Report launch: “Conservation Without Indigenous Peoples” - The case of the Kichwa territories in San Martin, Peru
On Thursday 10 November, several prominent Indigenous organisations representing the Kichwa people of the San Martin region in Peru, along with Forest Peoples Programme, held a webinar to launch a new report which explores how two State protected areas threaten the continuity of the Kichwa people’s territorial occupation and traditional forms of control and usufruct in that region.
The webinar opened with a preview of a new video “Dispossession” (“El Despojo”). The 16-minute short film details how Kichwa Indigenous communities are being systematically dispossessed of the territories they have occupied since before the creation of the modern Peruvian State.
In particular, the video shows the diverse ways in which Kichwa people relate to, use and protect their territories. It also shares testimonies of Kichwa community members regarding how they have been impacted by the imposition of exclusionary State-managed, natural protected areas within their ancestral lands; specifically, the Cordillera Azul National Park and Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area, created in 2001 and 2005 respectively.
Watch El Despojo (currently available in Spanish; English subtitles forthcoming)
The lead author of the report, anthropologist Miguel Valderrama Zevallos, began by describing the methodology used to develop the report with the participation of Kichwa communities and organisations.
He then went on to outline in more detail the contents of the report, which also includes two prologues. The first, written by Kichwa women leaders Marisol Garcia Apagueño and Nelsith Sangama, describes the Kichwa’s relationship to their ancestral territories; the second, authored by FPP staff members Matías Pérez Ojeda del Arco and Tom Younger, considers the Kichwa’s territorial struggles in relation to the commodification and trading of carbon within their lands by the Cordillera Azul REDD+ Project.
On the significance of this report, Miguel explained:
“That is the important point of this report: How many times here in the region and in relation to these natural protected areas, have the [Kichwa] organizations, communities and their representatives, really been able to give an independent account of how they relate to the management of these natural protected areas?
“Most of the time, those who talk about the relationship [these areas] have with the local population are the managers of the areas themselves, their administrators. And I always believe that they do it with the intention of showing how the management models are working: they always talk about good governance, participatory governance, shared governance, participatory planning. I believe that this, on the one hand, contributes to the discussion on how to improve management from a certain point of view.
“But this does not allow us to show how not only a planned management model has an impact on the population, but also that there is a model in practice that is violating rights; I think it is also important that this is narrated, that it can be told. I think the report helps a lot to have this [Indigenous] point of view on how these natural protected areas are implemented.”
There followed a presentation by Isidro Sangama, a renowned Kichwa leader and currently Secretary for the Defence of Indigenous Peoples' Territories of the regional Indigenous federation, the Coordinator for the Development and Defence of Indigenous Peoples of the San Martin Region (CODEPISAM) - one of the co-author organisations of the report. Isidro emphasised how successive actions by the Peruvian State have contributed to the gradual dispossession of Kichwa territories, including the Ministerial Resolution No. 0443-2019-MINAGRI, which blocks the titling of Indigenous lands superimposed by protected areas.
Isidro commented,
"We have been having dialogues - but negative dialogues - with the State. We all want our territories to go back to being Indigenous peoples' territories. Because they have been ours, and we want them to be, and to continue being Indigenous territories. These were our territories for many centuries, right up to our grandparents and parents’ time.
“But since 2001, when the Cordillera Azul National Park was created, there has been a total dispossession. They no longer allowed us to enter the Cordillera Azul National Park, for the simple reason that they blamed us, claiming that we are the destroyers of these territories. But on the contrary, for more than 500 years we have been taking care [of our land], thinking that our children, our grandchildren, will continue living in those areas, but the State thought the opposite.
“The State has created the Park, so that we can be dispossessed, and now we are suffering the consequences all around the Park.”
Isidro closed by explaining the harmful impacts of these natural protected areas on Kichwa people’s livelihoods and practices, including the salt mines which have formed part of their culture and economies for centuries, and reiterated the Kichwa’s demands for the demarcation, delimitation and titling of their collective lands.
