Peru’s Congress has decriminalized illegal logging, by utilizing a fast-track mechanism known as “approval by insistence” to amend Peru’s Forestry Law. This modification will effectively make it “open season” for organized crime in terms of logging and mining activities. These criminal enterprises can now extend their operations into Indigenous territories, causing environmental destruction and attempting to assert ownership over their land. This places Indigenous Earth Defenders at a legal disadvantage and increases the risks they face in conflicts with settlers seeking to expand illicit economies.
The proposal to modify Peru’s Forestry Law in Peru has been “under evaluation” in Congress since July 2022. Throughout this period, Indigenous organizations and numerous civil society allies have vigorously campaigned against the proposed changes, highlighting the potential disastrous consequences of legalizing such activities, as well as the disturbing fact that the Forestry Law was the very first to be approved in accordance with an FPIC (Free, Prior, and Informed Consultation) process in 2011, a milestone in Peruvian history that the Congress abruptly overturned in a fast-track procedure, without any kind of citizen participation.
Amazon Watch has joined a statement signed by thousands of organizations and individuals. This collective warning emphasizes that failure to reverse these recent changes could lead to a surge in deforestation and violence in the Peruvian Amazon. Such consequences would not only undermine decades of conservation efforts but also jeopardize the Peruvian government’s climate commitments. Additionally, it would put at risk millions of dollars invested in bilateral projects aimed at reducing deforestation and protecting Indigenous territories. These projects involve agreements with countries such as Norway, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Even more seriously, in the same week that the Forestry Law was being modified, Peruvian Indigenous organizations denounced the assassination of two more Indigenous leaders: Quinto Inuma of the Kichwa people and Bejamín Ríos of the Kakataibo people. Both were actively opposing the invasion that aimed to deforest their territories for coca cultivation and illegal logging. In both cases, they had successfully exposed the “crime of deforestation,” which now might no longer be legally sustainable in Peru.
Ricardo Pérez of Amazon Watch issued the following statement about the situation:
“Most experts in Peru agree that the interest behind modifying the Forestry Law is to adapt to the new import restrictions of products that deforest the Amazon in the European and U.S. markets in an underhanded way. The authorities of these countries must make a firm statement that they will not ‘fall for’ the game. Millions of hectares of forest and the very lives of Peruvian Indigenous defenders are at risk.”
The Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) issued a statement including the following analysis:
“We point out the inconsistency of the Peruvian government which commits to reducing deforestation in international meetings and forums such as the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 28) but in practice promotes laws like this and other predatory actions against the Amazon. The modification of the Forestry Law directly affects Peru’s climate commitments under the Paris Agreement by reducing the necessary conditions to consider the zoning of properties that supposedly do not have ‘forests,’ thus freeing these spaces from a mechanism that protects areas still maintaining forest cover. It is well-documented that individual properties are areas of high deforestation, and freeing them from forest zoning means encouraging deforestation, which is the main cause of greenhouse gas emissions in Peru.”
