Peruvian Government Research Articles

Low Price of Fresh Milk and its Implications in Peruvian Family Farming

The dairy activity in Peru is being affected by the low prices in the purchase of fresh milk, discouraging the producers of family agriculture, which has forced them to take a position of social struggle and sell head of cattle to continue sustaining the family economy. This situation directly affects the main producing areas, located within the dairy basin of the departments of Cajamarca, Arequipa, and Lima, which represents 51.7% of the national production of fresh milk that is collected by three large dairy companies and formal and informal artisanal processors. The different purchase and sale channels have generated vulnerability in the price that small and medium producers receive today for fresh milk, which in the last ten years has been lower than international prices. Moreover, the industry is under a tax regulatory framework that has given it market advantages, generating disparity in terms of the benefits of Peruvian dairy producers in addition to the structural limitations that do not allow improving their performance. Therefore, it is expected and recommended that the Peruvian government fulfill a regulatory and articulating role within the system, generating policies, plans, workshops, among others, in order to improve the articulation and performance of the system for the benefit of families that call for state intervention to improve their living conditions and economic stability.

Debilitated Lifeworlds: Women's Narratives of Forced Sterilization as Delinking from Reproductive Rights.

Peasant women in Cajamarca, Peru, who were sterilized by the Peruvian government in the 1990s, narrate their experiences of reproductive abuse using Andean medical principles of debilidad and fuerza (debility and strength) (Tapias 2006). In their narratives, many describe a generalized sense of loss of strength resulting from the procedure. This contrasts with the reproductive rights framework's emphasis on infertility as the main harm. In this article, I ponder the dissonance between these two frameworks and propose the concept of debilitated lifeworlds as decolonial feminist delinking (Mignolo 2007) from human fertility‐centric narratives. This concept is methodologically significant as a decolonial attunement to local motifs to talk about abuse and for weaving a constellation of embodied, emotional, social, and family harms. This article contributes to the emerging field of “decolonial reproductive studies” (Smietana et al. 2018: 117).

Chimbote, Projected: Urbanity from Up Above and from Down Below

In the late 1940s, the U.S. architectural firm Town Planning Associates produced a master plan for Chimbote in Peru as part of a regional development scheme centered on a new steel mill. The plan included designs for housing for the city’s workforce of rural–urban migrants, with proposals ranging from patio houses to provisional dwellings based on the vernacular self-built housing prevalent in Chimbote’s barriadas (squatter settlements). However, the influx of migrants vastly exceeded estimates, resulting in extensive unregulated urban growth. In an effort to remediate this problem, the Peruvian government selected the city as a key site for aided self-help housing projects beginning in the late 1950s. In Chimbote, Projected: Urbanity from Up Above and from Down Below, Helen Gyger explores the intertwined nature of authorized and unauthorized urbanisms in postwar Chimbote and employs a close reading of visual and textual sources to advance a comparative analysis of contrasting proposals that architectural history has previously separated into distinct categories.

