The Green Climate Fund today provided the final approval to begin a combined mitigation and adaptation project stemming deforestation in Peru’s Amazon basin.

The signing of a Funded Activity Agreement (FAA) between GCF and the Peruvian Trust Fund for National Parks and Protected Areas (Profonanpe) serves as the final funding clearance to begin work on this project.

The announcement provides a further fillip to GCF’s 15th Board meeting, which winds up today in Samoa.

The five-year project is focused on entrusting indigenous communities in the northern Peruvian province of Datem del Marañón to manage their wetland resources in ways that do not release the large amount of greenhouse gases stored in the region’s peatlands.

“This project comes with real global mitigation benefits as the swamps of Datem del Marañón hold a total carbon stock estimated at around 3.78 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 eq.),” said Alberto Paniagua, Chief Executive Officer of Profonanpe.

“The Amazon peatlands in Peru remain almost entirely intact. But they do face an increasing range of threats, including degradation from the large-scale clearing of palm trees for fruit, illegal logging and palm oil plantation expansion.”

The Executive Director ad interim of the GCF Secretariat, Javier Manzanares highlighted the unique benefits of this project, as it reflects the Fund’s prerogative of ensuring adaptation receives equal weight to mitigation in the Fund’s mobilization of climate finance.

The project’s adaptation component stems from the placement of indigenous communities at the forefront of sustainable land-use reforms to cope with a changing climate.

The largest share of funding supports commercial bio-businesses run by indigenous people selling non-timber forest products. These include harvesting salted fish, smoked meat, Aguaje pulp from palm trees, and Dragon’s Blood, a tree resin used as a component of anti-inflammatory medicine.

Profonanpe, a Peru-based environmental fund, is one of GCF’s Accredited Entities. These approved organizations partner with the Fund to implement climate finance initiatives on the ground.