Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services and the Seed Access Challenge: What role for (community) seed banks in Peru?

In Peru, the Ministry of Environment (MINAM) and Regional Governments have shown strong support for Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services (PACS)-type incentive mechanisms since 2014. In 2019, MINAM began to apply PACS as a central component of its on-going GEF Agrobiodiversity (ABD) project which aims to cover over 150 communities by the end of 2022 in four high diversity Andean regions in Peru.

As part of GEF project implementation the establishment of seed banks managed by individual families is being supported. In this Briefing Paper we provide an overview of the principal concepts associated with seed banks and the participatory methods for supporting their development, before presenting the results of a rapid appraisal of the current stage of seed bank development under the GEF project.

Drucker, Adam G.; Ramirez, Marleni; Vernooy, Ronnie.