In This Issue

The history of Notre-Dame in Paris is well understood thanks to the work of scholars using documentary and archaeological evidence, but the overall logic of the cathedral’s evolving design has received surprisingly little systematic attention. To provide a complementary perspective on Notre-Dame’s development, Robert Bork applies geometrical analysis to precise laser scans of the building’s fabric. In The Design Geometry of Notre-Dame in Paris he argues that the original designer developed a master plan for the whole cathedral, based largely on the geometry of equilateral triangles. Subsequent modifications to this scheme evidently involved increasing the vault height and flying buttress steepness in the choir and subtly altering the proportions of the nave and façade, but the original design continued to be respected in its broad outlines. This analysis thus sheds new light on the tension between innovation and conformity that characterized work on Notre-Dame in the first century of its history.The dominance of civil architectural paradigms in the analysis of the design of the Vatican Borgo fortifications, including the Castel Sant’Angelo, has generated a scholarly narrative that focuses on the design decisions of individual architects. However, such an approach cannot adequately address the complexity of a large-scale military project with unique site-based limitations. In The Longue Durée of the Borgo Fortifications, Ian Verstegen presents the fortification of the Borgo as a collective, military problem, where the site dictated the solution. Through a review of payments and drawings, this essay reveals that the majority of work occurred under Paul III and his engineers, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, and Giacomo Fusti Castriotto, who not only determined most of the Borgo’s design but also concluded trenchwork much earlier than previously supposed. Moreover, rather than focusing on individual designers, the article underscores the importance of military engineering site requirements and the contributions of anonymous soldiers to this project.Beginning in 1963, tourists yearning to experience the world of Gone with the Wind could finally visit the Old South outside Atlanta, Georgia. The Antebellum Plantation was one of the first attractions to open at the state’s new Stone Mountain Park, constructed around the world’s largest Confederate monument. But while the state of Georgia created the park and finished the memorial as part of its campaign against racial integration, it outsourced the plantation to private investors as a for-profit concession. Motivated by personal agendas, these citizens—led by Christie Bell Kennedy, founder of Stone Mountain Plantation Inc.—brought together vernacular historical buildings from across the state, transforming them to create a polished fantasy of White leisure. In The 1960s Antebellum Plantation at Stone Mountain, Georgia, Lydia Mattice Brandt and Philip Mills Herrington provide a careful examination of the history, architecture, and decoration of the Antebellum Plantation, still remarkably unchanged more than fifty years later. Their study reveals a fraught, ad hoc design process long disguised by the graceful big house at the center of the state-owned attraction.In the late 1940s, the U.S. architectural firm Town Planning Associates produced a master plan for Chimbote in Peru as part of a regional development scheme centered on a new steel mill. The plan included designs for housing for the city’s workforce of rural–urban migrants, with proposals ranging from patio houses to provisional dwellings based on the vernacular self-built housing prevalent in Chimbote’s barriadas (squatter settlements). However, the influx of migrants vastly exceeded estimates, resulting in extensive unregulated urban growth. In an effort to remediate this problem, the Peruvian government selected the city as a key site for aided self-help housing projects beginning in the late 1950s. In Chimbote, Projected: Urbanity from Up Above and from Down Below, Helen Gyger explores the intertwined nature of authorized and unauthorized urbanisms in postwar Chimbote and employs a close reading of visual and textual sources to advance a comparative analysis of contrasting proposals that architectural history has previously separated into distinct categories.

Air Quality Analysis in Lima, Peru Using the NO2 Levels during the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown

The emergence of the new COVID-19 virus in Peru forced the Peruvian government to take swift measures to stop its proliferation. Consequently, a state of emergency was declared, which included mandatory social isolation and quarantine. This action meant that people would transit only in emergency cases. In this context, this study’s objective is to analyze the air quality changes in terms of the capital city’s NO2 levels due to these government decisions using satellite imagery data obtained from the Sentinel-5P satellite. One critical problem is the lack of spatially distributed air quality data. The Peruvian Meteorological Service only monitors air quality in Lima, the capital city. In addition, the air quality ground stations are not always functioning. Thus, there is a need to find new reliable methods to complement the official data obtained. One method of doing so is the use of remote sensing products, although the accuracy and applicability are yet to be determined; therefore, this is the article’s focus. A temporal and spatial analysis was developed quantitatively and qualitatively to measure the levels of NO2 in eighteen regions of Lima to contrast the quarantine’s effect on polluting gas emission levels. The measurements are also compared with the official Peruvian data from ground sensors using Pearson correlation coefficients, thus, showing that Sentinel-5P data can be used for changes in the mean daily concentration of NO2. We also developed the first version of an open platform that converts the satellite data into a friendly format for visualization. The results show NO2 ambient concentration reductions compared to 2019 of between 60% and 40% in the first two weeks and between 50% and 25% in the following two weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown. However, this effect could not be observed two months after the start of the lockdown.

Open Form: Oskar Hansen and Svein Hatloy’s proposal for PREVI — Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda — Perú

The call for the housing estate of PREVI (Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda – Experimental Housing Project), carried out in 1969, in Lima, happened in a specially fruitful moment of reflections concerning changes in architecture and, mainly, in cities. In this context of criticism, issues like citizen participation and the change in architecture over time became key. This was a process that strongly influenced the proposals of 13 international teams that participated in the call in Peru. This project lab, promoted by the Peruvian government with UN funds, became, according to the opinion of the authors of this article, a fundamental experience in social housing in Latin America in the 20th century, concentrating seminal projects whose ideas still reverberate today. If all international architects who were invited to participate in the call already had, at the time, a significant repertoire in the housing issue, and were greatly in tune with the critical production of their contemporary colleagues, the Polish team, with Oskar Hansen and Svein Hatloy, brought to Peru a very peculiar work experience that they had been developing in Eastern Europe. Two structuring concepts of the practical and theoretical practice of Oskar Hansen and his wife, Zofia Hansen — the ‘Open Form’ and its deployment at an urban scale, the ‘Linear Continuous System’ (LCS) — appear in the proposal for PREVI as instruments for the search of a flexible architecture in space and time, open to citizen participation and intervention and adequate to their sociocultural peculiarities. Therefore, the present article aims at rescuing, through a more specific outline, the guiding ideas of the Polish proposal for the call and, in a broader sense, raising the importance of PREVI as a fundamental reference for social housing projects nowadays.

