Peru: Government opens door to companies in management of protected areas, continues exclusion of indigenous peoples from ancestral territories

The statement below was published by the indigenous Kichwa organisation CEPKA. It is a response to actions by the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment to consolidate the power of private actors in the management of the country's protected areas, at the cost of the rights and livelihoods of their inhabitants and traditional owners: the indigenous peoples.

On 27 July 2020, Peru’s Ministry of the Environment (MINAM) issued a project to modify the regulations of Law No. 26834 of National Protected Areas, which will allow the administration of Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) and Regional Conservation Areas (RCAs) to be carried out by private, for-profit companies. The Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of the Amazon (CEPKA) publicly rejects this measure, since it seeks to reinforce the exclusionary system through which the NPAs and RCAs are currently managed, prioritising the financial interests of some at the expense of indigenous peoples’  territorial rights, which are continually violated by the system of natural protected areas. CEPKA is an indigenous organisation that represents 43 native communities located in the provinces of Lamas, San Martín, Tocache, Bellavista, Sisa and Picota in the region of San Martin.

One of the proposed modifications to the regulation of the Law of NPAs is to Article 118, which states that the Executor of a Management Contract of an NPA or RCA must be a private legal entity, either profit or non-profit making. Through the justification of generating greater impacts on the financial sustainability of the NPAs and RTAs, MINAM opens the door to new actors whose purpose is business and, worse, it does so by echoing their interests in participating in the management of these areas.

All this time, our communities have been fighting and raising their voices to secure titles to our traditional territories that, due to the negligence of the State, fell into the hands of the NPAs and RCAs, but neither MINAM, SERNANP, nor GORESAM (responsible for the RCA) have been willing to listen, nor to think about acting quickly in response to our calls. We wish that these authorities would respond to our demands for territorial recognition – as well as those of our many brothers and sisters of other indigenous peoples of the Amazon – with the same speed with which they have responded to the private sector.

However, this paradigm of colonial and neoliberal conservation continues to exclude the participation of local indigenous communities and make them invisible. It impedes the ability of Kichwa men and women to share of our knowledge of the forest, and prevents us from accessing the paths and sites we have known and travelled since the time of our grandfathers and grandmothers in the past.

From a legal point of view, there is already an obligation for States to view indigenous peoples as allies rather than as enemies of conservation. Through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights' ruling in the case of the Kaliña and Lokono peoples v. Suriname, the Court "considers it relevant to make reference to the need to make the conservation of protected areas compatible with the adequate use and enjoyment of the traditional territories of indigenous peoples" (paragraph 173). Furthermore, the report of the former Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples questions models of conservation that not only ignore indigenous peoples’ rights, but also make them invisible and expel them from their territories, denying their contributions to forest conservation.

With regards to the situation in San Martin, the Cordillera Azul National Park (PNCAZ) and the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area (ACR-CE) were established in 2001 and 2005, respectively. The creation of both these areas did not involve any participatory work, nor did they follow a process of prior consultation or the obtaining of Free, Prior and Informed Consent from the local communities. As a result of this, as well as the insistence of the area administrations, there is a lack of knowledge of the forests that currently cover these areas and, in several cases, the forests’ status as the historical product of collective use by the original populations has been ignored. This continuous exclusion persists each time the areas’ Master Plans are updated: the PNCAZ’s Master Plan was updated in 2017, while the ACR-CE’s was updated in 2018. Neither went through a consultation process, and in neither case was there recognition of the Native Communities who have traditionally occupied and use both protected areas.

With MINAM’s proposed modifications, our Kichwa people are once again rejected as a strategic partner in the preservation of biodiversity. The promotion of racist discourses means that some actors are seen as more responsible, whilst indigenous communities – whose territories are at stake – are disregarded. So it is that the MINAM seeks to modify the regulation of the PNA Law, with absolute historical ignorance regarding the origin of the Amazon forests and spaces that were unjustly categorised as NPAs or RCAs, creating the conditions for the dispossession of territories.

The native community of Puerto Franco, member of CEPKA, offers a clear example of how Indigenous rights are being pushed to one sideAs the community’s lands remain untitled, they have suffered from the imposition of the PNCAZ. Furthermore, their territories now generate credits for the international carbon market, without any tangible benefit for the indigenous population. This model of conservation commodification is what MINAM aims to pursue on indigenous territories.

For this reason, we urge:

• MINAM to focus on biodiversity conservation that includes indigenous communities in decision-making, administration, planning and implementation of actions in NPAs and RCAs, as it is widely proven that, if their territorial rights are respected, conservation is more effective.
• MINAGRI, in coordination with MINAM, to address the obstacles that exist today for the titling of Native Communities that suffer from the overlapping of NPAs or RCAs in their territories.

Finally, CEPKA is not opposed to biodiversity conservation; on the contrary, it seeks to revive and raise awareness of local, grassroots conservation actions. These include ancestral practices that are beneficial to the forests, with historical knowledge of the management and use of biodiversity, and that still remain outside the narrative of exclusionary conservation.