Indigenous people in Peru fighting for land rights

The Hindu , Friday, December 05, 2014
Correspondent : Meena Menon
State doesn’t have the will to regulate oil extraction, says activist

The first Amazonian host of the U.N. climate change conference is ignoring the real drivers of large-scale deforestation and failing to protect indigenous people’s rights, according to a new report released here on Thursday.

Indigenous communities who have been invited to the climate talks cannot speak their mind, according to Robert Guimaraes, who represents the Shipibo people in Ucayali. He told The Hindu that his people suffered from a vicious cycle of illegal loggers, cocoa growers, illegal mining and in the last few years, there was a surge in people invading their lands and rivers for illegal fishing. The poison used to kill fish was destroying the rivers and in addition there was adverse impacts of gold mining in Tukima river.

In 2013, there was a violent conflict with cocoa growers and in a village in Calleria one person was killed. Some of the communities don’t own the land and have no titles. “Despite the fact that we were there before the state, we have no rights over land,” said Mr. Guimaraes.

He said communities are now resorting to legal action and in Corimbari people had filed a lawsuit against the Peruvian government to implement their obligation to ensure people got rights to land. There are 36,000 people who form part of the Shipibo nation and 132 communities, of which 62 have no land titles.

Alfonso Lopez Tejada, from the Loreto river basin region, said the environment problems faced by communities reflect the complete abandonment of the state.

“The state doesn’t have the will to regulate the extracting industries and the water systems have been polluted by dumping of toxic wastes from oil extraction since 30 years. From a Western point of view, oil means progress, development and modernity. Oil has made us poorer and it has meant death and destruction,” he said.

“Now the government has conducted studies which show that there are serious high levels of contamination due to crude oil extraction in lakes and the Kukama people have no access to a single source of safe drinking water,” he said. The region is a low-lying river basin which is flooded for six months. The fish in the lakes and rivers have been found to contain heavy metals. In the last two months there have been two major oil spills in the area.

Since 2002, 57 environmental activists have been killed in Peru. The report titled ‘Revealing the Hidden’ by the Forest Peoples Programme and AIDESEP, the organisation representing the Peruvian indigenous people, throws light on the invisible drivers of deforestation. This includes expansion for palm oil plantation, illegal logging operations and mega dam projects, said Conrad Feather, project officer, Forest Peoples Programme.

The report focussed on the rights of indigenous people and the failure of the government to enforce their rights which has led to many of them living as squatters. There are some 3,30,000 indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazonian region. Peru has pledged to cut net deforestation to zero by 2020 but it remains to be seen if the indigenous communities will get their rights.

 
SOURCE : http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/indigenous-people-in-peru-fighting-for-land-rights/article6662407.ece?homepage=true
 


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