---
title: what cash transfers for conservation showed in the peruvian amazon
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-cash-transfers-for-conservation-showed-in-peru
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-cash-transfers-for-conservation-showed-in-peru.md
subtitle: "a two-year pilot paid families and trained their communities. the plus was the group. what it was not built to fund is the land, or a payment that outlasts the pilot."
category: nature-finance
---

# what cash transfers for conservation showed in the peruvian amazon

*a two-year pilot paid families and trained their communities. the plus was the group. what it was not built to fund is the land, or a payment that outlasts the pilot.*

Cash transfers for conservation pay people who live in and around forests, rivers and grasslands directly, in money they can spend as they choose. The idea is that security lets people keep caring for a place instead of selling it off piece by piece. Some programs attach conditions. The newest version, a conservation basic income, attaches none.

In October 2026 the University of Bath published an evaluation of a conservation basic income pilot in the Peruvian Amazon, one of the first anywhere. It calls its own findings preliminary, and it is careful about what it does not show. Here is what it found, and what it leaves for a funder to solve.

## what the pilot was

The pilot, *Fighting the Climate Crisis with Reciprocity: Towards Indigenous Autonomy*, was implemented by Cool Earth with two Indigenous women's organizations: ONAMIAP, the National Organisation of Indigenous Andean and Amazonian Women of Peru, and its local partner OMIAASEC, the Asháninka and Yanesha Indigenous Women's Organisation of the Central Sector. The evaluation says the three co-designed it, with the aid-delivery company AidKit as a fourth partner.

It ran from late 2023 to mid 2025 in three Asháninka and Yanesha communities in the central Peruvian Amazon. Every adult received an unconditional payment every four months for two years, six transfers in all. Bath's press release puts the cash at about £2 a day and the number of people at 211.

Alongside the cash came the "plus": workshops on financial management, Indigenous rights and governance, conservation and climate resilience. That makes it a **cash plus** design. The evaluation says the pilot was framed "not as charity but as reciprocity," in recognition that these communities' care for their territories is itself climate action.

## what the evaluation measured

The evaluation compared a baseline survey (November–December 2023) with an endline survey of 82 participants (August 2025), and ran 24 in-depth interviews and three focus groups. The press release leads with different figures, so each one below carries its source.

| figure | change | source |
|---|---|---|
| Households with labour migration | 43% → 18% | Evaluation, survey |
| Households saving | 49% → 70% | Evaluation, survey |
| Households using loans | 19% → 6% | Evaluation, survey |
| Households that expanded cultivated area | 30%, often reopening abandoned plots | Evaluation, survey |
| Households unable to afford nutritious food | 73% → 26% | Evaluation, survey (also in the release) |
| Adopted environmentally beneficial practices | About 80% of interviewees | Evaluation, interviews |
| Adopted environmentally beneficial practices | "Close to 90%" of participants | Press release |
| Collective action | "87% active participation rate" | Press release |

The release's 87% appears to be two survey answers added together: nearly 60% of respondents said they took part frequently in collective environmental work such as reforestation, monitoring or sustainable land management, and another 27% said sometimes.

## why it worked, in the evaluation's words

The cash changed how families spent their time. Many people used to leave for day wages; with a predictable payment they stayed, worked their own farms, saved and planned. The evaluation calls this its strongest evidence.

The conservation change ran through something else. The evaluation says the "plus" component "appears particularly important" for the environmental practices, and that "the central impact of the 'plus' was undoubtedly on community relationships, cohesion and action." Interviewees described assemblies that used to sit empty and now fill, and shared work on reforestation, springs, seed banks, fish farms and a community house.

Its own explanation: the environmental outcomes did not come from "a simple incentive mechanism whereby participants exchanged conservation behaviour for payments." They came from "improved economic security, strengthened community organisation, and renewed attention to Indigenous knowledge systems," working together. Nobody was paid per tree or per ton of carbon, which is the opposite of how [credits are built](/guide/every-credit-is-trying-to-become-money?from=guide).

## what it does not show

- **No control group.** The evaluation compares the same people before and after, and its interviews ask what changed without prompting people to credit the pilot. That is real evidence, not a randomized trial.
- **Cash plus training, not cash alone.** The two came together, and the evaluation calls them mutually reinforcing, with the training "particularly important" for the environmental change. The pilot cannot tell you what cash without the organizing would have done.
- **Practices, not forest cover.** The evaluation recorded what people did and reported, not hectares of forest kept. It says future studies should use "more direct environmental indicators." Ecological outcomes at scale are not shown.

One question it cannot answer yet: the evaluation "cannot establish whether observed improvements will persist after the pilot ends." Cool Earth says it will carry the model forward and extend it to new communities in Peru and Colombia. That is welcome. It is still a program that someone has to fund, year after year.

## the plus was the group, and the group keeps land

Cool Earth has funded Indigenous communities in Peru with unconditional communal grants, and the evaluation says that work "has demonstrated that community-level funding is effective for territorial defence and collective governance." The household cash was meant to "reinforce, rather than replace, collective land stewardship." The conclusion goes further: a conservation basic income "should not be understood as a replacement for Indigenous territorial rights, governance reform or broader climate action."

Cool Earth's own post says what the cash protects against. Loggers arrive "just when they are struggling the most with cash in hand," and families are left to "stay in poverty and protect the rainforest they call home, or sell their land to loggers for quick cash." A basic income, it says, means communities "can say no to loggers and protect the rainforest, on their terms."

