CT is demonstrating the technical feasibility and potential benefits to rural development of reviving the agricultural infrastructure of the past. The Trust has also shown how critical it is that such projects be tackled within a multidisciplinary approach, based on a sound framework of preliminary research and feasibility studies.
But most crucial of all to the revival of these systems and their sustainability are concerted programmes of social reinforcement. In this way, local communities who have often lost the social cohesion and community ethos of the past, become accustomed once more to organizing themselves, not simply to reconstruct the physical infrastructure of canals and terraces, but to maintain them and apportion their benefits equitably to all community members within an agreed social framework of rights and responsibilities.
Alongside the strengthening of traditional mechanisms for cooperative decision-making, CT has worked on a broad front to support local Andean community development, especially to promote gender equality and facilitate individual access to all local and regional representative institutions. This is to ensure that in the longer term rural communities no longer exist in isolation and that they exercise to the full their democratic rights.
Looking to the future and from the socio-economic studies it has undertaken, the Trust believes that there is now the opportunity of creating a new kind of revived agricultural society which combines centuries-old, co-operative Andean traditions with a new entrepreneurial spirit represented by family members from highland communities who have experience of Peru's major cities.