Lima - During his campaign for president of Peru in 2006 he never showed any particular interest for the Amazon Rainforest. Even the creation of the Ministry of the Environment came about abruptly, as it wasn’t even announced during the campaign and was a decision that was only reached in 2008 during the Latin American – European Union Summit. Close to the end of his mandate next July 28th, summing up Alan García Pérez’s accomplishments for this region is a controversial and arguable subject.
“Quite poor”, is the adjective chosen by Richard Chase Smith, director of the Common Good Institute (IBC), in explaining what, for instance, happened in terms of conservation of the forests and the fight against illegal wood extraction. Although an initiative had been launched in July 2010 which intended to protect 54 of the 72 million hectares of Peruvian forests and aiming at avoiding deforestation, public policies when taken as a whole on this issue show disturbing results.
Forests adrift
According to Smith, for example, in Loreto, the greatest region of Peruvian forest (political divisions in Peru are now by regions and not by departments), of the 256 forest concessions requested since the year 2001, when the Forest Law was sanctioned, only 8 fulfilled the rules that oblige the concessionary to have an up-to-date environment handling plan, to reforest and so forth. This mess frequently added to by corruption, floats on this environment, where informal lumberers dominate the scene.
Ernesto Ráez, professor of the Peruvian University of Cayetano Heredia, is even more drastic in his opinions. He claims that 80% of the wood in circulation is derived from illegal extraction, because according to the predominant confusion, “legality does not favor business”, which leads companies to also penetrate far into protected areas to then quickly “legalize” the wood extracted by means of their formal concessions. “One of the problems is the search for mahogany, which is increasingly scarce.”
The
Forest Conservation Program tries to neutralize this chaos, among other means, by paying native communities 10 soles (approximately USD 3.75) per year, for every hectare of conserved forest. Considering that the communities that own land titles have 10 million 628 thousand hectares, this initiative can be interesting. However, it is not exactly within the indigenous people theme that President Garcia can show more results and exhibit his affinities.
Indifferent to the pleas of indigenous people
On June 5, 2009, after many months of conflict, and of what in Peru is known as ‘mecida’ (to go round and round without actually solving a problem adequately) a confrontation between the indigenous people of the Awajún ethnic group and the police took place in Bagua (a province on the country’s northeast), more specifically in the so-called “Curva do Diabo”, or Devil’s Curve (also in a local oil station close by), resulted in the official number of 34 dead, 24 of which were policemen and 10 were natives, a gruesome fact that led to a major commotion in Peru.
This was the unfortunate consequence of months of protests on the part of the indigenous people against several legislative decrees, such as the 1090 and the 1094, enacted by president García thanks to the special powers given to him by the Congress. The Indigenous People’s Association for the Development of the Peruvian Forest (AIDESEP), the greatest organization of indigenous people in the country, considered that these regulations placed the land of their ancestors under risk; therefore it rebelled against it and encouraged continuous demonstrations of protest and road blocking activities.
Versions of the incident are still being discussed, but the most accepted one says that the police attacked during the early hours of the morning, even after the natives had acceded to unblock the ‘Curva do Diabo’, which is part of a highway. What’s essential to note in this story is that the episode marked the most important point of the current president with the region and its inhabitants. Ráez and Smith agree when they say that this distance from the García administration was something that began long before, when he wrote an article called ‘The hortelão dog syndrome’ for the El Comercio newspaper.
In this text, published on October 29 2007, the president in a certain sense established what would become his policy for the Amazon. For example, he said that: “And against oil, they created the figure of the savage ‘non-contacted’ native; or, in other words, the unknown but presumable native, one who comes in the way of what would be the exploitation of millions of hectares.” According to Smith, these portions and others, in which García insists on extractivism activities, both in the mountain range and in the forest, created an administrative gap that soon became unbridgeable and difficult to overcome.
Further complications
Paradoxically, that was a moment in which a greater part of the country’s citizens, usually aloof from the Amazon, turned their gaze to rest on the indigenous people and to the forest itself. What Ráez considers “this XIX century outlook, that called for a conquering of the forest”, was employed in the words and in the decisions of the Chief of State and generated, on the average term, a contrary effect on the population that began to develop sympathy for this forgotten territory. However, further complications were to come.
Informal mining, which is extremely deleterious and settled especially in the southeast region of the country, specifically in the regions of Puno and Madre de Dios, continued to grow during García’s administration, and only on February 18, 2011, many years after the conversion of entire forest zones, the State decided to act.
On this day the armed forces and the police invaded the region with the clear intention to eliminate illegal dredges, especially those of Chinese origin, intended for the extraction of gold.
