Dozens have been killed in recent clashes between indigenous protesters and police in Peru.
The protesters are opposing land reform laws that are designed to open up parts of the country to international investors.
The resulting political turmoil has seen the approval ratings of Alan Garcia, the Peruvian president, slip to just 21 per cent and Yehude Simon, the country’s prime minister, says he will step down in response to opposition demands.
In an effort to appease native tribal groups, last week Peru’s congress repealed two of the land reform laws.
Garcia wants to encourage the development of Peru’s rich mineral and forestry resources to aid the country’s economy – but local activists say he is going too far.
They say they are not seeing the profits from the oil, gas, logging and mining activities on their ancestral lands, but that they are witnessing some of the serious environmental effects of it.
What is the right balance to strike between economic development and protection of resource-rich native lands?
To discuss this Riz is joined by Luis Valdivieso Montano, Peru’s ambassador to the US, and Andrew Miller, an environmental and human rights campaigner for Amazon Watch, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the rainforest and advancing the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin.
