Peru
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Peru is a country on the western side of southern South America. It borders Ecuador and Colombia in the north, Brazil and Bolivia in the east, and Chile to the south. Peru shares control of Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake, with Bolivia. A remote slope of Nevado Mismi, Peru, a 5,316 metre peak, is the ultimate source of the Amazon River.
Its major environmental issues include: deforestation (some the result of illegal logging); overgrazing of the slopes of the costa and sierra leading to soil erosion; desertification; air pollution in Lima; pollution of rivers and coastal waters from municipal and mining wastes.
Ancient Peru was the seat of several prominent Andean civilizations, most notably that of the Incas whose empire was captured by the Spanish conquistadors in 1533. Peruvian independence was declared in 1821, and remaining Spanish forces defeated in 1824. After a dozen years of military rule, Peru returned to democratic leadership in 1980, but experienced economic problems and the growth of a violent insurgency. President Alberto Fujimori's election in 1990 ushered in a decade that saw a dramatic turnaround in the economy and significant progress in curtailing guerrilla activity. Nevertheless, the president's increasing reliance on authoritarian measures and an economic slump in the late 1990s generated mounting dissatisfaction with his regime, which led to his ouster in 2000. A caretaker government oversaw new elections in the spring of 2001, which ushered in Alejandro Toledoa Manrique as the new head of government - Peru's first democratically elected president of Native American ethnicity. The presidential election of 2006 saw the return of Alan Garcia Perez who, after a disappointing presidential term from 1985 to 1990, has overseen a robust macroeconomic performance.
Geography
Location: Western South America, bordering the South Pacific Ocean, between Chile and Ecuador
Geographic Coordinates: 10 00 S, 76 00 W
Area: 1,285,220 km2 (1.28 million km2 land and 5,220 km2water)
arable land: 2.88%
permanent crops: 0.47%
other: 96.65% (2005)
Land Boundaries: 7,461 km - border countries: Bolivia 1,075 km, Brazil 2,995 km, Chile 171 km, Colombia 1,800 km, Ecuador 1,420 km
Coastline: 2,414 km
Maritime Claims: Territorial sea to 200 nautical miles; continental shelf to 200 nautical miles
Natural Hazards: Earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, landslides, mild volcanic activity
Terrain: Western coastal plain (costa), high and rugged Andes in center (sierra), eastern lowland jungle of Amazon Basin (selva). The highest point: Nevado Huascaran (6,768 metres.)
Climate: Varies from tropical in east to dry desert in west; temperate to frigid in Andes
Capital: Lima
Biodiversity and Ecology
From the Panama Canal, the Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena hotspot extends south and east into the wet and moist forests of Panama's Darién Province, through the Chocó region of western Colombia and the moist forests along the west coast of Ecuador, and into the dry forests of eastern Ecuador and extreme northwestern Peru. The hotspot includes a wide variety of habitats, ranging from mangroves, beaches, rocky shorelines, and coastal wilderness to some of the world's wettest rain forests in the Colombian Chocó. In addition, South America's only remaining coastal dry forests occur in this hotspot. Scattered throughout the relatively flat coastal plain are a number of small mountain systems that have fostered the evolution of "islands" of endemism within the region. In general, the hotspot can be divided into two major phytogeographic regions, the Chocó/Darién wet and moist forests in the north and the Ecuadorian/Peruvian Tumbesian dry forests in the south. The richest and most diverse region on Earth, the Tropical Andes spans 1,542,644 km2, from western Venezuela to northern Chile and Argentina, and includes large portions of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.
The Humboldt Current Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) extends along the West Coast of South America from Northern Peru to the southern tip of Chile. It is one of the major upwelling systems of the world, responsible for extremely high levels of organic production. The Humboldt Current system contains cold, low salinity waters that flow in the direction of the Equator and can extend 1,000 kilometers offshore.
Ecoregions
- Beni savanna
- Bolivian Yungas
- Central Andean puna
- Central Andean wet puna
- Cordillera Central páramo
- Eastern Cordillera real montane forests
- Gulf of Guayaquil-Tumbes mangroves
- Iquitos varzea
- Napo moist forests
- Peruvian Yungas
- Piura mangroves
- Rio Negro campinarana
- Sechura desert
- Solimões-Japurá moist forest
- Southwest Amazon moist forests
- Tumbes-Piura dry forests
Protected Areas
International Environmental Agreements
Peru is party to international agreements on: Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic-Marine Living Resources, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, and Whaling.
