An Alliance of Equals

Indigenous people have lived in the tropical rain forests of South America's Amazon basin region for millennia. And while their way of life has been threatened by outsiders (including Christian missionaries) for centuries, it is only in the last few decades that they have faced the threat of extinction due to development—i. e. gold prospectors, dams, cattle ranchers, oil wells, and lumber companies.

Saving the forests has become a popular cause in recent years, with presidents, kings, religious leaders, corporations, scientists, and environmentalists discussing their fate. But in all of the discussions on topics such as global warming and the genetic diversity of the rain forest, one group has been conspicuously absent: the 1.5 million people who live there.

As part of an effort to place themselves at the bargaining table for their survival, indigenous leaders from Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador—who are part of a coordinating body of indigenous organizations known as COICA—hosted environmentalists in May for what was called the First Iquitos Summit, held in Iquitos, Peru.

The environmental groups participating at the five-day meeting included the National Wildlife Federation, World Wildlife Fund, Rainforest Action Network, Conservation International, and Greenpeace. Many other groups, including the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, Cultural Survival, and the Washington, D. C. -based Inter-American Foundation, were also present as observers.

With the help of these groups, the indigenous leaders hope to gain more control over the fate of their native homelands. And based on the historic document signed at the meeting's end, they are succeeding.

The document formally declared a commitment among the indigenous people and the environmentalists to continue working together—as an alliance of equals. To this end, a committee made up of three Indian leaders and three environmentalists was formed and will hold its first meeting in Washington, D. C., this October. Specifically, indigenous people of the Amazon basin are seeking land titles. Most of the current territory they occupy is untitled, and as such is subject to the whims of the respective national governments in the region. If, for example, a timber company offers the minister of agriculture a sizable chunk of cash for logging rights to untitled Indian land, no legal barriers exist to prevent the selling of those rights.

Of course, government-issued titles are no guarantee in a country such as Peru where,according to Raymond Offenheiser of the Ford Foundation, "the central bank is flat on its back and the government cannot meet staff payroll." After all, land titles, like currency, are just pieces of paper—only as valuable as the bank behind them. However, they are a step in the right direction.

Land titles, while a priority, are just one of many demands the indigenous people are making in an attempt to secure their homelands for future generations. They also want research done on indigenous human rights violations, an end to Indian slavery in Brazil and Peru and to forced displacement, official recognition of tribal governments, and no multilateral development projects without Indian input and consent.

BRINGING SOME OF THESE ideas to fruition will require cash, and the indigenous people for the most part have none. "Debt-for-nature swaps" are one way to assist indirectly in bankrolling some of the desired changes. First proposed by ecologist Thomas Lovejoy in 1984, the debt-for-nature swap is simply a new application of the debt-for-equity swap concept and could involve, for example, a timber company paving off some government debt in exchange for logging rights.

Lovejoy suggested rewarding countries who invest in conservation by reducing their debt to the United States. Though he had no clear idea about implementation, Lovejoy believed that without some assistance it was unrealistic to expect debt-ridden countries to invest in conservation.

Because many countries are unable to meet their payments on enormous loans made to them in the 1970s, a secondary debt market has evolved. On this market, debts are for sale. Peruvian debt, for example, can currently be purchased for five cents on the dollar. So, it's possible for a foundation to purchase a large piece of debt—say, a million dollars—for only $50,000. The foundation can offer to cancel a government's debt if it puts some money into something such as reforestation.

Though these debt-easing deals sound good, and in some cases work well, they are no cure-all for the problems confronting the rain forest and its inhabitants. For one thing, very little debt is for sale. And debt that can be renegotiated often has dubious value. The reduction saves a country money it didn't really have in the first place. As a result, Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation believes that "putting a million dollars into conservation will often take a million away from another project such as child care."

