The Shilcayo Declaration: Kichwa autonomy to confront exclusionary conservation

More than 60 people discussed and reflected on the rights violations suffered by the Kichwa communities due to the creation of two natural protected areas (PAs) without due processes to obtain their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC): namely, the Cordillera Azul National Park (PNCAZ) created in 2001 and the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area (ACR-CE) created in 2005.

A long process of reflection was generated as a result of the failure of the Cordillera Azul National Park Technical Roundtable, created in September 2022, to push for a new social contract where conservation practice recognises and respects the rights of the Kichwa communities. The Roundtable was suspended in January 2023 and again in September of the same year, due to SERNANP and CIMA prioritising their institutional agendas, without respecting the demands of the Kichwa people and the historical agreements reached for a more just form of conservation. In particular, the point related to territorial demarcation within PAs following the current regulations, established in RM-136-2022-MIDAGRI.

The conservation model proposed by the PNCAZ has been questioned on various occasions by the Kichwa communities and their organisations, leading to alerts before the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) system in 2021; the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which has reiterated to the Peruvian State its previous recommendations on the protection of the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples; as well as in the judicial process that the Kichwa community of Puerto Franco has been bravely sustaining.

In Shilcayo, they also recalled their advocacy efforts targeting some of the buyers of Cordillera Azul carbon credits; the various advocacy trips that Kichwa leaders have made in Lima and internationally, such as at COP26 and COP27, as well as the VIII Regional Forum on Business and Human Rights for Latin America and the Caribbean organised by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

They also reflected on how the spaces offered by SERNANP, through its Management Committees, do not allow for full and effective participation, without favourable results for the communities, and end up being a model of false participation to legitimise the presence of the area.

And so, for two days in Shilcayo, in the Lower Huallaga, the Kichwa communities and their organisations wove their agenda of struggle, reaffirming their determination to continue pushing for autonomy in order to recover their territories and confront an exclusionary and colonial conservation model that refuses to open up to new paradigms.

In this way, the participants launched the Shilcayo Declaration, which can be read in full here, and in general terms mentions that:

1. They renew their commitment to build their autonomy and self-determination as a people, especially to recover their territories that have been taken away by a colonial and exclusionary conservation model that continues to render them invisible in the country.
2. They reaffirm their decision, based on their nationally and internationally recognised right to self-determination, to advance territorial self-demarcation within the Cordillera Azul National Park and Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area.
3. They will continue to demand that the State, especially the DRASAM, SERNANP, and ACR-CE comply with RM 136-2022-MIDAGRI, which allows for the demarcation of communal territories within PAs.
4. The buyers of carbon credits from the Cordillera Azul National Park - including Total Energies, Shell, BHP, and others - will continue to be held accountable for having invested in a Park that dispossessed them of their territories.
5. MINAM should once and for all supervise and regulate carbon credit trading, which has benefited at the expense of Kichwa territory, and the necessary safeguards should be approved. Furthermore, it must recognise the right of the Kichwa people to benefit from environmental conservation activities in their territory, as recognised by Convention 169 and the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
6. They reject the fact that CIMA and SERNANP continue to try to divide the communities of the structured Indigenous movement in order to implement their projects in their attempts to show that they listen to Kichwa demands and respect Kichwa rights.
7. They reject the stigmatisation, criminalisation and defamation campaigns against the leaders who have been defending the Kichwa territory.
8. They condemn the long delay of the IUCN, which, more than two and a half years after receiving their alert for having awarded the Cordillera Azul National Park through inclusion in its Green List, has not had the courage to give a clear answer as to whether or not to remove the Park from the List.
9. They do not recognise the Management Committee of the Cordillera Azul National Park and the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area as spaces for full and effective participation and accountability regarding the management of these areas. There is a need to think through and design other models of management and participation for Indigenous peoples.
10. They express their solidarity with other Indigenous peoples in Peru and the world who are struggling against an unjust system of protected areas based on the exclusion of lives and memories affecting their rights.