People and Society
Population: 29,546,963 (July 2009 est.)
Age Structure:
0-14 years: 29.1% (male 4,370,923/female 4,216,364)
15-64 years: 65.2% (male 9,695,270/female 9,574,018)
65 years and over: 5.7% (male 796,631/female 893,757) (2009 est.)
Population Growth Rate: 1.229% (2009 est.)
Birthrate: 19.77 births/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Death Rate: 6.16 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Net Migration Rate: -0.95 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2009 est.)
Life Expectancy at Birth: 70.74 years (2009 est.)
Total Fertility Rate: 2.37 children born/woman (2009 est.)
Languages: Spanish (official), Quechua (official), Aymara, and a large number of minor Amazonian languages
Literacy: 92.9% (2007 Census)
Energy
Peru has proven crude oil reserves of 930 million barrels, according to Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ). The country produced 110,900 barrels per day (bbl/d) of oil (including crude oil and natural gas liquids) in 2005, a 15 percent increase from the previous year. According to OGJ (1/1/06), Peru has proven natural gas reserves of 8.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), the fifth-largest amount in South America. However, Peru’s Deputy Minister of Mines and Energy has indicated that once seismic work is complete on Block 56, Peru’s proven reserves could increase to 15 -16 Tcf. In 2003, the country produced and consumed 19.8 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natural gas, a 21 percent increase from the previous year.
Peru had 6.0 gigawatts (GW) of installed generating capacity in 2003. In that same year, the country generated 22.7 billion kilowatt-hours (Bkwh) of electric power while consuming 21.1 Bkwh. Even though installed capacity is evenly divided between hydroelectricity and conventional thermal electricity, 82 percent of Peru's total electricity supply is generated by hydroelectric facilities, with thermal plants providing supply only during peak usage, or when natural conditions dampen hydroelectric output.
Conflict
International Disputes:
- Chile and Ecuador rejected Peru's November 2005 unilateral legislation to shift the axis of their joint treaty-defined maritime boundaries along the parallels of latitude to equidistance lines which favor Peru;
- organized illegal narcotics operations in Colombia have penetrated Peru's shared border;
- Peru rejects Bolivia's claim to restore maritime access through a sovereign corridor through Chile along the Peruvian border
Economy
Peru's economy reflects its varied geography - an arid coastal region, the Andes further inland, and tropical lands bordering Colombia and Brazil. Abundant mineral resources are found in the mountainous areas, and Peru's coastal waters provide excellent fishing grounds. The Peruvian economy grew by more than 4% per year during the period 2002-06, with a stable exchange rate and low inflation. Growth jumped to 9% per year in 2007 and 2008, driven by higher world prices for minerals and metals and the government's aggressive trade liberalization strategies. Peru's rapid expansion has helped to reduce the national poverty rate by about 15% since 2002, though underemployment and inflation remain high. Despite Peru's strong macroeconomic performance, overdependence on minerals and metals subjects the economy to fluctuations in world prices, and poor infrastructure precludes the spread of growth to Peru's non-coastal areas. Not all Peruvians therefore have shared in the benefits of growth. The United States and Peru completed negotiations on the implementation of the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (PTPA), and the agreement entered into force February 1, 2009, opening the way to greater trade and investment between the two economies.
GDP: (Purchasing Power Parity): $238.9 billion (2008 est.)
GDP-real growth rate: 9.2% (2008 est.)
GDP- per capita (PPP): $8,400 (2008 est.)
GDP- composition by sector:
agriculture: 8.5%
industry: 21.2%
services: 70.3% (2008 est.)
Industries: Mining and refining of minerals; steel, metal fabrication; petroleum extraction and refining, natural gas; fishing and fish processing, textiles, clothing, food processing
Exports: $33.27 billion f.o.b. (2008 est.) in copper, gold, zinc, crude petroleum and petroleum products, coffee, potatoes, asparagus, textiles, fishmeal
Imports: $29.08 billion f.o.b. (2008 est.) in petroleum and petroleum products, plastics, machinery, vehicles, iron and steel, wheat, paper
Natural Resources: copper, silver, gold, petroleum, timber, fish, iron ore, coal, phosphate, potash, hydropower, natural gas
Currency: Puevo Sol (PEN)
Further Reading
Return to Peru's country profile
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