Amazon Indigenous organisations write to Forest Stewardship Council calling for the cancellation of FSC’s certification of a logging concession inside the territory of the uncontacted Mashco Piro
FENAMAD, AIDESEP, and COICA state that, “respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and especially the lives of uncontacted Indigenous People, is not a priority for the FSC”.
The Mashco Piro are the largest group of Indigenous People living in voluntary isolation on the planet. They live in the rainforests of southeast Peru. They number more than 750 people. In July 2024, Survival International released photographs and a video of dozens of Mashco Piro people on a sand bank next to a river.
The Mashco Piro appeared near the Yine village of Monte Salvado. The Yine Indigenous People speak a language that is related to Mashco Piro. Survival International reports that the Yine have previously said that the Mashco Piro have denounced the presence of loggers on their land.
There are several logging companies with concessions inside the Mashco Piro’s territory. One of the logging concessions is owned by Maderera Río Yaverija S.A.C. (Maderyja) and is part of the Madre de Dios Amazon REDD project.
Another concession is just a few kilometres from where the Mashco Piro were filmed. A logging company called Maderera Canales Tahuamanu S.A.C. (MCT) owns two adjacent concessions inside the Mashco Piro’s territory. The logging concessions cover about 50,000 hectares.
The company has been logging the forest for more than a decade. It has constructed more than 200 kilometres of logging roads inside Mashco Piro territory.
Astonishingly, since 2011, MCT’s logging operations are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council . In January 2023, FSC terminated Maderyja’s certificate
Journalist David Hill has reported several times on the Mashco Piro and FSC. Here’s what he wrote in October 2022:
There is no other, less damning way of putting it. Despite claiming to “set the standard for responsible forestry worldwide”, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) gives the impression of totally failing to understand why it is so wrong for logging companies to operate in areas inhabited by indigenous people who live in “isolation” and have no regular contact with anyone else. Not only do such operations constitute a blatant incursion of their territories and the gross violation of their rights, as recognised by international law and instruments such as the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but it exposes them to the potentially disastrous risks of contact, disease transmission and fatal epidemics.
On 21 August 2022, one MCT worker was killed and another was injured by arrows shot by Mashco Piro people. “They were fishing near the bridge the company built over the river,” Julio Cusurichi, president of Peruvian Indigenous federation FENAMAD, told Hill. “But that’s the Mashco-Piro’s territory. It’s only natural they’re going to defend it.”
In November 2022, Hill interviewed FSC’s Director General Kim Carstensen. Hill explained to Carstensen that FENAMAD proposed a much bigger reserve than the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve that the government established in 2002 — the same year that MCT’s logging concessions was awarded. The government ignored the evidence that the forest was part of the Mashco Piro’s territory and instead of including the forest in the reserve, the government handed it over to loggers.
In the interview with Hill, Carstensen acknowledged that “the tragic incident is a strong indication that something has gone seriously wrong”. But he appeared not to understand that FSC should not certify logging operations on the territory of Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation.
In June 2023, José Francisco Cali Tzay, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, wrote to MCT.1 Letters were sent to the governments of Peru and Germany, and to FSC.
The letter states that,
We are concerned about the irreparable harm that your company’s operations may cause to Indigenous Peoples, who have not given their free, prior and informed consent. . . .
[W]e express our deep concern that your company has not acted with human rights due diligence regarding the adverse impact of your company's operations on the human rights of indigenous peoples living in the concessions where the company operates. . . .
We are equally concerned that the territory of Indigenous Peoples living in isolation in the Madre de Dios basin has not been officially demarcated to date in accordance with their effective use of the land, and that active logging concessions currently overlap their territory. ancestral, despite reasonable evidence of their presence since 1999.
The letter urges MCT “to suspend any activity that may bring the Mashco Piro people into forced contact with third parties”.
The Peruvian government replied with a letter that describes in detail the various laws in place to protect the Mashco Piro and other Indigenous Peoples. However, the reply makes no mention of suspending MCT’s logging operations on the Mashco Piro’s territory.
FSC did not reply to the letter.