Is timber management a realistic conservation alternative for indigenous Amazonian communities?

Indigenous people, who are often economically, socially, and culturally dependent on forests, represent important stakeholders in forest management. Due to high costs, indigenous communities partner with external institutions to harvest timber, often resulting in forest degradation within their territories, internal and external conflicts, and disinterest in starting new timber management projects. Using a standardized methodology to investigate the outcomes of previous community forestry projects presents an opportunity to better understand and potentially resolve further issues. To investigate this issue, we conducted research in the Sinchi Roca I native community in Peru. Our objectives were: (1) to describe the process of timber harvest; (2) to analyze gender differences in local perception of timber management; and (3) to evaluate the outcomes of the timber activity, applying socioeconomic criteria and indicators. Data collection included in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and intra-household surveys. We found that locals partnered with a company for timber harvesting, which led to a sanction from the Peruvian government. Timber harvesting was negatively perceived in the community, with 83.75% of survey respondents dissatisfied with the activity and 88.75% reporting internal and external conflicts due to the presence of the company. Moreover, women did not have a major role in timber harvesting, nor did they actively participate in planning meetings. Results suggest that improving future timber management projects in indigenous communities requires that projects be adapted to local realities and encourage local participation, including training for locals in governance, administration of documents, and negotiations with external stakeholders.

Repercussions of the COVID-19 Health Crisis In the Peruvian Informal Sector

After the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) a pandemic, the Peruvian government took preventive measures to counteract the spread of the virus by issuing Supreme Decree No. 008-2020-SA. This decree contains prevention and control measures aimed at ports, airports, land entry points, educational centers, transportation and workplaces.

Analysis and Prediction of Recorded COVID-19 Infections in the Constitutional Departments of Peru using Specialized Machine Learning Techniques

The COVID-19 pandemic in Peru caused thousands of losses where it can be seen that until the year 2021 there are more than 200,000 deaths among men and women throughout the country. This figure is alarming and could have been avoided in time if the necessary care had been taken and the norms imposed by the Peruvian government had been followed. In the last months of the year 2020, we began to see a decrease in deaths and infected by COVID-19, which caused the public to calm down, which led to some citizens not following the biosecurity protocols, consequently causing a second wave of infected people. Therefore, it is necessary to be able to prevent a third wave since in 2021 a reduction was again visualized, which meant a reduction of deaths and infected by COVID-19, so one option to be alert to a possible third wave is to use machine learning techniques with a data set with the ministry of health to predict in which parts of the country there is the possibility of new contagions and identify which gender will be more prone to be infected in this way be aware of which parts of the country should be prioritized and thus contribute to the stability and harmony of the country. Keywords— Covid-19; Machine Learning; Software prototype; Prediction models

From criminals to citizens: The applicability of Bolivia’s community-based coca control policy to Peru

Between 2006 and 2019, Bolivia emerged as a world leader in formulating a participatory, non-violent model to gradually limit coca production in a safe and sustainable manner while simultaneously offering farmers realistic economic alternatives to coca. Our study finds that not only has this model reduced violence, but it has effectively expanded social and civil rights in hitherto marginal regions. In contrast, Peru has continued to conceptualize ‘drugs’ as a crime and security issue. This has led to U.S.-financed forced crop eradication, putting the burden onto impoverished farmers, generating violence and instability. At the request of farmers, the Peruvian government has made a tentative move towards implementing one aspect of Bolivia’s community control in Peru. Could it work? We address this question by focusing on participatory development with a special emphasis on the role of local organizations and the relationship between growers and the state. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, focus group discussions and secondary research, we find that for community control to have any chance of success in Peru, grassroots organizations must be strengthened and grower trust in the state created. The study also demonstrates that successful participatory development in drug crop regions is contingent on land titling and robust state investment, which strengthens farmer resolve to participate so as to avoid a return to the repression of the past.

Introducing environmental decision-making criteria to foster Green Public Procurement in Peru.

