Early last month, in central Lima, Peru’s Environment Ministry (MINAM) did a spectacular no-show. Someone from the Ministry was supposed to turn up and vote at a crunch meeting that had been effectively more than 20 years in-the-making, but no one put in an appearance.
The meeting was convened by the Culture Ministry (MINCU), which presides over a Multi-Sector Commission overseeing the administrative process required to establish reserves for indigenous people in “isolation” in the remote Peruvian Amazon. The vote was critical: to approve - or not - a 1000+ page report called an “Estudio Adicional de Categorización” (EAC) which was necessary for a new reserve to be created in the north-east of the country. Given that it was expected a block of the other ministries and authorities on the Commission would vote against the report, MINAM’s presence was even more important than usual.
In the end, the Commission voted down the EAC eight-to-five - the first time that has happened in its 16 year history. The “noes” were from the Energy Ministry, Agriculture Ministry, Defence Ministry, Interior Ministry, Loreto regional government (GOREL) and three Loreto municipalities, while the “yesses” were from MINCU, national indigenous federations AIDESEP and CONAP, and two universities.
Then there were the no-shows: from MINAM, the Education Ministry and the Health Ministry (MINSA). The latter’s failure to turn up was particularly shocking too, given the extreme vulnerability of indigenous people in “isolation” because of their lack of immunological defences.
“We didn’t know [MINAM et al] weren’t going to turn up, so we were there hoping they would arrive at any moment, while explaining to the others the importance of approving the reserve’s creation,” AIDESEP’s vice-president, Miguel Guimaraes Vasquez, tells me. “No excuses were given. Our feeling was it was deliberately planned.”
Those three no-shows turned out to be crucial. If all of MINAM, MINSA and the Education Ministry had voted in favour of the EAC, it would have been an 8-8 tie, with MINCU, as the presiding authority, holding the casting vote. Given that it had already said yes, it’s safe to assume it would have said yes again and the final result would have been 9-8 in favour.
What that would have meant is this: Peru moving one step closer to establishing its ninth - and potentially largest - reserve for indigenous people in “isolation”, slated to be called the Yavarí Mirim Reserve.
Instead, the country is now left with the prospect of that area - bordering Brazil and extending for more than one million hectares - being divvied up between industrial-scale logging companies and/or the oil and gas industry, or the cocaine trade making further incursions. The consequences for the “isolated” people living in the proposed reserve could be catastrophic.
After the vote, Guimaraes Vasquez says he felt a “moment of real sadness, a sense of impotence”, especially after all the money that has been spent trying to establish the reserve and the length of time it has taken.
“Very disappointing,” he says. “We couldn’t believe it.”
When asked by a Congresswoman several days later at a Congressional hearing why no one from MINAM had turned up, the now ex-Environment Minister Juan Carlos Castro Vargas said it was because the Ministry had been preparing for a visit to United Nations headquarters in the US. Prior to that, the Minister said reserves for indigenous people in “isolation” need to be established with “a great deal of care” because no one, not even anyone from the state, can enter them.
That claim was utterly false.
In a sense, though, this no-show from MINAM wasn’t a massive surprise. In 2017, when the Commission met to discuss the “Estudio Previo de Reconocimiento” - another kind of report required at an earlier stage of the reserve establishment process - the Ministry abstained from voting to approve that too.
Moreover, in the broader context of MINAM’s operations, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise either. In its establishment and/or management of national parks and other “protected natural areas”, the Ministry has been complicit in the systematic violation of indigenous rights since its foundation in 2008.
In recent years, it is worth pointing out, MINAM has been the “implementing partner” of the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) administration of roughly $US13.3 million - or initially 124 million Norwegian kroner - donated by Norway’s government under a forest conservation initiative between Peru, Norway, Germany and the UK. Dating from 2014, that initiative is titled the “Joint Declaration of Intent” on “Cooperation on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and promoting sustainable development in Peru.” Although none of those funds went to MINAM itself, according to the UNDP, the Ministry played a significant role in deciding how they were spent.
In addition, another $US9 million - initially 106 million kroner - has been donated by Norway to Peru through the Peruvian NGO PROFONANPE. According to MINAM, the biggest recipient of those funds was GOREL (17%, or $US1.5 million), with SERFOR (8%), AIDESEP and CONAP (both 7%), and MINAM itself (2%), among others, getting in on the action too.
This financial support for GOREL, SERFOR and MINAM was highlighted in a furious letter last month when seven of Peru’s most well-known indigenous federations wrote to Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) as well as Germany’s KfW Development Bank and the World Bank - which finances other programmes in Peru - urging them to suspend all “climate funds” to these Peruvian authorities until they publicly commit to protecting the rights of indigenous people in “isolation” and demonstrate that they are doing so, which would include stopping blocking the creation of new reserves. That letter accused GOREL et al of putting the exploitation of natural resources ahead of human rights, and therefore being complicit in “historical forms of ethnocide.”
“Despite having confirmed they would attend the Commission’s meeting, MINAM’s representatives didn’t do so, thereby losing the opportunity to support the creation of the reserve and indirectly making clear their institutional position against the establishment of more reserves for people in isolation and initial contact,” stated AIDESEP, ARPI, COMARU, CORPIAA, FENAMAD, ORAU and ORPIO in their letter to NICFI et al.
“In fact, throughout the entire history of the Commission, MINAM has only ever voted once in favour of the rights of indigenous people in isolation and initial contact,” the federations continued. “The Ministry has almost always abstained from voting, thereby failing to support and guarantee the rights of highly vulnerable people and to protect millions of hectares of the Amazon rainforest.”
“It is unacceptable and unjustifiable that [MINAM and the other authorities] receive these funds [from Norway etc] if they’re against the establishment of reserves for people in isolation and initial contact,” the federations went on.
That letter also drew attention to the roles GOREL and SERFOR - which sits within the Agriculture Ministry - played in blocking the Yavarí Mirim Reserve, as well as their involvement in what the federations call a “campaign” against indigenous people in isolation and initial contact nationwide. Not only did GOREL’s representative Erwin Florett Diaz vote against the EAC, but he reportedly came to the Commission meeting with the Congressman, Juan Carlos Mori Celis, behind a potentially devastating bill which threatens Peru’s existing indigenous reserves, according to the federations and other civil society organisations.
Moreover, it was the SERFOR representative who cast the Agriculture Ministry’s “no” vote against the EAC, after a SERFOR report had been shared with the Commission claiming dozens of logging concessions overlapped the proposed Yavarí Mirim Reserve. The federations say those claims were “false”, possibly criminal, and intended to “confuse and pressure” the Commission, and that SERFOR was aware those concessions had been annulled by court order the year before.
“It’s no longer under discussion whether the people in isolation actually exist or not - what was under discussion [at the Commission] was the creation of the reserve,” says AIDESEP’s Guimaraes Vasquez. “But despite that, as soon as the meeting had begun, the Agriculture Ministry began to say the people there don’t exist and distanced themselves from the EAC.”
Can the Norwegians use their leverage to encourage institutional change at GOREL, SERFOR and MINAM? When I put that question to NICFI, a spokesperson replied that their agreement with Peru, Germany and the UK is “based on international conventions on Indigenous Peoples’ rights that both Peru and Norway have signed”, and that the use of Norwegian development aid, like NICFI grants, is “regulated by grant agreements [which] establish the grant recipients’ responsibilities for risk management, including risks related to human rights.”
“We discuss risk management regularly with our grant recipients,” that spokesperson says. “Over the past weeks, we have held a series of meetings with relevant Peruvian ministries and with Aidesep to discuss the recent developments. We have not taken a decision to suspend funding.”