"Stop this carbon dealing with our territories and start by recognising our territorial rights" - Kichwa people's statement to the IUCN, Peruvian State and buyers of Cordillera Azul carbon credits

On 31 May 2022, the Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of the Amazon (CEPKA), the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Peoples of Chazuta (FEPIKECHA) and the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Peoples of the Lower Huallaga of the San Martin Region (FEPIKBHSAM), organisations of the Kichwa people in the San Martin region of Peru, issued the following statement, in response to:

i) an evaluation report issued by the IUCN's Peru expert group (EAGL), after the Kichwa presented an alert to the IUCN in June 2021 concerning violations of their territorial rights by the Cordillera Azul National Park, demanding that the Park be removed from the IUCN's Green List of Protected Areas.

ii) Information concerning carbon trades relating to the PNCAZ and the REDD+ Project of the same name obtained from the Centro de Conservación, Investigación y Manejo de Áreas Naturales (CIMA) through access to information requests and a subsequent court order issued to CIMA by the Court of Transparency and Access to Public Information on 29 April 2022.

Read the full statement in English

Lea el pronunciamiento completo en Español

The Kichwa people reject the Cordillera Azul National Park’s exclusionary conservation and opaque carbon trading

Long live the Kichwa people and their territories in the San Martin region!

As the Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of the Amazon (CEPKA), the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Peoples of Chazuta (FEPIKECHA) and the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Peoples of the Lower Huallaga of the San Martin Region (FEPIKBHSAM), the bases of the Coordinating Committee for the Defence and Development of the Indigenous Peoples of the San Martin Region (CODEPISAM) of Peru, we reject the exclusionary conservation model and carbon trading on our ancestral territories, affecting our fundamental rights:

• To the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
  • We reject the inclusion of the Cordillera Azul National Park (PNCAZ) in its Green List Programme in 2018, as an example of conservation for the world. Its creation and management do not respect our rights and affect the IUCN's objectives of rewarding good governance.  
  • In June 2021 we alerted the IUCN. It took 11 months for them to respond with half-truths, ignoring our specific request: to remove the PNCAZ from their Green List. Do they recognise our collective rights to territory and prior consultation with consent? Do we participate fully and effectively in the management of the PNCAZ?  
  • We reject the fact that the group of experts (EAGL-Peru) that evaluated our alert never communicated with our organisations, but did communicate with those who violate our rights such as the National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State (SERNANP) and the Centre for Conservation, Research and Management of Natural Areas (CIMA), repeating the same mistake when evaluating the incorporation of the PNCAZ to the Green List in the first place.  
  • There was never any accountability for the 30,778,542 carbon credits traded between 2008 - 2022, or benefit sharing for the US$30,470,012.70 cancelled to date, of the total US$80,546,251.01 traded. Does IUCN believe in its lukewarm recommendation to improve transparency, participation, and accountability with an intercultural approach? 11 months only to "recommend" incorporating communities in the governance mechanism of the REDD+ project?  
  • Does the IUCN know that CIMA was coming to the communities with crumbs of the carbon sold without our knowledge? They never consulted us on the REDD+ project, nor on how to distribute the benefits.  
  • We regret that neither the General Directorate of Climate Change and Desertification of the Ministry of the Environment (MINAM), nor SERNANP, nor CIMA, provided full public information on the PNCAZ carbon deal that we requested at the beginning of this year. Regarding the sale to the French company Total Nature Based Solutions (Total NBS), we were told "the information requested is not available", "it is not on file" or "it is a private institution", in order to block our access to this information. The biggest sale of carbon in the history of Peru and nobody wanted to give us the receipt. We had to go to the Court of Transparency and Access to Information so that they could order CIMA to provide the information.  
  • We reject that the IUCN seeks to "impartially" recommend a Park that violates our rights when they themselves bought 10,172 carbon credits in 2014.

• To the Peruvian State
  • It is unacceptable that millions of dollars are coming in for the PNCAZ REDD+ Project and there is no official carbon counting system or "official" list of buyers. Who is supervising this? Is the General Directorate of Climate Change and Desertification of MINAM involved? What do the Regional Government of San Martin (GORESAM) and local governments know?  
  • No to the exclusion of the Kichwa people from the PNCAZ Management Committee: 20 years of the Park and only in 2021 was a Kichwa community (Puerto Franco) invited to participate.  
  • We reject that MINAM and SERNANP continue to deny our right to prior consultation and participation in the distribution of the benefits of the REDD+ Project, saying that there are no communities within the PNCAZ. There are at least 29 Kichwa communities with territories which coincide with the area under management. Where are our purmas (forest fallows), collpas (watering holes), purinas (hunting trails), ancient paths and water springs? The Park's forests DID NOT appear out of nowhere; their conservation is the product of our relationship with them, the care, protection, management, control and vigilance that we have been carrying out for centuries based on our traditional knowledge.  
  • It is unacceptable that SERNANP and CIMA respond that only US $80,546,251.01 dollars have been commercialised to date. Where are the US $84.7 million dollars from the contract with Total NBS? In 2021, the former Minister of Environment Quijandría said "We have completed the largest sale of carbon credits in the history of Peru for 87 million dollars in the PNCAZ". Is that the transparency and accountability of the Park?

• To national and international buyers of carbon credits from the PNCAZ
  • As we make public your participation in this carbon trading, we ask what safeguards do you demand from CIMA and SERNANP in order not to violate our territorial rights and full and effective participation in the decisions around our forests?  
  • No to the false climate solutions offered as "Nature Based Solutions" and "carbon neutrality" by oil and mining companies that pollute in other regions of the world, such as Shell, Total, BHP, and others, who buy carbon from the PNCAZ.  
  • No to the obscure role of carbon trading intermediaries such as Stand for Trees, which hide and camouflage the final buyers with little transparency.  
  • We reject that Total NBS and CIMA have traded 16,880,000 carbon credits between 2021 and 2028 for a total of US $84.74 million dollars. Total NBS seeks to clean up its image and CIMA and SERNANP the financial stability of a Park that violates our rights. Where does this leave the Kichwa communities? Does Total NBS know that CIMA is in breach of its contractual obligation 7.1 to respect Indigenous rights?  
  • We reject that of the total carbon sale to Total NBS, $72.74 million dollars will be used for a "financial mechanism" designed by a working group led by CIMA to finance the PNCAZ in perpetuity. In Peru, the solution to climate change should not be to go easy on polluting activities, but to recognise our fundamental rights as it is we the Kichwa who have been taking care of these forests for centuries.

Stop this carbon dealing with our territories and start by recognising our territorial rights and valuing our conservation actions and ancestral forest-friendly practices!