The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) published this month a new study called: “Tacna-Arica and Parinacota cross-border productive ecosystem: Characterization of the territory, institutions and the integrated platform of agricultural innovation projects”with the objective of analyzing the agricultural and rural sector of the Tacna-Arica and Parinacota macro-region, in Chile and Peru, as an integrated agricultural ecosystem, making visible the characteristics, complexities and symmetries of the territories, productive chains and institutional systems.
It is a multidimensional and multisectoral effort that has the participation of representatives of sectoral ministries, regional governments, private companies and civil society organizations from both countries, and which was developed by Marcela Aedo, Elizabeth Bastías, David Casanova, Eugenio Doussoulin , Oscar Fernández, Vitelio Goykovic, Víctor López, Pilar Mazuela, William Potter, Octavio Sotomayor, Alfonso Tolmos and Mercedes van Bladel, members of the Agriculture Commission of the Tacna-Arica and Parinacota Productive Ecosystem, with the support of the Natural Resources Division and the Division of Productive and Business Development of ECLAC.
This document is carried out within the framework of the project “Productive development and spatial heterogeneity in Latin America: institutions and capacity development in the programming and implementation of regional productive policies”, executed by ECLAC and financed by the European Union. In addition, the production of this publication was coordinated jointly with the Jorge Basadre Grohmann National University (UNJBG) in Peru, and in Chile by the University of Tarapacá (UTA), together with various local, public and private institutions and representatives of society. civil.
Both houses of study have been working since 2019 on the project “Tacna – Arica and Parinacota Cross-Border Productive Ecosystem”, which seeks to create synergies and alliances that reinforce the integration process of this macro-region between Chile and Peru. This process has received technical assistance from ECLAC and the support and financing of the European Union. As background, it should be noted that, in May 2020, three workshops were organized to address the lines of development of the prioritized areas: renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and tourism. Since then, in the agricultural area, an inter-institutional group has been formed that has been working on the design of an integrated program of innovation projects and on carrying out complementary procedures to finance its execution.
Likewise, the joint effort of the UTA and the UNJBG have joined the Agricultural Research Institute (INIA), both in Chile and Peru, to form the driving force behind the project “Biodiversity, productive diversification and short circuits Arica and Parinacota”, marketing with native peoples and family farming of this productive ecosystem that is presented in this document.
Throughout its six chapters, the study seeks to promote agricultural innovation, with special emphasis on peasant agriculture and indigenous peoples, taking advantage of the high agricultural productive potential of both territories. One of the premises of the project is that local agriculture entails great wealth in terms of biodiversity and that this ecosystem has climatic, water and territorial characteristics that allow it to produce high-quality fruits, vegetables, flowers and seeds. In addition, which translates into a contribution of 7% to the regional GDP in Tacna and 5.2% in Arica.
All these factors, together with the potential of the ecosystem’s energy and tourism sector, constitute an ideal basis for promoting sustainable and inclusive economic development that adds value to the local economy. For this reason, the study highlights the ecosystem as a whole, making visible the agricultural and rural dimension of both countries, discussing the characteristics of their territories, productive chains and institutional systems, with their differences and similarities.
Finally, one of the conclusions of this work, which identified 77 innovation units in Chile and 11 of them in Peru, is that a better integration of the institutions participating in this project (as well as other actors linked to this innovation system) can generate additional synergies to accelerate the development of agriculture and agribusiness, as well as other related items and services. In the same way, synergies can be developed in the field of promoting rural tourism routes, new commercial circuits or in the management of local biodiversity conservation projects.
