Basic Income Pilot With Indigenous Peruvian Communities Cuts Food Insecurity From 73% to 26%
Two years of unconditional cash, about £2 a day, also coincided with widespread reforestation and spring-restoration work.
A two-year basic income pilot run by the climate charity Cool Earth in three Asháninka communities in Peru's Amazon cut households' inability to afford nutritious food from 73% to 26%, according to analysis by the University of Bath's UBI Bath research group, published on 20 October 2026.
The pilot
- 211 participants each received 1,032 Peruvian soles (about £2 a day), to spend as they chose.
- The "Cash Plus" model added community-led training on financial education, Indigenous rights, governance, conservation and climate change.
- Cool Earth designed it with two Indigenous women-led organizations, ONAMIAP and Omiaasec, and partnered with AidKit to deliver the cash.
What changed
- Meal skipping fell from 49% to 22%.
- Households able to save rose from 49% to 70%.
- Participants forced to leave home for precarious work dropped from 43% to 18%.
- About 90% adopted environmentally beneficial practices, and 87% joined collective actions such as native reforestation, reducing forest burning and restoring water springs.
- Self-reported wellbeing scores more than doubled.
"Cash makes a massive and immediate difference to people's lives." — Dr Neil Howard, University of Bath
What's next
Cool Earth plans to continue the work, with a design phase in Peru's central Amazon later in 2026 and plans for other Peruvian communities and Colombia.
Honest context
The researchers note the study was relatively short and had no control group, so the results show associations rather than proof of cause, and more research is needed on long-term impact and whether it can scale.
