A Basic Income Pilot in the Peruvian Amazon Cut Hunger and Boosted Forest Protection

Can a regular, no-strings income help people and rainforests at the same time? Early evidence from Peru suggests it can. On 20 October 2026, the University of Bath published its analysis of a two-year basic income pilot run by the climate charity Cool Earth in three Indigenous communities in Peru's Asháninka region of the Amazon.

The 211 participants received 1,032 soles each, described as the equivalent of about £2 a day, to spend however they chose. The cash was paired with community-led training in financial education, Indigenous rights and governance, environmental conservation and climate change, a model the researchers call "Cash Plus". The pilot was co-developed with two Indigenous women's organisations, Onamiap and Omiaasec, and the aid and technology organisation AidKit helped work out how to deliver cash to forest communities.

The results were striking. The share of households unable to afford nutritious food fell from 73% to 26%, and participants skipping meals fell from 49% to 22%. Households able to save rose from 49% to 70%, and the share forced to leave home for precarious outside work dropped from 43% to 18%. Self-reported wellbeing scores more than doubled, and over three-quarters of participants helped fund a family member's education. On the environment, close to 90% adopted beneficial practices, and 87% took part in collective actions such as native reforestation, reducing forest burning and restoring water springs.

"Cash makes a massive and immediate difference to people's lives," said Dr Neil Howard, who leads the UBI Bath research group. Sofia Vargas, Cool Earth's country manager in Peru, said the pilot shows that a regular income does not create dependency: "this first of a kind pilot shows the opposite." Elida de la Cruz, vice-president of Onamiap, said the communities have "the capacity to carry out these projects on the ground."

The researchers are candid about the limits. The trial was small, ran for a relatively short period and had no control group, so more research is needed on long-term impacts and on whether the model can scale. Cool Earth plans to continue the approach, start a design phase with new communities in Peru's central Amazon later in 2026 and extend the model to other communities in Peru and Colombia, and it has been sharing the findings with policymakers in the UK and Colombia.