Governments in the Global South have recently started to align their public procurement regulations considering Green Public Procurement (GPP) guidelines to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 12. In this context, it is important to establish environmental criteria to help decision making after analyzing the variety of options available in the market. Thus, using as examples two of the most acquired products in public procurement in Peru: Medium-density particleboard melamine furniture and paper offset, the aim of this paper is to determine the main environmental hotspots and therefore show the path to foster GPP in Peru. To achieve this goal, a Life Cycle Assessment was carried out considering it is a suitable environmental management tool to quantify environmental impacts. For this, a set of scenarios were modeled and compared for each of the two products selected, covering different geographical and technological options that are currently purchased by the Peruvian government. Results demonstrated that it is possible to attain considerable reductions in the environmental impact of the products analyzed if the main critical stages throughout their life cycle are identified and adequate solutions are applied to avoid burden shifting. Moreover, we argue that it is important for developing countries to carry out case-specific life-cycle inventories as they provide higher-quality information based on the particular characteristics of regional or local industries, allowing the determination of more realistic environmental impact mitigation benchmarks. Nevertheless, the inclusion of lifecycle-based criteria in GPP must be performed cautiously, avoiding command and control regulations, as numerous challenges remain in terms of capacity building, environmental awareness, and environmental information, and transparency in emerging and developing economies. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:1206-1220. © 2021 SETAC.

Pandemic State Failure, Hydrocarbon Control, and Indigenous Territorial Counteraction in the Peruvian Amazon

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Peruvian government failed to protect its sparsely populated Amazon region. While infections were still rising, resource extraction was quickly approved to continue operations as a declared essential service that permitted an influx of workers into vulnerable indigenous territories despite weak or almost absent local healthcare. This article analyzes territorial counteraction as an indigenous response to pandemic national state failure, highlighted in a case of particularly conflictive stakes of resource control: Peru’s largest liquid natural gas extraction site Camisea in the Upper Amazon, home to several indigenous groups in the Lower Urubamba who engaged in collective action to create their own district. Frustration with the state’s handling of the crisis prompted indigenous counteraction to take COVID-19 measures and territorial control into their own hands. By blocking boat traffic on their main river, they effectively cut off their remote and roadless Amazon district off from the outside world. Local indigenous control had already been on the rise after the region had successfully fought for its own formal subnational administrative jurisdiction in 2016, named Megantoni district. The pandemic then created a moment of full indigenous territorial control that openly declared itself as a response and replacement of a failed national state. Drawing on political ecology, we analyze this as an interesting catalyst moment that elevated long-standing critiques of inequalities, and state neglect into new negotiations of territory and power between the state and indigenous self-determination, with potentially far-reaching implications on state-indigenous power dynamics and territorial control, beyond the pandemic.

THE TAMBOS OF THE PERUVIAN RURAL TERRITORY: A SYSTEMATIC CATALOG PROPOSAL AS DESIGN STRATEGY

The tambos are small buildings that function as social platforms in Peruvian rural areas to provide essential services to the entire vulnerable and dispersed rural population. The Peruvian government intends to implement more than a thousand new tambos in the national territory. However, this social infrastructure program faces heterogeneous conditions and demands according to Peru’s geographical and population complexity. This article proposes developing a systematic catalog of modular components as a design strategy for the architectural approach of future tambos. Georeferenced data and climate design guidelines were used to conduct this study. As a result, the systematic catalog synthesizes critical variables such as natural regions and programmatic requirements to generate diverse architectural configurations of the new tambos. Therefore, these future buildings would be optimally articulated in different areas of influence under a systematic vision of the Peruvian rural territory.

The Effects of COVID-19 on the Mental Health of the Peruvian Police and Armed Forces

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the mental health of the general population. However, little attention has been given to the mental health of a group considered an essential category, police officers and the members of the armed forces. This study examined the mental health of 204 members of the armed forces and the police department assigned to monitor the public roads to enforce the measures adopted by the Peruvian government. The instruments used in the study included the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S), and the Revised Mental Health Inventory-5. The results indicate that (during the last month), the majority of the participants felt nervous and edgy (81.8%), and hopeless or sad (68.2%). According to the participants, the feelings of hopelessness and discouragement were significantly affecting their ability to rebound (84.3%). Participants had mixed feelings in regards of the fear generated by COVID-19, 42.6% reported extreme anxiety or panic, 40.6% were uncomfortable to think about COVID-19, and 42.6% were afraid of losing their lives due to the illness. The fear of COVID-19 predicted 19.7% (Adjusted R2 = 0.197; F = 21.32; p = .000) of the participants’ mental health well-being. In summary, the results suggest the presence of important psychological stressors related to COVID-19 that could potentially led to the development of mental health disorders among the Peruvian police and armed forces.

