The overall project will be implemented by Asociación Curmi, a Peruvian NGO with a track record as a successful incubator of local “green” businesses. In the areas where the frog project will take place, Curmi has promoted agricultural projects to substitute slash-and-burn agriculture with permanent crops such as cocoa and hearts of palm. Asociación Curmi will receive scientific and technical support from the Institute for Research into the Biology of the Eastern Andes (INIBICO). INIBICO is an NGO devoted to the study and preservation of the flora and fauna in northern Peru’s high rainforest.

The total project cost is $1,845,922. Of this amount, $788,540 is being sought from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The GEF funds will be channeled through IFC in its capacity as GEF Executing Agency.

This project will aim to sustainably produce poison dart frogs in over 250 production lots covering more than 3,000 hectares near Iquitos, Tarapoto, and Pucallpa. Nearly 80% of the lots are situated in buffer zones of national parks and reserves; one lot is located inside a protected area; the rest are found in unprotected forests located outside of buffer zones.

This is a Category B project, according to IFC’s Procedure for Environmental and Social Review of Projects, because a limited number of specific environmental and social impacts may result which can be avoided or mitigated by adhering to generally recognized performance standards, guidelines or design criteria. The review of this project consisted of appraising and reviewing environmental and social information submitted by the project sponsor. The following potential environmental, health, safety and social impacts of the project were analyzed:

- Possible Induced Migration:

To prevent induced migration, the project will make it widely known that it can only employ people who lived in or near the project sites when the project started (which will be established through baseline social surveys). Interested and trained campesinos or natives will organize themselves into frog producer groups, which will operate under a special license, management plans, and operational plans in accordance with INRENA guidelines. To participate in the project, the frog producer groups will formally agree to protect their forests and prevent new immigration of external campesinos to the management areas (i.e., community based forest protection).

- Impacts on Illegal PDF trade:

The project will be able to pay rural inhabitants enough to diminish (or eliminate) their incentives to sell PDFs into the illegal pet trade. As a further disincentive, individuals who sell to illegal traders will no longer be able to sell to the project. Thus, it does not appear that the project will exacerbate the illegal trade in PDFs; in fact, the project is likely to reduce the illegal trade. The market study shows that consumers of the frogs prefer legally produced and exported frogs instead of smuggled ones, if the quality and price is acceptable.

- Deforestation:

The project provides rural inhabitants with an incentive for preserving directly over 15,000 hectares of tropical forest. In doing so, it will aim to create a network of conserved original habitats for at least 60 currently known Peruvian poison dart frog species and distinct variants. The project will establish agreements with communities in which they agree to not cut down the forest in exchange for participation in the frog production activities. In fact, the members of the producer units will also protect their backland forests to prevent new immigration and lumbering. Beyond that, the frog project will seek to sustainable produce and commercialize other NFTP products as well in order to improve overall value produced in standing rainforest. Finally, there will be close monitoring throughout project implementation to verify compliance. Anyone who violates the agreements will no longer be able to participate in the project.

- Safety of Frog Ranching Activities:

Peruvian poison dart frog species are not very toxic in the wild. It is not dangerous to touch the Peruvian PDFs and severe allergic reactions unheard of. In fact, PDFs produced via the ZIRA method can be completely nontoxic because they are not fed insects containing toxins. Thus, the project participants and the future clients should not be in any particular danger.

- Potential Creation of Inequity within Communities:

The project has developed a promising approach to distribute the benefits from frog sales within each participating community. In designing the income distribution plan, the sponsors have tried to avoid having a few inhabitants of a given community have a high income from frog sales while many other community members go without any income from the project. Although such an approach would have been easier from a technical and economic point of view (because it would allow the project to work with a smaller number of people), it would offer fewer social and ecological benefits. Instead, based on the total estimated income that could be generated from frog sales in each community, the sponsor will try to involve as many inhabitants as possible, such that each campesino obtains at least a basic salary.

- Impact on Indigenous People:

The project implementers have been advised of IFC’s policy with regard to indigenous communities. Some indigenous communities have already expressed interest in participating in the project. If it is feasible for the project implementers to sustainably produce PDFs in these areas, then they will seek to maximize benefits for the indigenous communities in a culturally sensitive way.

Location of environmental documents In locally affected community

The Environmental Review Summary (ERS) is available locally via Asociacion Curmi (see below).