- Indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon who have only recently come into contact with the outside world have created their own federation to stand against conservation projects they say benefit from their forests at their expense.
- In their guiding principles, the Chachibay Declaration, they demand an end to REDD+ and other large-scale conservation projects on or near their territories, which they call “exploitative.”
- The federation represents 12 communities living deep in the Peruvian Amazon who are currently facing increased illegal logging and drug trafficking.
- These communities say they don’t need any more biodiversity reports or conservation projects, but support with their basic survival needs like clean water and security.
Indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon who have only recently come into contact with the outside world say they want conservation projects to stay out of their territory, along with the NGOs and researchers championing these initiatives.
The demands are outlined in the Chachibay Declaration, recently drafted by Indigenous leaders from 12 communities located deep in Peru’s Amazon Rainforest. It was signed at a unique gathering between the leaders in the Chachibay native community in the Ucayali Basin in May, when they also created the first Federation for Nationalities of Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples and Their Families Living in Voluntary Isolation.
The declaration demands that large-scale conservation initiatives operating on or near their territory, like REDD+ — ostensibly meant to prevent deforestation — come to a halt. It also rejects “exploitative conservationists” who control development projects and funds in their territory. The signatories also stress that Indigenous self-governance is the only way to protect both their communities and their families still living in voluntary isolation, and who face increasing threats from outsiders.
“The Murunahua Reserve here in Ucayali — that ‘model protected area’ — has more illegal coca fields and loggers than guard posts. Our families there don’t need another biodiversity report; they need all those profiting from our misery to leave,” reads the English translation of the declaration.
The declaration was translated into English by Alejandro Argumedo, director of programs and Andes Amazon lead with the Swift Foundation, who was at the meeting in May. Argumedo said the Swift Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit that advocates for strengthened Indigenous governance, indirectly supported the assembly by providing funds to the community to build the gathering center in Chachibay.
The statement makes three concrete assertions: “No decision about us may be made without the indirect consent of our isolated relatives (through environmental signals, not forms); No PIACI funding may be granted unless it flows directly to our communities and grassroots organizations; No more ‘PIACI awareness campaigns’ that turn our isolated families into mascots for others’ gain.”
Wilian Ochavano Rodriguez, Indigenous leader with the Iskonawa community and one of the declaration signatories, told Mongabay by video call that there are currently no examples of good Indigenous alliances, “that’s why we are creating our own organization.”
Indigenous communities have no borders
Peru has one of the largest populations of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and/or initial contact, known by the Spanish acronym PIACI. Most live in the Amazon, along the border with Brazil in the departments of Loreto, Ucayali and Madre de Dios.
PIACI are in a unique situation of vulnerability, living in areas of abundant natural resources but with little or no opportunity to advocate for their rights, given their isolation. In Ucayali, Ochavano Rodriguez said that illegal logging and drug trafficking have spiked in recent years, leaving Indigenous communities — and their nearby kin in voluntary isolation — exposed to criminal groups.
But their location in the rainforest has also attracted a wealth of conservation projects and researchers, often without their consent.
At the center of their concerns are carbon trading projects, and other conservation projects, that seek to protect large swaths of Amazon territory, often at the cost of limiting the freedoms of the Indigenous peoples who live there and ignoring their real needs, said Ochavano Rodriguez. In areas demarcated for national parks or REDD+ projects, Indigenous communities living there have found they must now seek permission to cut down trees, hunt or fish in their own territory, jeopardizing their very survival, he said.
These projects also create borders in the rainforest, limiting the area of ancestral practices of communities that were once nomadic, or even continue to be, he said.
“They know very well that indigenous people have no borders, no territorial limits, and those things limit many things,” Ochavano Rodriguez said, adding that these decisions are often implemented without prior community consent.
In some cases, communities are consulted but misinformed. In a recent investigation, Mongabay exposed how multiple companies made false claims to numerous Indigenous communities to persuade them to surrender the economic rights to their forests in carbon trading schemes. This includes the Matsés community of Peru, some of whom are signatories of the Chachibay Declaration.
This isn’t the first time Indigenous communities in Peru, or elsewhere, have denounced carbon trading projects for violating their rights. In a 2011 report, the Forest Peoples Programme, a U.K.-based NGO that advocates for Indigenous rights, found that promoters of REDD+ projects in Peru were convincing Indigenous communities to sign away their rights to land; only consulted communities after the projects were underway; and failed to adhere to Indigenous peoples’ land rights.
Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti, an anthropologist and researcher with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), a nonprofit scientific research organization, told Mongabay that REDD+ is trying to improve, and in 2010, at the U.N. climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, created seven safeguards, including two points on better inclusion of Indigenous rights and participation.
