On Wednesday, February 1, 2023, at 9:30 in the morning, in the meeting room of the rectory, the rector of the National University of the Peruvian Amazon (UNAP), Dr. Rodil Tello Espinoza, received a visit from a delegation of research professors from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), made up of the architect Kleber Espinoza Díaz, the engineer Jorge Soria Navarro and the engineer Víctor Campos, who have been developing the Amazon Self-Sustainable Cities Project (CASA).
The PUCP multidisciplinary research team presented details of the CASA project, which is in phase 3, called: “Self-sustainable Itinerant Platform (PIA): Access to water and information for amphibian communities in the Amazon (2022-2024) ”, which is financed by the National Council for Science, Technology and Technological Innovation (CONCYTEC) and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI).
The PIA project seeks to co-produce a community space made up of a system independent of conventional water and drainage networks that also provides a satellite connection, which works autonomously implemented as a mobile infrastructure at the service of communities, reducing costs. access to water and information and facilitating the acceptance and appropriation of technology by users. The incorporation of local resources in its elaboration is sought, as well as the improvement of pre-existing local knowledge on the handling and management of water. Its communal use promotes access to quality water and generates public platforms for inclusion and dialogue through access to information.
It seeks to incorporate a social and intercultural approach in the design and implementation of urban infrastructure, generating alternatives to excessively technocratic views that result in infrastructure that is not appropriate for the socio-cultural and environmental context where they are located. It seeks, with this, to vindicate the ways of inhabiting the amphibian communities (floating and/or on stilt houses) that represent 20% of the settlements in Amazonian cities.
Amazonian Self-Sustainable Cities (CASA) is a research, action, and participation project whose main objective is to improve the quality of life of people in Amazonian cities. The appearance of cities has generated a radical change in the way of inhabiting the Amazon with the sedentary concentration of a large number of population, presenting challenges, since this way of inhabiting cannot fully coexist with the ecosystem and dynamic territory that surrounds it. . In the 21st century, we face additional challenges as a result of climate change and its effects on the Amazon ecosystem. The results of this project are born from exchanges with local authorities, non-governmental institutions and the population itself in which they sought to rescue the particular identity of the inhabited spaces of the Amazon, their customs and knowledge of adaptation and also their desires and vision for the future. .
Also present at the meeting were the Dean of the Faculty of Biological Sciences, Mildred García Dávila; the dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, Frida Sosa Amay; the dean of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Juan Manuel Rojas Amasifuén; the dean of the Faculty of Food Industries, Alengüer Alva Arévalo, and the professors of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering of the UNAP, Daniel Carrasco Montañez and Rosa Isabel Souza Nájar.