Peru

Abstract

Poverty in Peru increased in recent years, from 19.1% in 2016 to 28.4% in 2020, partly owing to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, it is now above the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) average of 26.3%. Extreme poverty also increased in that period from 5.2% to 8.6% and was on par with the LAC average (8.7%). The population living in completely informal households decreased from 67.9% in 2010 to 51.6% in 2018 but remained well above the LAC average of 36.3% in 2018. Regarding environmental indicators, in 2019, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per capita were 3.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (t CO2e), lower than the averages for LAC (6.3) and for countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (9.1). That year, the share of the population exposed to air pollution levels that pose risks to human health (PM2.5 at more than 10 µg/m3) was 98.4%, higher than 95.4% for LAC and 61.0% for the OECD. The marine protected area of Peru accounted for just 0.5% of its territorial waters in 2021, lower than averages for LAC (7.3%) and the OECD (18.6%). In June 2021, the government signed a decree that establishes the protected marine area of the Nazca Ridge National Reserve to 62 392 km2, thereby increasing the national marine protected area to almost 8% of territorial waters. On the fiscal side, environmentally related tax revenue was 0.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020, below LAC (1.0%) and the OECD (2.1%). Total tax revenues as a percentage of GDP in 2020 (15.2%) remained lower than the averages for LAC (21.9%) and the OECD (33.5%).