“Weaving the defence of the Kichwa territory in the face of the conservation of the Cordillera Azul National Park”
Kichwa Indigenous communities demand that Big Polluters buying carbon credits "assume their responsibilities for having invested in a Park that dispossessed us of our territories”.
In January 2024, Indigenous Kichwa communities and their representative organisations met for two days in the Indigenous community of Shilcayo in the San Martín region in Peru. Forest Peoples Programme reports that during the meeting, they reaffirmed their determination and commitment to recovering their ancestral territory which was taken from them by an exclusionary conservation model with the creation of the Cordillera Azul National Park.
The National Park was created in 2001. The following year, a company called CIMA (Centro de Conservación, Investigación y Manejo de Áreas Naturales) signed an agreement with the government to manage the national park. In 2008, the Cordillera Azul National Park REDD project started.
Since then the project has sold almost 36 million carbon credits. The biggest buyers of Cordillera Azul National Park are TotalEnergies and Shell, two of the biggest polluting oil corporations on the planet.
More than 60 people took part in the meeting, which was called “Weaving the defence of the Kichwa territory in the face of the conservation of the Cordillera Azul National Park”.
In addition to the Cordillera Azul National Park, the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area was also created without the free, prior and informed consent of the Kichwa communities.
In September 2022, the Cordillera Azul National Park Technical Roundtable was created to “push for a new social contract where conservation practice recognises and respects the rights of the Kichwa communities”, Forest Peoples Programme writes.
The Roundtable was suspended in January 2023 and again in September of the same year, due to SERNANP [Peru’s National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State] and CIMA prioritising their institutional agendas, without respecting the demands of the Kichwa people and the historical agreements reached for a more just form of conservation.
The Kichwa communities living near the Cordillera Azul National Park have raised questions about the conservation model imposed by the park’s managers on several occasions.
In 2023, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination sent a formal letter to the Peruvian state. The letter highlights failures to address Indigenous rights in the creation and management of the Cordillera Azul National Park, and asks a series of questions about how the State proposes to protect Indigenous rights in future.
The meeting produced a statement called the Declaration of Shilcayo, posted here in full (a Spanish version is available here):
Declaration of Shilcayo
For a conservation with respect for the Kichwa People of San Martín - Peru
Being the 27th of January 2024, gathered in the Native Community of Shilcayo, district of Chazuta, province San Martin, the Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of the Amazon (CEPKA) and its bases Puerto Franco and Mushuck Belen; the Federation of Indigenous Kichwa Indigenous Peoples of Chazuta Amazonia (FEPIKECHA) and its bases Canayo, Siyambayok Pampa, Llucanayaku, Pongo del Huallaga, Rebalse Chazuta and Tupac Amaru; the Federation of Kichwa Indigenous Peoples of Bajo Huallaga San Martin (FEPIKBHSAM) and its bases Callanayaku, Ricardo Palma, Shilcayo, Tununtunumba and Chipeza; regional organisation the Coordinator for the Development and Defence of the Indigenous Peoples of the San Martin Region (CODEPISAM); and national organisation the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP), in the framework of our meeting “Weaving the defence of the Kichwa territory in the face of the conservation of the Cordillera Azul National Park” declare the following:
We renew our commitment to build together our autonomy and self-determination as Kichwa people, especially in the struggle to recover our territories that have been taken away by a colonial and exclusionary conservation model that makes us invisible in the country.
We reaffirm our decision, based on our nationally and internationally recognised right to self-determination, to advance our territorial self-demarcation within the Cordillera Azul National Park (PNCAZ) and the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area (ACR-CE), generating our ancestral territorial polygons. We have already given the State several opportunities to make historical restitution, but they did not even respect the agreements of the Technical Roundtable of the Park.
We will continue to demand that the State, especially the DRASAM, SERNANP and ACR-CE, comply with RM 136-2022-MIDAGRI, which allows for the demarcation of our communal territories within natural Protected Areas (PAs).
We will continue to demand that the buyers of Cordillera Azul National Park carbon credits assume their responsibilities for having invested in a Park that dispossessed us of our territories. Especially those companies such as Total Energies, Shell, BHP, and others, who are polluting companies in the world and who seek to clean up their image at the expense of our forests.
We demand that the Ministry of the Environment once and for all supervise and regulate the trade in carbon credits that has benefited at the expense of our territory and approve the necessary safeguards for our protection. And that our right as an Indigenous people to benefit from environmental conservation activities in our territory, as recognised by Convention 169 and the jurisprudence of the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, be recognised.
We reject the fact that CIMA and SERNANP continue to try to divide our communities from the structured Indigenous movement, offering crumbs and dirty politics, spreading social poison and generating organisations within our communities to implement their projects in an attempt to show that they listen to our demands and respect our rights.
We reject the stigmatisation, criminalisation and defamation campaigns against the leaders who have been defending the Kichwa territory
We condemn the long delay by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) who, more than two and a half years after our alert for awarding the PNCAZ on their international Green List, have not had the courage to give us a clear answer on whether or not to withdraw the award given to the Park.
We do not recognise the Cordillera Azul National Park and Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area management committees as spaces for full and effective participation and accountability in the management of these areas. And we insist on the need to think about and design other models of management and participation with Indigenous peoples. And we demand prior consultation on the Master Plans for these areas.
Finally, we stand in solidarity with other Indigenous peoples in Peru and the world who are struggling against an unjust system of natural Protected Areas based on the exclusion of lives and memories, which continues to affect their rights. And we call on them!
Long live the Kichwa people and their territories in the San Martin region!
Kawsachun kichwa llaktakuna
Thank you for this post! Yes, it is time for the purchasers of carbon credits (indulgences) to face the full costs of that purchase, which is beyond the monetary amount paid, to cover the harms to the peoples who used to call that land their home. And there is likely other hidden costs, to the local environment and biome, that have yet to be documented. There is no free lunch for polluters.