For Ráez, this action was “too late and insufficient” because in the commissions that were formed to solve the problem, there was a lack of participation of other actors, such as the federations of farmers or of indigenous peoples and NGOs, who are also affected by the phenomenon of informal mining, which literally destroyed some forest zones in Peru, such as Huaypetue (in the southeast), where poverty and human trafficking also grew.
Close by, and to complicate this sum further, they are attempting to build the Inambari dam, a tip of the iceberg of a power agreement signed on June 16, 2010 in Manaus, by presidents Lula and Alan García.
In a 50-year horizon, the agreement states that they could build six dams in the region of the Peruvian Amazon, whose final goal – not clearly defined in the document – would be to offer electric power to Brazil, a country that, contrary to Peru, requires more power.
As doctor Marc Dourojeanni states in his book ‘Peruvian Amazon 2021’, dams, and especially the one in Inambari, are the most impacting infrastructures with regard to the Amazonian biome, because they imply in the destruction of roads, in the displacement of populations, in the flooding of farmlands and livestock breeding regions, in affecting aquatic ecosystems (where fish are to be found, the major source of protein in the Amazon region). If besides this agreement García also leaves to his successor the result of his favoring this installation of the Paquitzapango hydroelectric powerplant, the problem will be even greater.
This dam would be located in the country’s central forest and would flood dozens of villages of the Asháninka ethnic group, who – reminds us Ráez – during the period in which the Peruvian state and the subversive group Sendero Luminoso underwent several confrontations, lost approximately 10% of its population due to general violence. Actually, a new conflict is foreseen for this zone, in case this initiative goes ahead, as it ignores Convention 169 of OIT, which addresses the need to perform consultations with groups of indigenous people, when plans are made to interfere in their territories, an issue which has not been yet regulated in Peru, as per García’s decision.
In May 2010, the Parliament approved a Law that could regulate this right to consultation, but a few days later the president returned it. He claimed that the approved project “will serve the purpose of maintaining an erroneous interpretation of the part of these populations that they have the right to bar state decisions”. Organizations of indigenous people then protested and warned that the entire process of exchanging views and arriving at a consensus to approve the law had resulted in nothing.
The possible and the admirable
Notwithstanding, the creation of the Ministry of the Environment is seen as a right move on García’s part, although its work has been insufficient. Aside from the Woodlands Conservation Program, the ministry is trying to lend an economic value to biodiversity and to potentize its responsible use (an old concern of the current minister, Antonio Brack). It is also noteworthy the valuable activity of the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute (IIAP), which lately has taken some interesting initiatives, such as to promote the adoption of new technologies in fish farming activities in the Amazon.
Interestingly enough, this handing out of the Amazon for the exploitation of hydrocarbons fell approximately 78% in 2009 and 60% in 2011. According to Smith, there is no official explanation for the fact, although it could be due to the difficulty of extracting oil or gas in these regions. Back in 2007, García’s administration tried to cut out more than 200 thousand hectares of the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park (in the country’s southeast), exactly to create an oil exploitation lot, a decision which produced waves of protests. He finally backed off due to national and international pressure, but this was yet another dark cloud that hung over the term of this Chief of State.
The government was permissive in handing out territories to some companies, for farming reasons aimed at the production of biofuels in the zone of San Martín (in the northeast), without considering that zones containing indigenous people and forests could be affected. But on the other hand, it was proactive when it came to devising the plans to protect the forests, including a Map of the National Forest Heritage, which suggests conservationist purposes.
But if the focus is centered on the president himself, in his global policies, one can say that one is not before a leader that has a marked vocation for the environment or any kind of identity with the Amazon Rainforest. This paragraph, extracted from the ‘hortelão dog syndrome’ seems to underline this observation:
The first resource is the Amazon. It covers 63 million hectares and has abundant rains. In it, one can conduct wood reforestation, especially in the 8 million hectares that have been destroyed, but for that end one needs a property, in other words, a land area which is safe and covering 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000 hectares, because in areas smaller than these, there isn’t any formal investment on the long term employing high technology.
Privileges went to investments, the expansion of properties, the production and global lines that are very important for any public policy, but that lie some distance away from a political consensus with regard to the populations of indigenous people or without enough emphasis on the protection of biodiversity, all of which collide with the possibility of a sustainable Amazon. What’s most disturbing is that, in the current presidential campaign, there is no candidate that can carry on the correct actions of García’s administration and redirect the wrong ones, someone that can really understand the region is something vital for Peru and for the planet.
