Statement: We reject the approval of the modification of the Forestry and Wildlife Law that violates the collective rights of Indigenous peoples and puts the Amazon at risk.

This statement was originally published by AIDESEP on December 15 2023

The Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP), representing 2,439 native communities, 109 federations and 9 regional organisations, categorically rejects the approval by insistence of the modification of Law N° 29763, the Forestry and Wildlife Law, which represents a serious danger for Indigenous peoples and will promote large-scale deforestation of the Amazon.

In this regard, we state the following:

1. We condemn the approval by insistence of the modification of the Forestry and Wildlife Law, which was done surreptitiously while taking advantage of the political and social crisis that the country is facing. This has been pushed through by the spokespersons of the Congress of the Republic, who surprisingly admitted the debate on the amendment to the Forestry Law, responding to the interests of certain powerful groups that will benefit, violating the collective rights of Indigenous peoples and putting the Amazon at risk.  
2. We reject the infringing actions of this Congress that approves bills against Indigenous peoples. In spite of the pronouncements and multiple letters addressed to congress members from AIDESEP and other Indigenous organisations in which we stated that this amendment puts at risk forests, biological diversity and above all violates our collective rights as Indigenous peoples, as the main defenders of the Amazon against the advance of activities such as illegal logging, agriculture and mining, the invasion and trafficking of lands, among others, which will benefit from the aforementioned amendment.  
3. We demand that the State and regional governments effectively address the historical debt of titling native communities, given that this amendment encourages new processes of invasion in areas supposedly "freely available to the State" and which are in fact areas demanded by Indigenous peoples.  
4. We warn that the most damaging aspect of this amendment is the change of use from forestry and protected lands to agricultural purposes, which used to be carried out exceptionally and in compliance with technical rules. However, now it will be possible to make changes "legally" without respecting technical criteria, leading to impunity for this attack on forests, which protect us from the impacts of the climate crisis.  
5. We point out the incongruence of the Peruvian State that, at the international level and in spaces such as the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 28), assumes commitments to reduce deforestation, but in practice promotes this type of laws and depredatory actions against the Amazon. The modification of the Forestry Law directly affects Peru's climate commitment in the framework of the Paris Agreement, by reducing the conditions necessary when considering the zoning of land holdings that supposedly demonstrate that they do not have "forests", releasing these spaces from a mechanism that allows for the protection of areas that still maintain forest cover. It is well documented that individual plots are areas with high deforestation, so releasing them from forest zoning means encouraging deforestation, which is the main cause of greenhouse gas emissions in Peru.  
6. We state that this amendment will also affect the areas where our brothers and sisters belonging to Indigenous peoples living in Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI) live, where extractive activities will increase, driven by mafias that seek to invade, dispossess their territories and generate more deforestation, putting at risk the very existence of these highly vulnerable Peruvians.  
7. We hold the Congress responsible for the consequences of this amendment, which will increase extractive activities that depredate the forests and, with them, threats against the lives of Indigenous defenders. In recent years, more than 30 Indigenous leaders have been assassinated for defending their territories from illegal extractive activities and also from those legalised by this type of law.  
8. We condemn the fact that this approval was carried out without respecting the right to consultation on legislative measures and in flagrant and systematic violation of the constitutional and international legal framework that protects our rights as Indigenous peoples. To date, Congress has failed to comply with the international treaty article that was ratified by the Peruvian State.  
9. We demand that the Ombudsman's Office and the Executive, as soon as possible, take urgent legal action so that this amendment of the Forestry Law is declared unconstitutional for violation of the right to prior consultation of legislative measures.  
10.  We alert our support communities, and national and international civil society, that we are facing a Congress that has no legitimacy, that only seeks to please big interests and does not act to promote actions in favour of the population. We have already warned that this amendment, as well as other legislative initiatives, are part of a package of norms against the rights of the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon.  
11. We notify the Congress that, in exercise of our rights to self-determination, autonomy and the exercise of indigenous justice recognised in the Political Constitution of Peru and Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation, we will not allow any third party to enter our territories that seeks to destroy our forests under the protection of this law.  The State forgets that our life and future generations depend on the Amazon, therefore, we will defend it against the imposition of harmful laws.

Board of Directors of AIDESEP.