Interpersonal Relationships in the 1996–1997 Japanese Embassy Hostage Crisis in Peru: A View from Relational Development Theory

This paper applies relational development theory to the Japanese embassy hostage crisis that took place in Lima, Peru (from December 1996 to April 1997). During the hostage crisis, members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a Peruvian terrorist organization, stormed the Japanese embassy in Lima and took hundreds of people hostage. They presented their demands to the Peruvian government in exchange for the safety of the hostages. Developed by Mark L. Knapp, the theory describes how interactants—e.g., couples, negotiators, and so forth—go through relationship stages to strengthen their interpersonal communication or social bond. In this conceptual analysis, two important relationships are explored: (1) The relationship between the MRTA and the hostages and (2) the relationship between the MRTA and the Peruvian government (including President Fujimori). Overall, the authors of this analysis found that the MRTA-hostage relationship was ultimately more favorable than the Fujimori-MRTA relationship.

Unintended Effects From the Expansion of the Non-Contributory Health System in Peru

Over the last two decades, the Peruvian government has made great efforts to improve access to health care by significantly augmenting the coverage of the non-contributory public health care system Seguro Integral de Salud (SIS). This expansion has a positive impact on welfare and public health indicators, as it limits the risk of catastrophic health-related costs for previously uninsured individuals and allows for the appropriate treatment of illnesses. However, it also entails some unintended consequences for informality, tax revenues, and GDP, since a few formal agents are paying for a service that the majority of (informal) agents receive for free. In this paper, we use a general equilibrium model calibrated for Peru to simulate the expansion of SIS to quantify the unintended effects. We find that overall welfare increases, but informality rises by 2.7 percent, while tax revenues and output decrease by roughly 0.1 percent. Given the extent of the expansion in eligibility, the economic relevance of these results seems negligible. However, this occurs because the expansion of coverage was mostly funded by reducing the spending per-insured person. In fact, we find larger costs if public spending is increased to improve the quality of service given universal coverage.

Perceptions, priorities, and project delivery problems in women's and environmental health in Peru: a qualitative study

BackgroundWomen living in low-income and-middle-income countries experience increased exposure and worse effects of environmental threats and climate change. Peru is especially susceptible to a range of environmental exposures, including high levels of pollutants, contamination associated with extractive industries, and flooding exacerbated by the ongoing climate emergency. International policies and movements are increasingly calling for a gendered approach to planetary health. However, little research has been done explicitly examining environmental threats to women's health in Peru. We aimed to understand the current Peruvian research, advocacy, and policy landscape at the environment-gender health nexus. MethodsWe did in-depth semi-structured interviews in Spanish via online Zoom video conferencing (audio only) with key informants from the Peruvian Government, academia, and non-governmental organisations to explore their perception of environmental health threats and priorities, population vulnerability factors, awareness of projects and collaborations on these topics, and the role of gender in their work. We used thematic analysis to compare priorities, gender sensitivity, and barriers and facilitators to delivering successful women's environmental health projects in the country. FindingsSince July 14, 2020, we have interviewed 16 people, with four further interviews planned to take place before the end of May, 2021. Several interviewees mentioned the detrimental role of weak institutions, multilevel corruption, and the absence of interdisciplinarity and intersectorality across programmes and research. Barriers to successful collaboration across organisations and sectors were clearly identified, including funding scandals related to extractive economies, high staff turnovers impairing long-term programme implementation, and machismo culture in both organisations and communities. By contrast, some interviewees highlighted that successful collaborations were instead built on direct relationships, reputation, trust, and transparency. Women's empowerment was also described as important for successful programme delivery, especially in female-led associations. Some interviewees emphasised the so-called invisibilisation of vulnerable groups, such as girls, teenagers, pregnant women, victims of gender-based violence, and LGBTQI people. Existing health inequalities varied by setting and cultural context and were deeply and silently exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. InterpretationThese qualitative findings highlight the multiple and inter-related contextual issues faced by environmentally threatened communities in Peru, and how macrostructural barriers contribute to a paucity of sustainable, gender-oriented, environmental health projects. FundingPartially funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council.

