Sustainable rural development through community-based and bottom-linked ecotourism in the Chaparri Reserve Region

This project tackles the urgent challenge of triggering the sustainable development potential of Global South rural areas, notably of those with high poverty levels and living under the social, economic and environmental threats brought by the contemporary proliferation of extractive industries. This project addresses this development problem by stimulating sustainable rural development in the North of Peru through community-based and bottom-linked ecotourism. Through action research with expertise from complementary academic partners and stakeholders from the public, private and civil society sectors, new knowledge will be produced and integrated into a sustainable rural development assessment and a community-based ecotourism plan in the Chaparri Reserve Region as a case study. Researchers, students and stakeholders will be trained in participatory research processes, sustainable development, community-based ecotourism and strategies to bottom-up link local community innovations on the ground with the networks, policy programmes and investors that can further support them.