AIDESEP calls for modification of Peruvian Forestry Law which threatens indigenous peoples’ lands and rights

The executive committee of AIDESEP (the national indigenous peoples organisation of the Peruvian Amazon) has issued a critical analysis of the proposed regulations for Peru’s new Forestry Law. The analysis highlights some of its improvements including measures to enable state procurement of community forest products and the requirement of concession owners to include an assessment of their impact on surrounding areas in their management plans. However, it highlights that the observations made consistently over many years by indigenous organisations remain unincorporated. These include the failure to recognise indigenous peoples’ customary lands much of which remain without any ‘paperwork’ and which if not rectified could result in substantial overlaps between indigenous peoples’ lands and forestry concessions and an excessive bias towards the promotion of large scale logging and plantations over and above the support of community forest management.

They call on the government to take steps to ensure ‘independent indigenous participation…to correct and modify this proposal….and not repeat the mistake of the forestry law itself where the critical observations of AIDESEP were neither responded to nor debated’. Furthermore they also call for the implementation of independent audit of large scale forestry concessions in Peru as agreed as part of the World Bank’s Forest Investment programme. ‘…It is unacceptable to persist with this model in the current proposal (as)…existing studies show how the majority of these failed and ended up in violation of the law…At the very least (this model) must first be evaluated and only then proceed according to its results”

The regulations are currently being circulated for comments by Peru’s Ministry of Agriculture. The regulations are required to enable the implementation of Peru’s Forestry and Wildlife Law (29736) which was passed in 2011.

See AIDESEP's observations in full (Spanish only)