 assessment by CIFOR-ICRAF found that, nearly 15 years on, Peru's deforestation rates remain "stubbornly high" and have fallen short of the programme's original targets, with TDC-recipient communities showing high dropout and expulsion rates that raise questions about long-term sustainability — a reminder that satellite-verified payments alone have not been sufficient to reverse Amazon forest loss.

Read the full analysis: https://www.forestsnews.org/89630/how-forest-conservation-incentives-introduce-both-problems-and-opportunities-in-peru