Peruvian indigenous organisations secure important commitments to respect indigenous peoples’ rights in the approved version of Peru’s Forest Investment Plan

On 30 October 2013, after months of intense negotiation and dialogue with the Peruvian government, Peru’s Forest Investment Plan (FIP) was finally approved by the Sub Committee of the Forest Investment Programme, a World Bank initiative that aims to reduce emissions from deforestation.

Despite multiple setbacks in the negotiations the final version of the plan contains the following important commitments (extracts taken from the Peruvian Government’s formal presentation):

• $14.5 million committed to ‘enabling conditions’ including the titling of indigenous lands, community forest management and indigenous forest governance.
• Consider the participation of indigenous technical teams in the design of FIP projects.
• Indigenous peoples will be the direct implementers of the forest management and community forest governance programmes, while for the land titling programme they will be included in the technical teams.
• The mechanisms to ensure the regulation of REDD pilot projects will be analysed and developed in greater detail during the design phase of the Forest Investment Plan in order to prevent bad practice.

In a subsequent press release AIDESEP highlighted that these commitments reflect the following proposals that they have been insisting on since 2010:

1. The inclusion of technical teams from indigenous organisations in the consultancy teams who will design the four projects identified within the FIP.
2. The inclusion of communities and indigenous beneficiary organisations as the implementers of project activities in particular those that refer to community forest management ($4 million) and community forest governance ($3.5 million). In the case of titling of indigenous territories ($7 million) this will be co-implemented with the respective regional governments. We wish to contribute to ensure that these funds actually reach the communities to ensure concrete results.
3. Establish a public mechanism (with participation of indigenous peoples and civil society) to register, verify, certify and supervise best practice and to sanction bad practice of pilot REDD+ initiatives and thereby prevent the ‘carbon pirates’ from derailing the process. In this way there will be compliance with what was agreed in the Peru RPP (Readiness Preparation Plan, Version 2011).
4. The FIP-Peru will support the compliance of the commitment contained within the Peru-RPP to ‘harmonise the legal framework regulating the titling of indigenous territories in Peru’ (contained within DL 22175 from 1975) to the provisions contained within ILO convention 169 in order both to update this policy that is over 30 years old and achieve results in the security of indigenous territories considered part of the ‘enabling conditions’ for REDD+.

To reflect these latest commitments, a final paragraph was added to the proposed resolution for approval of the Plan:

“The Peruvian government and indigenous organisations commit to maintain this joint work in the next phase which is the formulation of the specific projects within the Forest Investment Plan in order to analyse and identify road maps to resolve issues that require attention such as the control and registry of REDD pilot initiatives, the participation of indigenous technical teams in the process of designing these specific projects and the ways in which communities will be involved directly in the implementation of these projects in the field”

Finally, AIDESEP’s vice President Daysi Zapata highlighted that:

“These debates have served to improve the quality of the consensus and for this reason we support the Plan and request its approval. This dialogue can and must continue in the design of the 4 projects (contained within the FIP) to ensure these gains are upheld”.