UPDATE: Together, we achieved a victory for isolated Indigenous peoples!
Peru’s Congress recently voted on an attempt to abolish protections for Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI). If it had passed, it could have brought about the genocide of dozens of cultures and the destruction of 13% of the Peruvian Amazon. But the legislators suddenly found themselves under scrutiny – including from a strategic Twitter action to pressure the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force to take a stand – and the bill was defeated!
Political power in Peru resides in its congress, as its unpopular president remains cornered by investigations. In a disastrous regional trend, powerful economic interests are launching a new initiative against Indigenous rights and the Amazonian rainforest. Under the Peruvian Bill 28736, Peru’s Congress seeks to dismantle the law and system in place to protect Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI). This Friday, June 23, 2023, the Peruvian Congress might vote to modify this law, leaving the door open for the genocide of dozens of cultures and the destruction of 13% of the Peruvian Amazon.
Amazon Watch is joining an international movement mobilizing solidarity in this crucial moment. Our Peru team is supporting with advocacy and media strategies to halt this dangerous bill from advancing, including pressuring international actors, such as the government of California. This is a crucial moment to amplify Indigenous communities across the Peruvian Amazon and protect the PIACI Law.
During the rubber boom in the first decades of the twentieth century, PIACI decided to move deeper into the forest, as a strategy to avoid becoming enslaved or dying of smallpox or flu, diseases unknown to their people. In response to this situation, in 2006, the Peruvian Indigenous movement managed to pass a law to protect PIACI, which established the government’s obligation to create intangible reserves for their “relatives in isolation.”
The first attack against PIACI came from the Anglo-French oil company Perenco, which tried to block the creation of the Napo-Tigre Reserve but had to back down due to the weakness of its legal arguments and the risks to its image.
Then came the loggers, who tried to use the excuse of post-COVID “economic reactivation” to request forestry concessions in several of the zones where reserves should be created, although they failed thanks to legal actions brought by the Indigenous movement and its allies. Extractivists did not stop there. What do the forces of deforestation do when the laws are in the way? Well, they change them. Using expensive public relations campaigns demonizing the movement to protect the rainforest.
With the argument that people in isolation simply “do not exist,” a campaign has been launched to modify the PIACI Law, with the objective of transferring the power to establish and annul reservations from the Ministry of Culture to governments of the Peruvian States overlapping the Amazon. These state governments have recently attempted to grant more than 47 forestry concessions in the territories of peoples in isolation and had to be stopped by a judge’s order.
In fact, the Loreto state government has been one of the main promoters of this denialist campaign. Four reserves are currently in the process of being created, three of which are also in Loreto.
Indigenous Peruvians demand California not support those who promote the exploitation of PIACI territories
Perhaps the most paradoxical and outrageous aspect of this campaign is that the government of Loreto promotes deforestation, the dismantling of the PIACI Law, and the possible continuation of the rubber genocide while being a member state of a global alliance known as the Governors’ Climate and Forests (GCF) Task Force. The GCF Task Force was founded by California and seeks to “transform” the economies of governments in the global south that have rainforests so that they can be compensated for the emissions of large consumers of oil.
In reality, initiatives like the GCF Task Force have been nearly useless in curbing deforestation in Peru. Instead, it has become a giant international platform for state governments like Loreto and others, to ask for climate finance on one hand while promoting deforestation on the other. This strategy could end one of the few mechanisms that have proven to be a barrier against deforestation over the years. All with total impunity, behind the backs of taxpayers in the United States and Norway.
AIDESEP has sent a letter to the GCF Task Force demanding that it cut off funding to any member state that commits such acts, but to date, it has not been heard. Peruvian Indigenous organizations and allies are focused on an urgent effort to stop the modification of the PIACI Law that will be debated this Friday, June 23, 2023.
The peoples in isolation need us on their side, just as we need the forests in which they live and protect to survive. While we continue to battle in the corridors of Congress and the media, we must not neglect the international front. This is why Amazon Watch is helping to amplify AIDESEP’s demands for answers to all international institutions claiming to be fighting climate change.
As the embassies of the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada in Peru sent a letter to Congress, warning of the dangers of the law, and reminding Peru of its international commitments on climate issues, the GCF Task Force was instead congratulating its Peruvian partners for their “collaborative work in the Amazon” and their “Low Emission Development Strategies.” We have a responsibility to amplify this unacceptable public stance by GCF.
Peru’s regional governments, as well as extractive companies trying to greenwash their image in front of the world, must know that we will not allow them to continue. The GCF Task Force must denounce this contradiction. We have only a few days to act.