Meteorological factors and childhood diarrhea in Peru, 2005\u20132015: a time series analysis of historic associations, with implications for climate change

BackgroundGlobal temperatures are projected to rise by ≥2 °C by the end of the century, with expected impacts on infectious disease incidence. Establishing the historic relationship between temperature and childhood diarrhea is important to inform future vulnerability under projected climate change scenarios.MethodsWe compiled a national dataset from Peruvian government data sources, including weekly diarrhea surveillance records, annual administered doses of rotavirus vaccination, annual piped water access estimates, and daily temperature estimates. We used generalized estimating equations to quantify the association between ambient temperature and childhood (< 5 years) weekly reported clinic visits for diarrhea from 2005 to 2015 in 194 of 195 Peruvian provinces. We estimated the combined effect of the mean daily high temperature lagged 1, 2, and 3 weeks, in the eras before (2005–2009) and after (2010–2015) widespread rotavirus vaccination in Peru and examined the influence of varying levels of piped water access.ResultsNationally, an increase of 1 °C in the temperature across the three prior weeks was associated with a 3.8% higher rate of childhood clinic visits for diarrhea [incidence rate ratio (IRR): 1.04, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.03–1.04]. Controlling for temperature, there was a significantly higher incidence rate of childhood diarrhea clinic visits during moderate/strong El Niño events (IRR: 1.03, 95% CI: 1.01–1.04) and during the dry season (IRR: 1.01, 95% CI: 1.00–1.03). Nationally, there was no evidence that the association between temperature and the childhood diarrhea rate changed between the pre- and post-rotavirus vaccine eras, or that higher levels of access to piped water mitigated the effects of temperature on the childhood diarrhea rate.ConclusionsHigher temperatures and intensifying El Niño events that may result from climate change could increase clinic visits for childhood diarrhea in Peru. Findings underscore the importance of considering climate in assessments of childhood diarrhea in Peru and globally, and can inform regional vulnerability assessments and mitigation planning efforts.

Effects of COVID-19 pandemic control measures on air pollution in Lima metropolitan area, Peru in South America.

The sanitary measures implemented to control and prevent an increase in infections due to the COVID-19 pandemic have produced an improvement in the air quality of many urban areas around the world. We assessed air quality during the COVID-19 pandemic for particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), NO2 and O3 in in metropolitan area of Lima, Peru between pre-lockdown period (February 1 and March 15 of 2020), historical period (March 16 to April 30 2017–2019) and lockdown period (March 16 to April 30, 2020). The complete national lockdown that was implemented in Peru produced statistically significant reductions in the in-air pollutant (PM10 (-40% and -58%), PM2.5 (-31% and -43%) and NO2 (-46% and -48%)), as recorded by the by the ground-based air quality monitoring network throughout the metropolitan area, compared with the corresponding concentrations for the previous weeks and over the same period for 2017–2019. Analysis of the spatial Distribution of satellite data also show decreases in the concentrations of PM10, PM2.5 and NO2 as a result of the containment measures and suspension of activities implemented by the Peruvian government. The concentrations of O3 significantly increased (11% and 170%) as a result of the decrease in the concentration of NO2, confirming that the study area is a hydrocarbon-limited system, as previously reported. The results obtained contribute to the assessment by the regulatory agencies of the possible strategies of control and monitoring of air pollution in the study area.Graphical abstract Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11869-021-00990-3.

The Brutish Museums By Dan Hicks

What is the role of a museum “curator”? To take care of and safeguard the objects in the museum’s collection? Or to cure the misdeeds of the past? Increasingly, it seems that those in charge of museums see themselves not as guardians of their historic treasures, but as the shameful and reluctant custodians of ill-gotten booty. The great collections of the world are falling over themselves to disembarrass themselves of anything that might be associated with a disagreeable part of history. In 2010, Yale University agreed to return a collection of antiquities to Peru, following a court claim by the Peruvian government; the items in the collection had been taken from the Inca site of Machu Pichu in the 1910s. In February 2019, the City of Stuttgart announced that it was returning to what is now Namibia a whip and a bible that were looted in 1893. Most recently, the French National Assembly voted in September 2020 to return 26 artefacts, currently in the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum, that were taken from the Kingdom of Dahomey following its defeat in the Franco-Dahomean Wars of the 1890s.1 The most famous, and controversial example is, of course, the claim by Greece for the return of the ‘Elgin’ or ‘Parthenon’ (depending on whether you are a ‘keeper’ or a ‘returner’) Marbles from the British Museum. But in every case, there is the same pattern: the wrongs of the past should be righted by repatriation of items of cultural, or totemic, significance.