EVEN TO BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND the Indian battle for land titles in Peru—and, ultimately, rain forest preservation—one must look at the basic political context in that country. Peru is financially paralyzed by a staggering foreign debt. To meet its payments, it is doing what other countries in the Amazon region do that are in the same situation: exploit the vast resources of the rain forest.In addition to the debt, or perhaps because of it, Peru suffers chronic inflation. For example, a U. S. dollar was worth 28,000 Intas the first day of the COICA conference, and 33,000 on the last. In other words, relative to the international economy, Peruvians lost one-fifth of their buying power in about a week.

Of course, with an economy such as this one, nobody saves any local currency. That's why the central bank is broke; most people withdrew all their money a long time ago.

To complicate matters further, Peru grows about 80 percent of the South American coca leaf crop. As much as they'd like to, the owners, growers, and traders of this notorious cash crop don't operate in a vacuum. Intimate connections exist between the forces behind the crop production and the Shining Path guerrillas. The Shining Path gets a percentage of the crop profits, which helps keep them well-armed to continue fighting one of the world's bloodiest and least understood civil wars.

In the scope of this and many other conflicts involving the Peruvian military, the Colombian drug cartel, the Shining Path, the U. S. military, and assorted right-wing para-military groups, the Indians are barely pawns. It is a sad irony since the indigenous people comprise a majority of the Peruvian population.

THE SITUATION IN BOLIVIA is no less complicated. Until 1986, the Chimanes forest, for example, in the Beni region of Bolivia, was an untouchable forest reserve of 1.2 million hectares (or almost three million acres). It wasn't accessible by any roads, and was home to thousands of indigenous people. Four years ago, lumber companies faced with dwindling reserves in other parks began pushing the government to lift the ban on logging in the Chimanes. Twelve companies petitioned the government, and seven were awarded permanent concessions on about 600,000 hectares. Construction of roads immediately followed.

Throughout this entire process, no one from the government or industry consulted with a single indigenous resident. Meanwhile, Conservation International was orchestrating the world's first debt-for-nature swap. The deal went down in early 1987, and though it looked good from the outside, it too suffered from the same oversight as all the other deals: The indigenous people, the local inhabitants who would most be affected by any change in the area, were never consulted. According to COICA, the deal took place "with the most brazen disregard for the rights of the indigenous inhabitants and resulted in the destruction of the very forests the swap was meant to preserve."

In 1987, Indians clashed repeatedly with loggers and ultimately brought their case before the Bolivian government. After much discussion, the Bolivian government reversed itself and in 1988 the president issued a Supreme Decree: Until more information was available concerning the impact of harvesting the Chimanes forest, all lumbering and building would stop.

The decree, however, was never honored and the logging continued. Consequently, the indigenous people mobilized in an effort to fight what they saw as essentially a conspiracy between the government and the private development organizations.

The Indians claimed that the government, when dividing up the Chimanes forest between industry and locals, gave all the good land to the timber concessions, and all the swaps and unarable portions to the Indians. Furthermore, the land that was given to the Indians was parceled into little pieces, effectively dividing their community and usurping their power.

The Chimanes Indians are maintaining their position in the ongoing struggle: They want the whole forest back. In addition, they want each family to hold title to 200 acres, instead of the 20 acres currently allocated. Even if their demands are met, and the forest is returned to them, the Indians face a formidable host of tough problems. Their numbers are growing, with no real discussion of population control. And resource management will be an issue, as they too wish to do some logging.

The rain forest is a big place that is shrinking fast. There is not a lot of time left to figure out what to do to help, given the current rates of destruction. (The World Resource Institute recently published findings that we were wrong in our estimates of the rain forest disappearing at a rate of one acre every second; it's actually going at one-and-a-half acres every second).

The Iquitos Summit was a positive step. But many tough decisions remain. The development of a policy and a plan that will protect the rain forest requires balancing an enormous number of facets and interests—a balance upon which the Indians, the forest, and ultimately our entire planet depend.

As COICA's president Evaristo Nkuang of Peru said, "We either disappear with the forest, or live with the forest. We have no other place to go. And we need a place to give our children."