FACTORTIERRA

The science already has an answer about why Piura Andes' medicinal plants heal.  All photographs provided by Fidel Torres .  PIURA, Peru - The potential of medicinal plants in Peru is enormous in terms of biodiversity, but restricted in terms of usefulness. The  investigations are focused on their power for treatment or healing diseases, but they are not enlarging their own perspective to other activities requiring them too, as cosmetology or nutrition.  This narrow vision also limits the economic potential for the communities where these species grow. In the other side, many of these investigations only arrive to gather the knowledge of the communities where that  biodiversity is located, treating them as a source but blocking them to participate into the scientific process. Add to  this the risk that biopiracy follows to represent, that gets data and results but it does not patent them as owned by this  country but it compromises them as ...

They said that 2012 would be a dry year… they said.   By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo   PIURA CITY, Peru – Sánchez Cerro Vridge, February 24 th , 2012, 7:00 in the morning, 1400 cubic millimeters per second. The water is colorized by the violent improvisation instead of the unexpected. Piura River overload was the season attraction after months and months looking a flow like a creek-category.   The cement coat of Eguiguren Pier avoids the flow power to erode the banks of Piura and Castilla Cities, like it happened in 1983. The work was build after 45 miles to the west, El Niño Current caused extreme rains between January and June of that year.   The river put the people on alert in 1998, 2001, and 2005. Just in 1998, the power of water destroyed Bolognesi Bridge, the fourth from north to south, killing around 50 people. “I’m not never going to forget that number – 4414 cubic meters per second,” El Tiempo’s journalist Teo Zavala remembers. After that tragedy, every ...

Written and photographed by Mariluz Mejía, distributed by agrored Norte.   Girls and teenagers of Provinces Ayabaca and Huancabamba, highlands of Piura Departmen t , participate in the ethnical-botanical investigation made by Agrored Norte & Mountain Institute , funded by Peru’s National Council of Science & Technology, Ministry of environment, and Ministry of Agrarian Development & Irrigation, about the potential of wild fruit species of páramos and cloud forests .   They are high-school students of Totora school, Pacaipampa District ( Ayabaca Province ) and Cajas-Shapaya’s Virgen del Carmen School, El Carmen de la Frontera District ( Huancabamba Province ).   Those girls and teenagers mean a potential in scientific knowledge generation to value the riches of Piura Andes biodiversity, that belongs to the families living around the páramos and cloud forest ecosystems   The contribution of the girls’ knowledge  about  the ...

By air, sea, and land, big and small have punished Colán to die.   By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo   COLÁN, Peru – Before Máncora left it down to a second place –that is also losing—, this one was the spa of Piura for instance. Now, it is condemned to go degrading, droned by corporate and communitarian interests that can sweep centuria of tradition, like the moment they wounded the cliff that keeps it.   La Esmeralda de Colán, better simply known as Colán , is exposed to its water pollution and the waves that threaten the building close to(not mentioning over)the rim. A natural phenomenon is the killer that condemns it to a slow death.   The confluence of Humboldt and El Niño Currents also carry on died animals that get stranded on the rims: porpoises, sea lions, and dolphins have been reported at the zone. Miguel Alarcón Ato, president of La Esmeralda’s Association of Residents and Owners, suspects that the combination of industrial sewerage from Paita City to th...