Potato Park

Short Summary

The Potato Park (Spanish: El Parque de la Papa) is a 15,000 ha ethnobotanical landscape in Peru managed by six Quechua indigenous communities under a sui generis legal regime, the Indigenous Biocultural Heritage Area (IBCHA). The Park exists to preserve and promote the enormous biodiversity of native potatoes in Peru—more than 900 varieties—and to protect the fragile ecosystem by recognizing the role of indigenous "biocultural heritage" practices.

Website address: parquedelapapa.org

Location: Pisac, Cusco, Peru

Logo. source

Origin Story

As multinational biotech and agricultural corporations have sought to appropriate the seeds and genes that have been managed as commons for generations, Peru has become a prime target of enclosures. To prevent such appropriations of shared wealth, the indigenous peoples of the Cusco Valley joined with the nonprofit group Andes1 in the 1990s to develop an ingenious legal innovation, the Indigenous Biocultural Heritage Area (IBCHA), a sui generis legal regime to preserve and promote native potato varieties and protect the fragile ecosystem.

Potato Park was launched in the year 2000 under the legal regime of the IBCHA. The indigenous practices of stewarding the agro-ecological landscape through traditional practices reaches back millennia.

Translation of original German caption from CDKN: “Francisca Bayona Pacco, 37, is Papa Arariwa in the Para Paru farming community...She brings Pachamama (Mother Earth) an offering of coca leaves and asks her to protect the potatoes from the frost.” source

Profile

Potatoes are a central element of Quechua culture. They play a role at baptisms, weddings, funerals and many other occasions. It is not uncommon for a single farmer's field to produce hundreds of different varieties, many of them quite rare.

As Alejandro Argumedo and Bernard Yun Loong Wong write in their profiles of the Potato Park (2010; 2008), the six Quechua communities see themselves as living in reciprocal relationship with the land, each other and the spirit world. The approach has been called ayllu–a political and socioeconomic system in which “individuals with the same interests and objectives [are] linked through shared norms and principles with respect to humans, animals, rocks, spirits, mountains, lakes, rivers, pastures, food crops, wildlife, etc.” In the Potato Park, people strive for a balance between the ayllu of the Runas (humans and their domesticated crops and animals), the Sallaka (wild plants and creatures) and the Auki Ayllu (sacred beings, including mountain protector spirits).

The point of agriculture in Quechua societies is not to raise maximum crop yields for market sale and profit. It is to faithfully implement the principles associated with the ayllu, which lies at the core of the Quechua’s stable, regenerative agroecological practices that have evolved within the Andean landscape–a region that has a variety of different “vertical” microclimates at different altitudes, often at short distances from each other.

Although the Potato Park does not have state recognition within either Peruvian national law of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Indigenous Biocultural Heritage Area agreement is legally compatible with existing systems of national and international law. Certain aspects of the Potato Park are enforceable in conventional ways, such as its scientific study agreement with the International Potato Center (CIP) and the Potato Park database.

YOUTUBE fN7eZaF_e5g Introductory video about the Potato Park

Governance

The legal regime that is the Indigenous Biocultural Heritage Area (IBCHA) affirms the role of Quechua societies in the region in managing their indigenous “biocultural heritage” practices. Under the IBCHA, they have authority to conserve traditional culture, knowledge and livelihoods in over 12,000 hectares considered essential to the agrobiodiversity of the Pisaq region.

The Park has a formal registry of its biological diversity and uses “geographical indicators” (legal rights for place-based products) and trademarks to protect its stewardship authority over local genetic diversity (Argumedo and Pimbert 2005:11).

Friends & Partners

The International Potato Center (CIP), a research-for-development organization with which Potato Park has a scientific study agreement

YOUTUBE aLI2KySC9-U From video description: "In April 2014, indigenous and ethnic minority farmers from Bhutan and China visited the Potato Park in Peru for a learning exchange on how to cope with climate change."

Finances

The potatoes from the Potato Park may not be sold as a commodity, which ensures that they and the landscape are treated with respect. (While potatoes may not be sold to outside markets, the IBCHA system does authorize communities to selectively share their "living library" of potential genetic knowledge with scientists and others, and to prevent patenting of such knowledge.)

The Park hosts socially and ecologically sensitive forms of development such as agroecotourism, “nutraceuticals” (dietary and nutritional products) and pharmaceuticals. The Potato Park has a processing center for natural medicines and soaps, a network of local pharmacies and a video communications center.

Women play a key role in many of the economic activities of the Association of Communities of the Potato Park (the formal name of the project). These include:

The Sipaswarmi Medicinal Plants Women’s Collective, which sells natural medicine and soaps
The Tijillay T’ika Women’s Audio-Visual Collective, a women’s co-operative that makes videos in the native language about local resources

Sources

Argumedo, Alejandro. 2008. “The Potato Park, Peru: Conserving Agrobiodiversity in an Andean Indigenous Biocultural Heritage Area,” in Amend, T., Brown, J., Kothari A., Phillips, A., Stolton, S. editors. Protected Landscapes and Agrobiodiversity Values. Vol. 1 in the series, “Protected Landscapes and Seascapes.” IUCN & GTZ. Heidelberg, Germany: Kaspareg Verlag.
Argumedo, Alejandro and Bernard Yun Loong Wong. 2010. “The Ayllu System of the Potato Park, Cusco, Peru.” Satoyama Initiative, United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, March 5, 2010.
Argumedo, Alejandro and M. Pimbert. 2008. Protecting Indigenous Knowledge Against Biopiracy in the Andes. London. IIED.
David Bollier, "The Potato Park of Peru," in David Bollier and Silke Helfrich, Patterns of Commoning (Off the Commons Books, 2015)
United Nations University -- Our World, "The Thriving Biodiversity of Peru’s Potato Park" (2011)
FAO, "Peruvian 'guardians' lead Potato Park to a secure future"