The Indigenous Guard of the Shipibo people face up to exclusionary conservation in Peru and propose an Indigenous ecological area

The Indigenous Guard of the Shipibo people in Peru through a recent statement challenges the paradigm of exclusionary conservation in the Ucayali region, where the Regional Conservation Area (ACR) Lago Imiria has cut off access to various livelihood strategies of local communities and has also not been properly managed by the environmental authorities that created it. The Guard demands an alternative model - an Indigenous conservation area.

The Indigenous Guard of the Shipibo people was created in November 2021 at the First Regional Meeting of Amazonian Indigenous Guards in the face of advancing illegal economies, deforestation and other territorial threats against Shipibo communities, as well as the lack of protection offered by the Peruvian State to safeguard their lives. From the exercise of their own autonomy, the Shipibo people decided to organise themselves to provide internal security for their communities with a territorial scope: the protection and recovery of their territories.

Read the proposal (in Spanish): Lake Imiria: Towards an Indigenous Ecological Area

The Guard has also been questioning another of the problems faced by their communities, namely the imposition of a biodiversity conservation model that excludes them. This is the case of the ACR Lake Imiria, which, as with other natural protected areas in Peru, was created without an adequate process of prior consultation to obtain free, prior and informed consent, as required by international law that protects Indigenous peoples, and even by the Peruvian Constitutional Court.

In a recent statement, the Indigenous Guard of the Shipibo people denounced some of the activities that have been affecting their communities in Lake Imiria, such as: (i) illegal fishing involving large fishing companies coming from the city of Pucallpa; (ii) trafficking of timber, non-timber and wildlife products; (iii) increased invasion of communal territories, deforestation and an increase of actors related to drug trafficking; (iv) contamination of the lake and surrounding forests due to chemical residues from coca plots and poisons used for fishing. In addition, the statement emphasises the ACR's restriction of access to the lake's resources.

Finally, the Indigenous Guard of the Shipibo people demands:

1. Legal exit of the ACR;

2. The formation of an Indigenous Ecological Area - administered by the local population; and

3. Budget proportional to the size of the new area constituted by the Indigenous communities and hamlets that have expressed that the ACR Lake Imiria model has not fulfilled the expectations of management since its imposed creation, and on the other hand has violated fundamental rights by cutting access to traditional livelihoods.