Ordenamiento territorial, or land use regulation, has moved to the centre-stage of land policy, with infrastructure and mining projects threatening existing land rights and livelihoods. The lack of a clearly-defined demarcation of land use is a permanent source of conflict, while investors seek guarantees as to secure access to the concessions they are granted.

In 2008, the then new and under-resourced Ministry of the Environment (Minam) was given the important function of ‘establishing policy guidelines, criteria, the tools and general procedures to regulate land use throughout the national territory, in coordination with other relevant bodies, and in managing the process’ (‘establecer la política, los criterios, las herramientos y los procedimientos de carácter general para el ordenamiento territorial nacional, en coordinación con las entidades correspondientes, y conducer su proceso’). The Dirección General de Ordenamiento Territorial, within Minam, was tasked with implementation.

The embedding of land policy within Minam was a pointer as to how policy was to be conducted. However, one important effect of the now infamous Ley 30230 of 2014 was that it significantly weakened not just Minam and specifically the binding nature of decisions made, but it also put the whole matter of land policy into the hands of the cabinet (Council of Ministers).

A new decree, approved 28 April, now limits Minam’s policy role strictly to environmental matters, with land policy matters placed firmly under the remit of the cabinet. The NGO Cooperacción worries that this represents yet another confused piece of institutional reform that does nothing to help build a proper system of land use regulation. http://cooperaccion.org.pe/main/opinion/723-ordenamiento-territorial-en-el-limbo

The publication of the decree was rapidly followed by the events we reported on 13 May: the failure of Congress to repeal Decree 1333 which indigenous communities claim undermines the right of communities to their ancestral lands. Economy and Finance Minister Alfredo Thorne now says he hopes that Congress will shift its ground on this in the wake of some rewording after consultations with indigenous organisations.

It looks to be time for someone or some agency, perhaps the Defensoría del Pueblo, to commission an overall review and look long and hard at the net effects of these policy measures in terms of the protection they provide for indigenous and peasant communities.