On 17 July 2024, FSC posted a statement on its website about the Mashco Piro. FSC states that,
FSC will conduct a comprehensive review of MCT’s compliance with duties to respect and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples living in self-isolation in the proposed indigenous territory in Madre de Dios.
On 31 July 2024, three Amazonian Indigenous organisations wrote to FSC in response to FSC’s statement. The organisations are FENAMAD; AIDESEP, the national Indigenous organisation in Peru; and COICA, an alliance of Indigenous organisations in the Amazon countries.
The letter accuses FSC of “endorsing the systematic violation of the rights of Indigenous Peoples”. A translation2 of the letter is posted below (the original in Spanish is available here):
Statement: We reject the FSC decision to maintain certification of a logging company that puts the Mashco Piro at risk
FENAMAD, AIDESEP, and COICA, 31 July 2024
The indigenous organisations of the Amazon, the Coordinator of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) and the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and Tributaries (FENAMAD), jointly SPEAK OUT publicly in response to the statement published by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) , in which it responds to the public questioning that is being made at a global level following the campaign carried out by the organisation Survival International, which denounces its indirect involvement in human rights violations by legitimising with its certification the forestry extraction activities of the forestry company Canales Tahuamanu SAC in areas of the traditional territory of the Mashco Piro indigenous people, in the Madre de Dios region, in the Peruvian Amazon, a situation that has been denounced on multiple occasions by our organisations.
The response issued by the FSC in the aforementioned statement is disappointing, considering the seriousness of the case, and is cause for concern because it admits that the certification of the company’s logging operations is carried out with full knowledge of the context of risks to the life and integrity of the Mashco Piro and also to the company’s own employees.
Although the FSC publicly acknowledges that there is a “critical problem”, in its statement it does not announce the required and logical suspension of the company’s certification, but only undertakes to carry out a “comprehensive analysis” of the case. We find the FSC’s response to be entirely insufficient, and it seems to indicate that this organisation, instead of addressing and solving a systematic problem that entails human rights violations, is trying to avoid responsibility through delaying strategies. Furthermore, given the arguments presented by the FSC in its statement, it can be interpreted that the announced “comprehensive analysis” that is to be carried out will not generate significant changes in the position of said organisation, given that the same statement reports that the circumstances of the case have already been subject to two previous evaluations in 2022 and 2023, without finding sufficient reasons to suspend the company’s certification.
Specifically, the FSC states that the aforementioned evaluations provided two arguments that justify continuing to support the certification of the company Canales Tahuamanu SAC: 1) that the concession in which it operates is legally valid, and 2) that it has “protocols to prevent encounters with members of the Mashco Piro, which were designed in coordination with the Ministry of Culture of Peru.” These arguments by the FSC do not guarantee compliance with its own standards regarding the products marketed by the company being responsibly sourced and complying with respect for human rights.
In this sense, the fact that the concession in question was granted by the Peruvian State and that the FSC presumes it to be legally valid does not justify the invasion of the territory of a people in isolation, nor the destruction of the forests on which their survival depends as a result of the presence of heavy machinery along hundreds of kilometres of roads, much less the exposure of the Mashco Piro to situations that could lead to their extermination.
Likewise, the fact that the company has “protocols to prevent encounters with the Mashco Piro” does not guarantee that these are effective measures, particularly when in August 2022, the death from arrow wounds of the Canales Tahuamanu SAC company worker, Jean Marco del Águila Ángulo, occurred in an encounter with the Mashco Piro , in which his colleague Genis Huayabban Padilla was also seriously injured.
This statement reflects that the FSC continues to ignore the seriousness of the allegations made and the implications and responsibility that come with its negligent position regarding the risks and violations of human rights. For this reason, as representative indigenous organisations at regional, national and international levels in the Amazon, we wish to express that:
The FSC has been aware of the serious consequences of the operation of the logging company Canales Tahuamanu SAC in the territory of uncontacted peoples since at least 2020. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, FENAMAD sent several communications to FSC management warning of the risk of physical extermination implied by the reactivation of logging activities in the territory of the Mashco Piro people in isolation.