But these are rarely carried out in practice, said Sarmiento Barletti, who also leads CIFOR’s global comparative study of REDD+ and helps inform Indigenous communities of these projects.
“It’s a lot of promises,” he said. “In practice, there are very little guidelines that are being put forth about how to do this.”
One of the most common violations of rights is the lack of free, prior and informed consent with communities before project implementation, he said. There are no clear procedures and it’s expensive to do correctly, he added.
PIACI are particularly vulnerable to being taken advantage of in these schemes due to language barriers and the difficulty in understanding the technicalities of the contract, Sarmiento Barletti said.
Despite the controversies around carbon trading programs, not all Indigenous communities reject them. Peru has recently established the Indigenous Jurisdictional REDD+ Program, guidelines to ensure that REDD+ projects are aligned with the rights of Indigenous peoples. It was created by Peru’s two umbrella organizations representing Amazonian peoples, AIDESEP and CONAP, as well as the national Indigenous organization that represents communal reserves, ANECAP, with support from the Ministry of Environment.
In an email response, AIDESEP spokesperson Stephany Cadenillas said the organization “is not promoting (conventional) REDD+ projects, as we are aware of the risks associated with them. Rather, we have proposed our own Amazonian Indigenous REDD+ (RIA) program, based on the worldview and approaches of the Amazonian Indigenous peoples.”
Ochavano Rodriguez rejected this initiative, however, saying it hasn’t changed the way REDD+ functions, as the full funds still don’t trickle down to the individual communities affected. AIDESEP doesn’t represent him or their new federation, he told Mongabay.
“They believe they represent everyone, without consulting us,” he added. (AIDESEP did not respond to Mongabay’s further requests for an interview.)
Peru’s Ministry of Environment didn’t respond to Mongabay’s multiple requests for comment.
In an email response, a spokesperson for the government’s Directorate of Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and in Initial Contact (DACI) said the Peruvian state recognizes both those living in isolation and those who have made initial contact with distinct reserve areas and protection measures. To date, the spokesperson said, “no direct impact on indigenous peoples in isolation and initial contact linked to any conservation project has been identified.”
According to Ochavano Rodriguez, the Ministry of Culture, of which DACI is part, is an underfunded ministry that never leaves the capital Lima and doesn’t know what’s going on in their territories.
One of the main issues with REDD+ and many other forest-based initiatives, Sarmiento Barletti said, is that these initiatives are being implemented in areas where Indigenous populations have lived through years of violence and discrimination.
“If you don’t have an initiative that addresses that,” he said, “then you make things worse.”
NGO savior culture
The new PIACI federation also takes a strong stance against NGOs that promote these development projects in Indigenous communities. These same organizations also promote other community projects on their agenda without consulting communities about their actual needs or allowing them to control the funds, Ochavano Rodriguez said. This creates a situation of dependence and puts them at risk, he added.
One of the recent agenda items of NGOs like WWF and Conservation International, whose representatives have visited Ochavano Rodriguez’s community of Chachibay and others nearby, he said, has been to try to empower communities to protect their territories from intruders, as the presence of both illegal logging and drug trafficking has increased in the region.
But this has been deadly for Indigenous leaders, he added. Between 2010 and 2022, an estimated 29 environmental defenders and Indigenous leaders in Peru were killed for defending their territory. Ochavano Rodriguez blamed these deaths on NGOs for encouraging communities to defend their territories themselves, without any effort to make the area itself safer or pushing for investigations into these murders, he said.
“They are not interested in the people,” Ochavano Rodriguez said. “They are simply interested in raising funds and funds and more funds, and more Indigenous people continue to die and become poorer.”
In an email response, Claudia Coronado Landeo, communications and marketing manager with WWF Peru, said the organization has its own safeguards “to ensure that our work is guided by respect, collaboration and integrity towards the people in the territories where we operate.” This includes working in alliance with AIDESEP to create an early-warning system for communities in the Amazon, supported the creation of the Amazonian Indigenous Schools (EGIDA) network, and support the Indigenous Jurisdictional REDD+ program. They also invest in strengthened food security initiatives and Indigenous women’s entrepreneurship, Coronado Landeo said.
Conservation International didn’t response to multiple requests for an interview.
Ochavano Rodriguez said these initiatives fall short if Indigenous communities aren’t allowed to manage the funds or their own development. They also need the state to better ensure their security, he said.
“We truly fight from and for our community,” he said, adding that they know best what the communities need.
Banner image: An Indigenous group in a boat in the Ucayali River. Image by Juan Carlos Huayllapuma/CIFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
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