Peru is facing a wave of environmental conflicts as extractive industries expand into land whose ownership remains legally unclear and a new report by Global Witness highlights how this process will become potentially bloodier through laws recently passed in Lima.

The report “Peru’s Deadly Environment” [http://www.globalwitness.org/perudeadlyenvironment/] states that 57 environmental defenders have been killed since 2002 with 60% of these occurring in the last four years, and that Indigenous Peoples have been among the most exposed to the new violence. Global Witness found that that “80% of all killings of environmental and land activists in Peru between 2002 and 2013 stemmed from local opposition to extractive projects” while Peru’s Human Rights Ombudsman documented “1935 social conflicts generated by opposition to mining projects over the period 2006 to 2014.”

The vast majority of mineral deposits are located on or near Indigenous lands, and logging activities in Peru’s Amazon have also seen Indigenous activists murdered, including Edwin Chota, the campaigning mayor of the Ashéninka community of Saweto in September this year. Global Witness reports that the murder of Chota and three of his companions was symptomatic of “The government’s failure to recognize Indigenous claims to their traditional lands, an issue Chota and other Indigenous leaders campaigned on for more than a decade”, as well as “Poor law enforcement and pervasive corruption that is allowing illegal logging to thrive in the Peruvian Amazon; and the gaps in institutional capacity and resources to adequately address these problems.”

Pointing to a common theme, Equal Times noted on news of Chota’s death: “Official recognition of the Saweto Indigenous community came in 2003, a year after a section of their land was given to a logging company for 40 years. The logging had ‘priority’, although the government committed to study and solve the case.”

The titling of Indigenous land has proceeded at a snail’s pace across Peru, resulting in incursions by loggers in the Amazon, and in the mountains by mining companies taking advantage of formerly communal land being claimed by some as individual titles. Global Witness notes that 20 million hectares of Indigenous land in the Amazon is still pending official titling.

In mountainous areas affected by insecure titles, many Indigenous activists are working to emphasize the common benefits of collective land titles, arguing that it places the community in a far stronger position to negotiate with mining companies. The Quechua community of Paras is located over 3300m above sea level in the High Andes of Ayacucho province, Peru. Like other mountain regions, Ayacucho is increasingly becoming a focus of mining companies eager to exploit a region that’s rich in mineral resources long un-exploitable due to the insurgency by Shining Path guerrillas.

In the face of concentration in land ownership and the prevalence in Peru of development theories based on the benefits of private ownership such as those of the Lima-based Institute for Liberty and Democracy, activists like Tania Pariona Tarqui spoke to the farmers of Paras concerning the impacts that open cast mining has had on the peace and livelihoods of Indigenous communities across the Americas. The poisoning of land, the violence and communal fracturing associated with the Marlin Mine in Guatemala served as a warning, she said, to Indigenous communities not securing collective title of their land.

Paby Cáceres Vargas of Ayacucho’s Defensoría del Pueblo also attended the meeting, describing the rights of Indigenous peoples under international law and in the Peruvian constitution. “The problem”, he said later, “is the implementation of such rights. The backlog of land ownership cases still to be processed and the slow pace of land titling are staggering.”

The same challenge faced Edwin Chota in the territory around the Upper Tamaya River in the Peruvian Amazon—-an issue that will be highlighted when Peru hosts the World Climate Change Conference next month. Global Witness’s report reveals that “Deforestation in Peru accounts for almost half its greenhouse gas emissions, with the rate of destruction more than doubling between 2011 and 2012 to 246,000 ha annually”. The report also quotes recent research by the World Resources Institute showing that Indigenous land rights has proven to be one of the most effective ways to curb deforestation and cut carbon emissions.

The Peruvian government has proceeded to undermine such rights not only through failing to provide the resources necessary for proceeding with pace in providing titles, but passing new legislation – Law 30230 – that weakens environmental and social protections in a bid to encourage further investment in logging and mining. According to La Campaña Territorios Seguros para las Comunidades del Perú, Indigenous communities lacking irrefutable proof of their property rights stand to lose most from the new legislation.