Speaking of the exclusionary way in which the Cordillera Azul National Park has been imposed on Kichwa communities and managed by the NGO CIMA, Samuel Pinedo, Kichwa leader and President of the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Peoples of the Lower Huallaga San Martin (FEPIKBHSAM), stated,
“We believe that [CIMA] should have taken an inclusive approach to administration … We as Indigenous communities do not know how they are managing their governance, [or] how they administer their budgets. We, as natives and as Indigenous peoples, have been doing the work of conservation and preservation without economic benefits, because this is our culture, this is our reason for existence...”
With regards to the Kichwa’s struggle to demand greater accountability in the way the Cordillera Azul National Park is managed and benefits shared, Samuel explained,
“When we make demands and put pressure on them to clarify many things that they have been doing, we also feel violated, attacked and many times discriminated against, because there is a very bureaucratic apparatus to try to get our demands dealt with.
“In that sense we see their total lack of interest: they say they have a social vision, towards humanity and people, but in the true sense of the word this is not so. We cannot perceive any benefit from these natural protected areas as they call them. [We Indigenous] peoples have been protecting our territories for thousands of years and we will continue to do so from generation to generation because it is not our style, it is not our custom to destroy the forest.
“Other organizations cannot profit from something that we have been doing ourselves just by saying it is so.”
The final speaker, Nelsith Sangama Sangama, Kichwa leader and part of the leadership of national Amazonian peoples organisation AIDESEP, emphasised how the current situation faced by the Kichwa connects to longer histories of dispossession and exclusion of Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon:
“Before, when they sold rubber and expanded their mines, our kin were killed and forced to migrate to other places. But the only resource we have left in the territory is the forest, and we want to be part of it.
“Listen carefully, representatives of the State: we want to participate. We want to be included. Right now, the work they are doing excludes us; we are not part of the work they are doing. They say that they are doing inclusive work, that the Indigenous communities are participating. But this is totally false.”
Nelsith also questioned how it is possible that the Cordillera Azul National Park has been selling carbon credits for 14 years, and yet the Peruvian Ministry of Environment still does not have an official register of carbon trades.
She ended by sharing the platform of demands which the Kichwa organisations presented to the Peruvian Ministry of Culture (MINCUL) and the National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State (SERNANP) at a high-level meeting held in Chazuta on 3 September 2022:
-
Prior consultation of the Cordillera Azul National Park and the REDD+ carbon project, in accordance with the international and national normative framework that protects the rights of indigenous peoples.
-
Demarcation of collective territories within Cordillera Azul National Park, according to recent regulations, and that these territories are legitimately visible in the NPA Master Plan.
-
Accountability and transparency on the part of CIMA and SERNANP in the Kichwa communities, with the presence of the Ministry of Culture and the federations.
-
Full and effective participation in the management of Cordillera Azul National Park.
-
Distribution of carbon credit benefits to Kichwa communities.
-
Respect for the structure of the Indigenous movement. Any coordination should be with the accompaniment of the federations. This includes the development of the Mapping of Uses and Strengths (MUF) that the Park will carry out.
-
The communities do not agree with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) decision to award the PNCAZ through inclusion on its Green List.
-
Reparations and compensation for 20 years of exclusion of the Indigenous communities.
-
Follow-up meeting of the signed agreement in a Kichwa community.
Aperçu
- Type de ressource:
- Actualités
- Date de publication:
- 23 novembre 2022
- Région:
- Pérou
- Programmes:
- Gouvernance territoriale Chaînes d’approvisionnement et commerce Politiques et financements pour le climat et les forêts Culture et savoirs Conservation et droits humains
- Partenaires:
- Consejo Étnico de los Pueblos Kichwa de la Amazonia (CEPKA) Federación de Pueblos Indígenas Kechwa Chazuta Amazonía (FEPIKECHA) Federación de Pueblos Indígenas Kechwas del Bajo Huallaga San Martín (FEPIKBHSAM)
