blue moon fund

Here in the highlands of southern Peru, the Amazon River begins in melt water trickling from glaciers draped on high Andean Peaks, cascading downward through the cloud forests, into the rivers Marañón and Urubamba that eventually flow  together at Iquitos in eastern Peru. From there the Amazon makes it way to the Atlantic through the greatest expanse of rain forest on the planet.

In this region where snow-covered mountains reach down into tropical lowlands we encounter the highest biodiversity on earth.  In Manu National Park, a visitor may encounter some 700 species of birds, more than in all of North America.   

Today, however, these lands are at the epicenter of a global race to extract oil and gas, gold and other minerals. More than seventy percent of the Peruvian Amazon is up for oil and gas leasing.  Chinese, European and American companies contest for the right to drill in National Parks. 

Multinational companies are seeking licenses to build dams in the headwaters of the Marañón and Urubamba River systems to export electricity to Brazil. Brazilian companies are planning transcontinental highways across the Andes to open the remote Amazon headwaters. Tens of thousands of unregulated gold miners are pushing into the last remote places occupied by isolated, uncontacted indigenous tribes. 

Now, at last, Peruvians are awakening to these threats to their national patrimony and culture.  Local NGOs are steadily gaining supporters and a voice in national policy. However, they need support to scale up and match the unprecedented size and power of the global forces now impinging upon the Amazon.   

Our work at the blue moon fund supports these local organizations with planning resources and science and international assistance to meet challenges posed by these global trends.  We advocate for sustainable, careful, planned development. For transportation modes that use the vast river systems (hydrovias) in place of traditional road networks. We work for best practices in the form of “offshore-onshore” models for oil and gas development without roads that open the region to land invasions and deforestation. We advocate good science and sound planning techniques for the appropriate location of hydro dams. 

blue moon also seeks to assure that indigenous groups affected by large infrastructure projects have a voice that is heard, not only within Peru, but also outside the country within the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank, and other international financial institutions that play such a large part in financing highways, oil and gas development, dams and other large infrastructure projects.