Peru’s Cordillera Azul - another example of conservationists violating indigenous rights
Huge swathes of prestigious national park in the Amazon is claimed by numerous Kichwa communities
A week before Christmas, at a global summit dubbed the “Biodiversity COP15” held in Canada, something arguably momentous happened. In an ostensible attempt to halt and overturn the historically unprecedented rates of biodiversity devastation around the world, a “Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF) was adopted by parties to the legally-binding and now three-decades-old Convention on Biological Diversity, after years of intense negotiations and delays.
The ultimate, noble intention? For as many people as possible to live in “harmony with nature” by 2050.
No doubt about it, the most contentious element of the GBF is what became, in the final text, “Target 3”: the aim to “protect”, in the conservationist sense of the term, almost a third of our entire planet by 2030. This is the so-called “30x30” target. In addition to understandable concerns about how realistic that aim is or how beneficial it would be even if it was achieved, numerous human rights, environmental and indigenous organisations around the world have persistently warned of the dangers posed by “30x30” to millions of indigenous peoples and other communities because of the conservation industry’s destructive, exploitative and abusive past and present.
Well-documented reports of such abuses in the name of conservation continue to roll in, not that you would know it from the mainstream media. For example, the month just before COP15 four Peruvian indigenous federations known by the acronyms CEPKA, FEPIKBHSAM, FEPIKECHA and CODEPISAM, together with the UK-headquartered NGO Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), released a damning 74 pager on two “protected areas” in north-central Peru: “Conservation Without Indigenous Peoples: The case of Kichwa territories in Cordillera Escalera and Cordillera Azul in San Martin, Peru.”
The Cordillera Azul National Park, now Peru’s fourth largest, is not your average park: it is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) “Green List”, which supposedly gives it some kind of prestige, and it has received substantial support from the US government over the years. Just over a week ago talks between the Kichwa and the two institutions running the park - the state agency SERNANP and an NGO called CIMA - broke down. Here are 10 of the most important, most startling claims made about Cordillera Azul in the federations’ and FPP’s recent report:
1 The number of Kichwa communities whose land has been included in the park is - somewhat astonishingly - “at least 29.” Established in 2001, it appears that it was assumed there was “no traditional Indigenous occupation” within the area, thereby enabling conservationists to argue that they would be protecting a purportedly “pristine” region.
2 Creating the park like that seems to have involved fundamentally misunderstanding the way the Kichwa live, i.e. that they are “multilocal.” A village might be sited in one particular location, but that doesn’t mean that the only land used or claimed by the people living there is contiguous to it. Doh!
3 The Kichwa were not properly consulted before the park was established, as was their right under the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention 169, which has been legally binding on Peru since February 1995. This failure to consult has been repeated again and again over the last 20 years when the park’s official Management Plans have been updated.
4 The park has undoubtedly limited the Kichwa’s access to resources, as well as inhibiting “the cultural transmission of traditional ecological knowledge” and imposing preposterous bureaucratic requirements, which initially included forcing them to travel hours in the wrong direction when they wanted to go hunting. Some have been prosecuted or criminalised - for carrying out subsistence activities - and their property confiscated or destroyed.
5 The Kichwa have been unable to participate effectively in the management of the park, which is repeatedly described as “exclusionary.” This has led to one community, Puerto Franco, filing a lawsuit against SERNANP demanding to be allowed to participate in management as well as share in the benefits of protecting the region.
6 The park’s existence has blocked certain Kichwa communities’ efforts to obtain legal ownership of their land. This has involved the park’s director visiting one community, Callanayaku, where he told residents that gaining title to any part of the park is “impossible”, and warning San Martin’s regional government against taking action towards titling another community, Ankash Yaku.
7 Things have been made even more complex by the park becoming the site of a so-called “REDD+” or carbon offsets project from which major polluters like Shell and TotalEnergies have bought credits, thereby enabling them to greenwash their operations by claiming their emissions are being mitigated by protecting the Amazon. The Kichwa have been unable to participate in or benefit from that project - the focus of an Associated Press report last month - and it has been run with a total lack of transparency.
8 All this means that the Kichwa’s rights, as enshrined by ILO Convention 169 as well as jurisprudence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica, have been “systematically” violated by both the park and carbon project.
9 This has happened despite the “new global paradigm” that has emerged within conservation over the last 20 years seeking to include and involve indigenous peoples. In the case of Cordillera Azul, these new ways of thinking and operating have gone unheeded by “decision-makers in the State service [i.e. SERNANP] or NGOs linked to conservation in Peru.”
10 One of the concluding recommendations is that Peru must recognise the Kichwa’s land rights by giving them title irrespective of whether such areas now fall within the park or not. “Management should, above all, fully respect and encourage the recognition of the Indigenous people’s right to the ownership of their territories through collective titling, in line with the country’s legal system, which has been openly disregarded,” the report states.