Peruvian Wetlands: National Survey, Diagnosis, and Further Steps toward Their Protection

Abstract

Wetlands are crucial hydrological features that provide benefits, including ecosystem services and habitat conservation, protection from flooding associated with sea level rise and extreme events, water storage and treatment, recreation, and aesthetics, among others. Peru is one of the few countries in Latin America that has not developed a national wetland inventory. While this can in part be attributed to the limited availability of peer-reviewed publications in the English literature, a larger quantity of Peruvian wetland-related publications are available in Spanish, and are less accessible to the global population. In this paper, we developed an extensive review and synthesis of the Spanish literature, including university theses, peer-reviewed articles, and government reports. Our report focuses on evaluating the state of the art of Peruvian wetlands in terms of temporal evolution, geographical distribution, vested institutions, research topics (e.g., water quality, fauna, flora, microorganisms, etc.), and advances toward the conservation of wetlands. The analysis identified 274 wetland-related publications in Spanish (188 theses, 83 peer-reviewed, and 6 government reports) and a temporal increase in dissemination over the past two decades. The reports encompassed 161 distinct wetlands distributed nationwide; however, most of the investigations focused on only a few wetland bodies with a disproportionate concentration in just three administrative regions. This reveals that wetland-related research is unevenly distributed in Peru, and highlights a need to extend this knowledge to underrepresented systems and regions. Although Peru ranks third in South America for protected (Ramsar) wetland areas, case studies have revealed that wetlands in the country are vulnerable to human activities. Recent national legislation established in 2021 should help to address this challenge, as before this time, there was a more decentralized approach, whereby each administrative region held responsibility for the protection of their own wetlands. Collective findings indicate that research activity should be increased nationally in order to better understand the function and benefits of wetlands throughout Peru, in addition to the continued development and enforcement of regulations designed to protect these valuable ecosystems. Finally, since a national Peruvian wetland inventory is urgently needed, this analysis provides a baseline for this development of, as well as identifying gaps in, knowledge needed for appropriate national representation.