The Spring Break 2025 Peru course is open for applications until the deadline of Monday, September 23rd!
Course Basics:
PLCY 798T: Sustainable Development, Environmental Policy, and Human Rights in Peru will run from March 14 to March 23, 2025.
The course is led by Prof. Tom Hilde, Matt Regan, and Claire Squire from the School of Public Policy. The itinerary includes the Amazon rainforest, the Andes mountains, and Lima on the Pacific coast. A description of the course can be found below.
This course is a 3-credit graduate course that also accepts students from other universities and senior and junior undergraduates in good academic standing. There is a maximum enrollment for the course, admissions are rolling, and, based on twelve years of experience, the course is usually full. If you are interested in applying, it's best to do so earlier rather than at the last minute. All specializations are welcome.
If you have a graduate assistantship, tuition remission does apply. Check with your advisor for more details.
Course Description:
Taking a systemic, multidisciplinary approach, participants will study complex sustainable development policy challenges in Peru with a focus on the tensions between economic development, environmental well-being, and the protection of human rights and security, particularly those of indigenous peoples.In the Amazonian region of Madre de Dios – one of the most biodiverse regions in the world – we travel by boat up the Tambopata River to stay at Posada Amazonas, an eco-lodge co-owned and operated by the Ese’eja indigenous community of Infierno. We will study this cooperative arrangement of ecotourism as an example of employment-generating, environmentally-sound, and self-managed local development. This kind of model is challenged by the most pervasive model: large-scale resource exploitation moving further into the Amazon, particularly illegal gold mining, and the opening of this formerly remote region following the completion of the Interoceanic Highway, which cuts through the Amazon from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We will observe first-hand the natural richness of Peru’s Amazon rainforest and the efforts and challenges of Peruvians in seeking a development model consistent with the health of the natural environment. We will also witness the destruction by activities such as illegal gold mining and illegal logging exacted on the environment and human communities, including mercury poisoning and human trafficking. One of the main drivers of deforestation in this region is illegal gold mining. Many of the miners migrate from communities in the Andes, given economic insecurity and environmental change in that region. From Madre de Dios, we therefore go to the Andean region of Cusco to study environmental pressures and the problem of persistent poverty and conflict in the Andes and local and national efforts to develop better livelihoods.
Cusco, a town at about 3400 meters elevation in the Andes, was the center of the Incan Empire until the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. The Cusco region is rich in Incan and pre-Incan culture overlaid in Cusco by Spanish art and architecture. Cusco will be our home-base for excursions to agrarian communities and other villages in the region. We meet with local communities, NGOs, and officials working on issues related to sustainable development, environmental policy, and democracy and human rights in order to understand better the relations between agrarian poverty, environmental migration, Peru’s development policy, and their connections with the Amazonian region.
In Lima, we meet with leading scholars and researchers, government officials, and others to discuss and analyze the economic, political, and cultural frameworks through which environmental, development, and security policy develops in Peru.
Apply:
For more information and to apply for the course, go here.
If you'd like to talk with the course director, you can email him at thilde@umd.edu.