Indigenous organisations ask UN body to urge Peruvian Government to stop exclusionary conservation in Cordillera Azul National Park

Organisations of the Kichwa people together with human rights organizations have submitted a formal petition to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), requesting urgent action to stop exclusionary conservation by the Cordillera Azul National Park (PNCAZ). This includes the recognition of the territorial rights of Kichwa communities within the Park; a process of prior consultation on the creation of the Park and its REDD+ Project guaranteeing respect for free, prior and informed consent (FPIC); participation in the management of the Park; and recognition and reparations for damages by two decades of this exclusionary conservation model.

The formal petition was submitted to CERD in advance of its 107th session, to be held between 8 – 30 August 2022 in Geneva. It was submitted by the Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of the Amazon (CEPKA), the Federation of Kichwa Indigenous Peoples of Chazuta (FEPIKECHA) and the Federation of Kichwa Indigenous Peoples of the Lower Huallaga of the San Martin Region (FEPIKBHSAM), together with the Coordinator for the Development and Defense of the Indigenous Peoples of the San Martin Region (CODEPISAM). In it, they ask CERD to take urgent action to urge the Peruvian State to take immediate measures against the exclusionary conservation of the PNCAZ.

Download the Urgent Action Request in English and Spanish 

The organisations' request details how the Peruvian State's failure to protect and guarantee the Kichwa's property rights over their ancestral territories is being exploited for large-scale carbon trading, in order to perpetuate an exclusionary conservation model imposed on the communities.

Among the forms of structural discrimination faced by the Kichwa people, the petition highlights:

The PNCAZ dispossessed communities of their territories when it was created in 2001 without an adequate consultation process that sought the communities’ FPIC. When the PNCAZ was created, Peru had already ratified ILO Convention 169 in 1995, so consultation was an obligation. Even the Peruvian Constitutional Court (ruling STC N°00025-2009-PI) subsequently clarified this obligation. This brings down the narrative of the National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State (SERNANP) that because there was supposedly no national framework for consultation (Prior Consultation Law of 2011), it was not mandatory.

The PNCAZ has meant severe restrictions on the use and access of Kichwa communities to their customary territories. At least 28 communities have been affected. From requiring permits to enter the protected area to limitations on customary activities such as hunting, fishing, gathering food and medicinal plants, or visiting places of spiritual importance. This has not only affected livelihoods and food security, but also the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge between generations of Kichwa.

These examples constitute clear violations of the Convention on Biological Diversity (preamble and articles 8j and 10c), the AICHI objectives related to protected areas (objective 18) and other international agreements that recognize Indigenous participation in conservation as essential.

The request also alerts CERD specifically to the exclusion of Kichwa communities from decision-making on large carbon sales on their ancestral lands. With zero transparency and accountability on the part of SERNANP, the Ministry of Environment, and the Center for Conservation, Research and Management of Natural Areas-Cordillera Azul (CIMA) as the Park's manager, the Kichwa people have had to resort to the Transparency and Access to Information Tribunal to obtain details of the REDD+ project. The sales of carbon credits to national and international buyers for around 30,778,542 credits for US$ 80,546,251.01 between 2008 and 2022 remained hidden for years. And Indigenous organizations have also warned elsewhere that the PNCAZ has been unfairly awarded for good governance by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2018 through inclusion in its Green List.

As an emblematic case, the CERD action denounces the sale in March 2021 of US$ 84,740,000 of carbon credits by CIMA to Total Nature Based Solutions SAS - part of the corporate group Total Energies, one of the largest oil companies on the planet. The Kichwa point out that this contract was drafted and signed between CIMA and TNBS without the knowledge or free, prior and informed consent of the Kichwa peoples, other indigenous communities in the region or representative indigenous organisations at the regional or national level. This contract represents the largest sale of carbon credits in Peru's history and the largest to date among private buyers in the world.

Furthermore, despite the fact that the contract with TNBS stipulates that CIMA is obligated to "respect the internationally recognized human rights during the performance of activities within the Park, respecting those most vulnerable groups, including, inter alia, indigenous communities with respect to Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)" and “carry out permanent due diligence activities to identify, prevent, mitigate, and implement contingency actions to address any adverse human rights impacts", this has not happened. On the contrary, CIMA and SERNANP continue to consider the Kichwa communities whose territory was taken from them by the Park as mere "neighbours".

Finally, in their request, the Indigenous organisations remind the CERD that in its Concluding Observations on the combined 22nd and 23rd periodic reports of Peru, the CERD already highlighted its concerns about the serious violations of the rights of Indigenous peoples. Thus, CERD recommended that Peru, among other things, guarantee the protection of Indigenous peoples' rights to secure tenure of their traditional lands, territories and resources; ensure consultation with Indigenous peoples and obtain their FPIC prior to the adoption of measures affecting their rights; and investigate and prevent acts of harassment, threats and violence against Indigenous rights defenders.

However, the Committee's clear recommendations continue to be directly contravened and violations of the rights of Indigenous peoples have continued to proliferate and increase in the last four years, with serious impacts on Kichwa communities.

For Nelsith Sangama, a leader of the Kichwa people, former leader of CEPKA and current leader of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP), she reiterates that this request to CERD is important for the Kichwa people:

 

"Definitely from the Indigenous grassroots communities we take this cry to the United Nations (CERD). Not everything is wonderful in the Cordillera Azul National Park. And we have to make these serious violations by the Park visible. A work that does not involve the people. They are buying and taking the riches of the Indigenous people's territory through the carbon project on our forests, but we, the Indigenous people, do not know anything and they do not take us into account. An unconsulted park without Indigenous peoples’ consent. Let's say, everything is a different reality, it is not as SERNANP and CIMA say it is - that is not what we see on the ground, but quite the opposite. That is why it is good that the United Nations is aware of it.”

 

Specifically, the Indigenous organisations’ petition asks the CERD to call upon the Peruvian State to:

1) take immediate steps to fulfil its responsibility to recognise and protect the Indigenous territories of the Communities and take measures to protect these territories from actions by third parties, including its own officials, that would undermine their integrity, including ordering SERNANP and the Cordillera Azul National Park to allow the affected Kichwa Communities to proceed with the delimitation and demarcation of their traditional lands that have been overlapped by the Park;

2) carry out a prior consultation process regarding the Cordillera Azul National Park and Cordillera Azul REDD+ Project, guaranteeing respect for the Kichwa Communities’ free, prior and informed consent;

3) take concrete steps to guarantee the effective participation of the Kichwa in the administration and management, including key decision-making roles and processes, of the Cordillera Azul National Park;

4) ensure that Kichwa Communities and other affected Indigenous peoples share equitably in any benefits from the Cordillera Azul National Park, including compensation for the carbon credits already commercialized and in progress, as well as recognition and compensation for the effective conservation role continuously played by the Communities through their territorial patrols and other forms of territorial protection and governance;

5) recognise and make reparations for the harms caused during 20 years of the exclusionary conservation model imposed by the Cordillera Azul National Park, by providing compensation for any losses incurred.