Law 30151, passed in January this year, exempted the Police and military from criminal responsibility if they kill protestors while on duty. The law fits a pattern, according to Front Line Defenders, of the security services being used as a legally immune private security force for extractive industries, resulting in the criminalization and victimization of Indigenous and environmental activists.

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Peru: indigenous leaders murdered for protecting their forests

The Ecologist – http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2639050/peru_indigenous_l...

18th November 2014

As Peru prepares to host UN climate talks, Global Witness exposes the murder of Peruvian eco-defenders – 57 killed since 2002, including indigenous leaders protecting their forests from illegal logging ignored by police and Government.

A new report by Global Witness sheds light on what’s driving the high number of killings of environmental defenders in Peru, less than a month before the country hosts the UN climate talks in Lima.

Peru’s Deadly Environment calls into question the commitments of Peru to protect its carbon-rich forests and the people who live in them, in light of unfettered illegal logging, disregard for indigenous land claims, and new laws that favour industrial exploitation over environmental protection.

The report comes on the heels of the killings of four indigenous leaders in Ucayali in September, including prominent anti-logging activist Edwin Chota and three of his fellow Ashéninka leaders from the Peruvian Amazon.

“The murders of Edwin Chota and his colleagues are tragic reminders of a paradox at work in the climate negotiations”, said Patrick Alley, Co-Founder of Global Witness. “While Peru’s government chairs negotiations on how to solve our climate crisis, it is failing to protect the people on the frontline of environmental protection.

Environmental defenders embody the resolve we need to halt global warming. The message is clear, if you want to save the environment, then stop people killing environmental defenders.”

Since 2002, 57 eco-defenders killed

Peru is the fourth most dangerous country to be an environmental defender, behind Brazil, Honduras and the Philippines. At least 57 environmental and land defenders were killed in Peru between 2002 and the present day, more than 60% of them in the last four years, according to new Global Witness data.

Most of these deaths involved disputes over land rights, mining and logging. 72% of Peru’s indigenous communities still have no way of demonstrating their land tenure rights, and over 20 million hectares of land claims have not yet been processed.

Peru’s Deadly Environment was being launched yesterday at an award ceremony in which the Alexander Soros Foundation honoures Chota and his colleagues with its annual Award for Environmental Activism.

Diana Rios Rengifo, daughter of one of the murdered men, will accept the award on behalf of her father and their Ashéninka community, which has been fighting for more than a decade for the right to gain titles to its land.

“They may have killed my father and his friends, but I am still here”, said Diana, daughter of Jorge Rios. “And I will continue to fight for the rights to our territories and for the rights of the other indigenous peoples of Peru.”

Deforestation is rampant

Peru presides over an area of rainforest roughly the size of the US state of Texas, and recently committed to reduce net deforestation to zero by 2021 as part of a $300 million deal with Norway.

In 2012 deforestation rates in Peru doubled from the previous year and forest loss now accounts for nearly half the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Illegal logging is worth 1.5 times the value of legal timber exports in Peru, and allegations contained in Peru’s Deadly Environment hint at collusion between loggers and government officials.

Edwin Chota had received numerous death threats for his resistance to the loggers who were gutting his community’s forests, but his appeals to the authorities were ignored.

Before he died, Chota sent local police photographs of the illegal loggers who are now charged with his murder and the locations of their logging sites.

Peru shamed – but hosting December UN climate conference

Across Latin America, strengthening indigenous rights to their land has proven links to healthier forests and lower carbon emissions – evidence that will take centre stage at the upcoming Lima climate conference.

Meanwhile hosts Peru invoked a new law in July 2014 that grants extended land use rights to investors for the expansion of large-scale agriculture, mining, logging and infrastructure projects.

“Peru’s credibility as a forest protector hinges upon providing land and resource rights to the country’s indigenous and rural populations”, said David Salisbury, a University of Richmond professor who has spent time with Edwin Chota’s community of Saweto.

“If you want to keep forests standing, you have to invest in people who live in them, as they have the most at stake in the sustainable development of those areas. Saweto is a perfect example. The government should recognize there are people in the forests, and give them rights to them.

“How can you maintain standing forest, and mitigate climate change, if the defenders of the forest are being assassinated?”