So the thing at stake is the land. The cash buys time to refuse an offer. The group, organized and informed about its rights, does the keeping. Both hold only while the land is still theirs to keep and the money keeps coming.

## the missing piece: a payment that outlasts the pilot

**The land.** A household payment does not stop a debt, a concession or a competing claim from taking the territory. Paying people on land they can lose buys time, not the place.

**The money.** Cash that arrives through a program arrives as long as the program does. The evaluation's open question, whether the gains persist, is a funding question as much as a research one.

This is where [*ensurance*](/?from=guide) fits, and where it does not. It is not a basic income and does not replace one. It funds a place in a fixed order: the land first, then the species and flows it carries, then its people.

1. **Ensured** means paying off the land. The community or its chosen holder acquires it, retires its debt and clears its claims, and proceeds cover those costs. Nothing is acquired or titled over a community's objection, and a community that already holds its land decides whether to use ensurance at all. Legal recognition of a title stays a state act; ensurance pays the costs around it.
2. **Entrust** is the land held free of debt, rent and claim, for good ([how permanent protection is meant to hold](/guide/permanent-protection-has-to-survive-us?from=guide)).
3. The land carries its **species and flows**: forest habitat, springs, soil, fire resilience. Those are what the funding keeps.
4. With the land's cost out of the picture, every dollar that arrives can go to care, paid to the group its people govern. How the group shares it, per household, equally or into communal work, is the group's decision. A certificate purchase paying the recipient it names, and splits to a group account, are live today. Automatic payments to every holder are designed, not live.

The money comes from those who already pay when the place fails, such as the water user downstream, the insurer and the supply chain, paying before the failure instead of after.

The forest, the river and the grazing land exist whether or not anyone buys a certificate, and so do the people who have kept them. Ensurance is how the land gets secured and the keeping gets funded. It is not the land, and it is not the community.

## what this means for a funder

If you fund cash transfers for conservation, as a foundation or a public program, carry three things into the next design.

- **Fund the organizing, not only the cash.** The evaluation calls the "plus" particularly important for the environmental change, and cash and training mutually reinforcing.
- **Fund the land question beside the household payment.** Purchase where the community wants it, debt, surveys, legal costs and the claims that block a title.
- **Fund a payment that does not depend on the next grant cycle.** A pilot proves the point. It should not be the end of the money.

:::johnson
**the "plus" was the group. the missing piece is a payment that outlasts the pilot, on land that cannot be lost.** Secure the land first. Then every dollar can go to care.

[talk to someone about securing the land →](/contact?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land)
:::

Foundations: [see how perpetual funding is structured through entrust](/solutions/foundations?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land). Governments: [see how public budgets fund forests and watersheds as infrastructure](/solutions/governments?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land).

## frequently asked questions

### do cash transfers help conservation?

The first evaluation of a conservation basic income pilot in the Amazon says they can, through people rather than around them. In the Bath evaluation of a Peru pilot, about 80% of interviewees described adopting environmentally beneficial practices, and the researchers credit cash and training together. There was no control group, and forest cover was not measured.

### what is cash plus?

Cash plus pairs an unconditional payment with something more. In the Peru pilot that was workshops on finances, Indigenous rights and governance, conservation and climate. The evaluation found the "plus" particularly important for community organizing and environmental practice, working together with the cash.

### what happens when a pilot ends?

For this pilot, nobody knows yet: the evaluation says it cannot establish whether the improvements persist. Cool Earth says it will continue the model. What turns a pilot into something that lasts is money that does not depend on the next budget, and land that cannot be lost to debt or a competing claim.

### did the peru pilot reduce deforestation?

It did not measure that. It measured practices and perceptions, such as reforestation, protecting springs and less burning, and it calls for direct environmental indicators in future studies.

## sources

[Howard, Langridge, Remnant, Mishan, Ulfe Young & Espinoza (2026), *Fighting the climate crisis with reciprocity: Towards Indigenous autonomy — Conservation Basic Income Pilot Evaluation*, Bath Papers in International Development](https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/396480700/Fighting_the_climate_crisis_with_reciprocity_final.pdf) — the evaluation: design, sample, survey and interview findings, limits

[University of Bath, "World-first basic income trial boosts Indigenous livelihoods and Amazon rainforest protection" (20 October 2026)](https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/world-first-basic-income-trial-boosts-indigenous-livelihoods-and-amazon-rainforest-protection/) — press release: 211 people, about £2 a day, "close to 90%", 87% participation

[Cool Earth, "World-first basic income trial boosts Indigenous livelihoods and Amazon rainforest protection"](https://www.coolearth.org/news/world-first-basic-income-trial-boosts-indigenous-livelihoods-and-amazon-rainforest-protection/) — Cool Earth's account, including loggers and saying no to them

## the series

1. [what a conservation basic income leaves unfunded](/guide/what-a-conservation-basic-income-leaves-unfunded?from=guide)
2. [community land rights come first](/guide/community-land-rights-come-first?from=guide)
3. [what cash transfers for conservation showed in the peruvian amazon](/guide/what-cash-transfers-for-conservation-showed-in-peru?from=guide)
4. [the alternative to fortress conservation is not a market](/guide/the-alternative-to-fortress-conservation-is-not-a-market?from=guide)
5. [community-led conservation needs an account it controls](/guide/community-led-conservation-needs-an-account-it-controls?from=guide)
6. [how to fund indigenous land rights that last](/guide/how-to-fund-indigenous-land-rights-that-last?from=guide)