Infrastructure

In recent decades there has been a major expansion of large-scale infrastructure projects into indigenous peoples and forest peoples lands and territories in tropically forested countries. These projects include roads, railways, ports, power transmission lines, oil and gas pipelines, and hydroelectric dams. These projects tend to require large-scale investment and have often involved funding by international financial institutions such as the World Bank, The Inter-American Development Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank), national development banks (such as the Brazilian Development Bank), and private finance.

Why is it relevant to indigenous peoples and forest peoples?   

Large-scale infrastructure projects in or near indigenous peoples and forest peoples territories are often required to enable the implementation of other large-scale development projects, such as roads for mines and logging to transport raw materials and allow heavy machinery to access remote locations, hydroelectric dams to generate the energy required to process and smelt raw materials such as bauxite, or ports to ship raw materials overseas. They also open indigenous and traditional lands to outsiders, including those who deforest lands for commercial gain, who privatize them and convert them to agricultural lands or plantations, or those who engage in illegal mining or narcotic-related activities.

The environmental and social harms of these large-scale infrastructure projects and the activities that they facilitate have been widely documented. Issues include encroachment on and dispossession of indigenous peoples and forest peoples’ lands, forced relocation, desecration of sacred sites, destruction of forests and their habitats, loss of biodiversity, and undermining of traditional livelihoods. Indigenous women are often disproportionately affected by the negative impacts of these projects.

At the root of these harms is the failure to respect indigenous peoples and forest peoples inherent self-determination, land, territory, and resource rights and to consult them and obtain their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) when infrastructure projects are being designed, approved, and implemented. The failure to respect these human rights in the context of such highly controversial projects has frequently resulted in resistance by indigenous peoples. Their imposition by the state and external actors has resulted in huge burdens on these peoples and communities, generating tensions and conflicts between community members and in an alarming number of cases has involved threats to the lives and well-being of community leaders and representatives, including the criminalisation and killing of land rights defenders.

Infrastructure projects have impacts far beyond the area where the project that they are enabling is located, with roads, pipelines, or power transmission lines, potentially traversing, and coming close to, the territories of multiple indigenous peoples, including areas used by indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation or initial contact. If such projects are not handled in a way that guarantees respect for the rights and FPIC of all affected peoples, as required under international human rights standards, they also have the potential to generate conflicts between affected indigenous peoples.