In August 2020, the FSC provided a first response on the case and committed to conducting a review as part of the “FSC systems and procedures”. However, based on the re-evaluation report carried out in 2020, the FSC decided to renew the company’s certificate for five more years, sending a clear message: respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and especially the lives of uncontacted Indigenous People, is not a priority for the FSC.
The alerts raised by the indigenous movement in Peru continued in the following years, including approaches with the Permanent Committee of Indigenous Peoples (CPPI) and the FSC Indigenous Foundation. However, an effective response was never provided by the organisation. Regrettably, in August 2022, before the deaf ears of the Peruvian State, the company Canales Tahuamanu SAC and the FSC, an incident occurred between the Mashco Piro, Indigenous People living in voluntary isolation, and company workers, which left the unfortunate result of one forestry worker dead and another injured.
The decision by the FSC to maintain the certification of the company, Canales Tahuamanu, over the years, despite the repeated complaints about the systematic contravention of the policies and commitments of the certifying body, implies indirect responsibility in relation to the violation of human rights of the uncontacted Mashco Piro Indigenous People, and the risks to the physical integrity and life of the company’s workers.
The FSC’s response in 2020, as well as its recent public statement in response to the overwhelming evidence released by Survival International in the campaign to protect the Mashco Piro people, lead the indigenous movement to believe that the investigations promised by the FSC are nothing more than delaying strategies to allow the continuation of the forestry operation disguised under standards of social and environmental responsibility. At the same time, they make it clear that the evaluations did not assess the real risks that exist for the lives of peoples in isolation and the people who work in forestry concessions that operate in their territories.
It is clear that the FSC must take swift, concrete action in line with its own standards to address this serious situation and stop being complicit in the violation of the human rights of the Mashco Piro people in isolation.
Its commitment to carry out further research is not enough, as the evidence is clear and compelling. Since 2016, the Peruvian State has recognized that FSC-certified concessions operate in the territories of uncontacted peoples, concluding that it is not possible to mitigate the risks of this operation through contingency plans. Therefore, it is urgent to exclude forestry concessions to guarantee the survival of these peoples and avoid the loss of more human lives.
For the above reasons, indigenous organisations demand that the FSC:
Immediately withdraw the NC-FM-COC-005-485 certification granted to concessions 17-TAH/CJ-012-02 and 17-TAH/CJ-013-02, as this is the only way to comply with the principles and standards that it has publicly stated guide its actions: “responsible forest management and unwavering respect for Indigenous Peoples and workers’ rights.”
Promptly conduct an internal investigation to explain the reasons why, after internal assessments were carried out in 2022 and 2023, even though one death occurred in 2022, the FSC decided to continue endorsing the company and maintaining its certification to date.
Modify FSC internal policies to explicitly prohibit certification of extractive companies operating in the territories of Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation, whether or not these are recognized by States.
Carry out a deep and comprehensive reform of its Indigenous governance system, guaranteeing representation and timely decision-making in response to alerts linked to the violation of the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Finally, we consider that the relevant investigations can and should be carried out, but only after having withdrawn the certification of the company Canales Tahuamanu SAC. Otherwise, the Indigenous organisations that subscribe to this statement will be forced to withdraw from possible spaces for dialogue with FSC regarding this case, as these have proven ineffective to date.
It is time for the FSC to stop endorsing the systematic violation of the rights of indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon.
We Indigenous Peoples want concrete actions, facts and not words!
In addition to Tzay, the letter was signed by Pichamon Yeophantong, President-Rapporteur of the Working Group on business and human rights, David R. Boyd, Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, Clement Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.
The translation was made using Google Translate and DeepL. If Spanish speakers notice any mistakes, please let me know, and I’ll be happy to correct them.
Logging in the lands of uncontacted people should never have been approved, for any reason. Ending the logging is inadequate - all roads must be destroyed and returned to natural conditions and blocked from access. Otherwise, like in the Amazon, for roads, if you build them, settlers come. FSC is a farce anyway - all cutting of trees must stop, that is theft from Nature. Logging is part of the edge of the firestorm of Capitalism.