Indigenous leaders share adverse business impacts on communities and forests with UK MPs

Indigenous leaders from Africa and South America have spoken to members of the UK parliament about the need to prioritise the rights of indigenous peoples in UK legislative proposals on sustainable commodity supply chains, and to ensure that British laws hold UK companies and financiers accountable to affected communities overseas.

Wrays Pérez, Pamuk (leader) of the Autonomous Government of the Wampís Nation (GTANW), Peru, and James Otto, from the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), Liberia, explained via a webinar that in order for these proposals to be effective, law-makers setting legal standards for the responsible conduct of UK companies must consult in a meaningful manner with indigenous peoples  and civil society organisations in producer-countries.

James Otto said:

 

“The UK, as a global leader, should do a couple of things including protecting the rights of indigenous peoples and their collective right to free, prior and informed consent. In Africa, and Liberia particularly, our governance system is so weak that there are no laws to hold companies accountable. The UK needs to include robust protections for customary land rights”.

James also highlighted that implementation and compliance mechanisms need to be developed alongside the law itself, “if the UK is going to make laws to hold companies accountable, they should really push for proper enforcement on corporations.”

Any legal proposal related to the production of commodities – whether this be agricultural, mineral, timber, oil and gas or others – must include detailed provisions on a combined human rights and environmental due diligence (mHREDD) process as recommended by a taskforce set up by the UK Government, the Global Resource Initiative (GRI). Due diligence needs to be undertaken by investors and companies alike and needs to cover the UKs global footprint, meaning that companies domiciled in the UK as well as those importing goods into the country need to be in scope.

James Otto explained why it is so vital to ensure any legal duty on companies to undertake and act on the results of due diligence must cover the company’s full global footprint, giving the example of the company Equatorial Palm Oil, headquartered in the UK, which ran the subsidiary Libinco, co-owned by the palm oil giant Kuala Lumpur Kepong. In his talk, James described the human rights abuses experienced by local communities affected by this palm oil operation, including land grabbing, disregard for  communities’ consent and false promises of benefit-sharing. He also highlighted that coercion, intimidation, violence and torture have been administered through the state army, who would use company cars to inflict misery on land defenders who stood up for their human rights to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).

The impacts of not upholding the international standard of FPIC, as outlined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, was clearly set out by Pamuk Wrays Pérez. He highlighted the Wampís and Achuar peoples’ decade-long fight against GeoPark and its oil and gas concession, co-managed by Petroperú, who occupy their customary lands without consultation, much less consent. GeoPark has received investment from a number of UK-based investors. Representing 15,000 Wampís, who have lived in their ancestral territory on the border of Peru and Ecuador for thousands of years, Wrays said:

 

“These investments come out of the multilateral banks, […] but if we pollute the forest this money is not going to be of any use. Because it is from this land that food is produced. Food for everyone, for the whole world […]. If we pollute this land, our money will be useless, because we cannot eat money. That which we eat is produced from this earth, but Mother Nature is not being respected, that is the bad thing that is being done. That is why we urge the investors, those who give money to these extractive oil companies, that first they have to see where they are going to invest.”

He added, “We consider that these investments made by major economic interests do nothing more than pollute our forests. They are trampling all over our sources of life, which are the waters.”

The environmental impacts of business operations, such as pollution, degradation, deforestation and conversion all play a part in creating and exacerbating human rights violations of indigenous peoples. Indigenous lands and territories have very high significance for nature’s global contributions to people [1] and yet only 10 per cent of indigenous lands are legally secured.[2] Securing customary land rights would enable indigenous peoples to practice their rights to self-governance and self-determination, putting them in control of their own development which simultaneously ensures the continuation and wellbeing of their cultures, traditions, histories and visions for the future.

Recognising the role played by secure customary land tenure is also vital in terms of biodiversity and climate change mitigation. Adopting a rights-based approach is a pre-condition to the success of the post 2020 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, being developed by the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and renewed ambitions to halt climate change in the lead up to the Conference of Parties (COP26). Indigenous peoples are leading the way in providing recommendations for law-makers, as the recent second edition of Local Biodiversity Outlooks attests. In this report, sustainable production and consumption (target 4) is highlighted as a priority area for action to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss (Strategic Goal A). [3]

Background:

The webinar, hosted by APPG Africa and APPG Human Rights, was convened by Traidcraft Exchange, CORE and Forest Peoples Programme. The webinar was chaired by Chi Onwurah, MP and featured two other speakers; Prof. Olga Martin-Ortega, Professor of International Law at the University of Greenwich, and Mark Dearn, Director of CORE.

The CORE Coalition comprises of over 50 UK human rights organisations who are collectively demanding a Corporate Duty to prevent negative human rights and environmental impacts. A law such as this would mean that companies and investors alike would be required to undertake human rights and environmental due diligence (mHREDD) and be required to address and remedy their human rights impacts, as well as prevent and mitigate potential impacts. The CORE Coalition is calling for civil and criminal liability regimes to ensure this future law is robust and effective in ensuring rights-holders can hold companies to account.

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The full webinar is available to watch here.

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[1] https://zenodo.org/record/3553579#.X6LHeYj7Q2w

 

[2] https://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/GlobalBaseline_web.pdf

[3] localbiodiversityoutlooks.net