The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS), in strategic partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), launched a three-year circular economy project to serve rural border communities in Colombia and Peru, in the cities of Leticia and Caballococha, both located on the banks of the Amazon River-a region historically affected by conflict and geographic isolation.
The initiative will foster sustainable economic integration and resilience through a circular economy framework-an economic model that eliminates waste and pollution by keeping materials in use through reuse, recycling, and regeneration.
By applying a "waste-to-resource, resource-to-income" approach, the project focuses on three core pillars:
- Deploying community circular-economy pilots with transformation infrastructure;
- Building binational governance and institutional capacity between Colombia and Peru to ensure long-term sustainability;
- Empowering local communities through training in financial management, project development, environmental legislation, and resilient production.
"Circular economy models give remote border communities a way to protect the environment and grow their economies at the same time," said Mark Lambrides, Director of the OAS Department of Sustainable Development. "When Colombia and Peru work together across the banks of the same river, a shared waste problem becomes a shared source of local prosperity," added Director Lambrides.
Key project activities benefiting local communities in Leticia and Caballococha include the installation and operation of waste transformation pilots, providing targeted technical assistance to local community organizations, establishing commercial supply chains to bring local products to market, and systematically sharing knowledge across the region.
The initiative was officially presented during a two-day binational launch mission beginning on November 3. The mission brought together regional governors, municipal mayors, diplomatic representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Colombia and Peru, local producer associations, and technical research institutions. The agenda included site visits to local indigenous and producer communities along the Amazon, and the inauguration of local processing infrastructure and new technical training facilities in the Instituto de Educación Superior Tecnológico Público Mariscal Ramón Castilla in Caballococha.
