Global pandemic, ‘uncontacted’ tribe. . . but who cares if there’s timber to certify?
Indigenous concerns about logging impacts met with little or no response from international certifier
Almost exactly five years ago indigenous federation FENAMAD from the south-east Peruvian Amazon issued an urgent public statement expressing its concern about a logging company, Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT), which had just been given permission to re-start operating in one of the remotest parts of the rainforest that included the territory of indigenous people in “isolation”, most widely-known as the “Mashco-Piro.” This was at the height of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
FENAMAD's concern was understandable, to say the least. Even at the best of times the Mashco-Piro are extremely vulnerable to contact with other people because of their lack of immunological defences, thereby making the transmission of germs and diseases unusually dangerous and potentially fatal. But a global pandemic like COVID-19 elevated the risk of transmission to a whole new, frightening level.
“Logging company machinery and personnel enter Mashco-Piro territory with the permission of the Health Ministry and silence from the Culture Ministry, putting indigenous people at risk of catching COVID-19,” ran FENAMAD’s statement’s title.
The federation didn’t mince its words. It warned that “exterminio” - probably best translated as “extinction” - was possible. Indeed, it used the word “exterminio” no less than five times.
As FENAMAD explained in that statement, MCT’s concession includes part of the Mashco-Piro’s territory which is set to become part of the expanded Madre de Dios Reserve for the Mashco-Piro and other indigenous people in “isolation”, as agreed by a state-run Multi-Sector Commission four years previously in 2016. In addition, FENAMAD pointed out that, as a result of the Mashco-Piro’s presence in that part of the forest, an Environment Ministry agency, SERNANP, had decided to abandon a control post there. Effectively, the risk of contact, disease transmission and perhaps even violence was just too great.
Exactly 17 days after that, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) - which had certified MCT’s concession since 2011 - issued a statement bigging up its achievements in Peru. The title: “Peru Reaches 1 Million FSC-Certified Hectares During the Health Crisis.”
Any mention of MCT’s concession, the controversy, the “extinction” warnings? Some expression of concern, perhaps?
Nope, nothing at all.
Perhaps the best, most charitable excuse for the FSC was that it simply hadn’t been aware of FENAMAD’s statement, although obviously it should have been. When I asked them this week about it, an FSC International spokesperson replied:
“To the best of our knowledge, the public statement issued by FENAMAD on 3 July 2020 was not shared directly with FSC Peru, nor were they formally notified of its content at the time. As a result, it was not referenced in the 20 July communication, which focused on the broader context of FSC-certified forest areas in Peru.”
11 days after the FSC’s statement, FENAMAD wrote to them directly about MCT and the Mashco-Piro - again warning of “extinction.”
“Our organisation expresses its bewilderment and concern regarding the current situation in which the Peruvian state [i.e. SERNANP] is withdrawing its park rangers due to the high-risk situation caused by the permanent presence of Mashco Piro indigenous peoples in isolation,” FENAMAD wrote, “while at the same time an FSC-certified logging company is entering the same area with personnel and heavy machinery to carry out large-scale extractive activities.”
There was no way the FSC could claim they didn’t know what was going on this time, right? It took FSC-Peru almost a month to reply - no rush! - and inform FENAMAD that their concern would be taken into account when the annual audit was done the following month. That audit - not published until December - green-lighted MCT on the grounds it had a “COVID-19 Vigilance, Prevention and Control Plan” approved by the Health Ministry.
In other words, no concrete action was taken, so MCT, still certified, carried on operating in Mashco-Piro territory in the midst of the pandemic.
Of course, this happened some years ago, but it is worth drawing attention to now because it is yet another example of the FSC’s scandalous handling of this case. Despite all that has gone on over the last few years - for example, the death of one MCT worker and the serious injuries sustained by another in 2022, a barrage of critical media coverage, ongoing lobbying from civil society, the FSC’s decision to suspend MCT’s certification, the FSC finally acknowledging the concession includes indigenous land, the subsequent decision to extend MCT’s suspension, the repeated insistence by the FSC that it is respecting indigenous people’s rights, numerous calls by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to expand the Madre de Dios Reserve, and even the Inter-American Court on Human Rights becoming involved too - MCT’s certification still hasn’t been terminated.
Worse, this week, the FSC released a bizarre 48-page report, titled “Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and FM Certification in Peru, particularly the Mashco Piro people in the Reserva Territorial Madre de Dios”, in which it concluded, among other things, that it will not terminate MCT’s certification, primarily on the grounds that as long as the company remains certified then the FSC will continue to have some leverage over it, whereas it wouldn’t if the certification lapsed. Elsewhere, the report outlines various proposals about how its “Principles & Criteria” and other operating procedures might be updated to ensure that the rights of the “Marscho-Piro”, as it calls them on one occasion, are respected.
Finally, those events five years ago are also worth remembering now because of a Supreme Court decision announced just a few days ago. It was that July 2020 statement by FENAMAD about the Mashco-Piro and MCT that led to the logging company suing the federation for defamation and winning two regional court rulings which effectively gagged the latter from pronouncing publicly on the case - an unsavoury process briefly mentioned in FSC’s report this week when it referred to “the potentially disproportionate use of litigation by MCT to defend its concession and to silence the local [indigenous organisation].” The Supreme Court has now overturned those rulings on various grounds - among them, that FENAMAD’s rights to due process and freedom of expression had been violated.
For the US-headquartered NGO Earthrights International, which has been supporting FENAMAD with its legal defence, this case is another example of a wave of “growing criminalisation” of indigenous leaders speaking out against corporate abuses.
“We celebrate the Supreme Court’s ruling which addresses the violations of FENAMAD’s rights not only from the perspective of the Peruvian Constitution, but also within the framework of international human rights, including the American Convention on Human Rights and rulings by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights,” says Earthrights’s Juliana Bravo in a statement.
“Indigenous organisations are constantly fighting for the collective rights of our peoples, and the protection of the lives of our brothers and sisters living in isolation is important and a part of that fight,” says FENAMAD’s president Alfredo Vargas Pío in that same statement. “This ruling is an important advance not just for Madre de Dios, but for all of the Amazon.”