Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

The Runa in Ecuador 31
Table 3.2 Protected and Forest Areas in the Ecuadorian Amazon (continued)
Total Protected 3,259,208 (25% of
Areas (ha)
Ecuadorian
Amazon)
Upland 1,612,104
Lowland 1,647,104
Total Protected 323,365 (2.5% of
Forests (ha)
Ecuadorian
Amazon)
Upland 265,408
Lowland 57,957
Abbreviations:
Acdo/Resol Acuerdo/Resolucion (Legal
Agreement/
Resolution)
BP Bosque Protector (Protected
Forest)
PN Parque Nacional (National Forest)
RB Reserva Biológica (Biological
Reserve)
RE Reserva Ecológica (Ecological
Reserve)
RPF Reserva de (Wildlife
Producción Faunistica Production
Reserve)
Source: Data compiled from Vázquez and Ulloa (1997) and from INEFAN/GEF (1996).
colonization, and 60 percent of that was in the
Amazon (Sawyer 1997, 5–6). As a result, nearly
one-third of the Ecuadorian Amazon—more than
38,000 square kilometers—was titled for settlement
by outsiders in the short space of 30 years.
The policy governing Amazonian land was based
on the concept of tierras baldias, or empty lands,
which by definition fell under state jurisdiction.
Baldias has multiple connotations as a legal
term—empty, unoccupied, and uncultivated.
Incorporating notions of both use and ownership,
it specified that lands with no owner or forested
areas uncultivated for longer than 10 years
reverted to the state. Indigenous occupation of
the forest for centuries and traditional systems of
resource management had no legal standing.
Linkage of “appropriate use” to the granting of
tenure rights was designed to promote market
development, and it quickly transformed the
landscape. Colonists were restricted to approximately
50 hectares per family, and had to demonstrate
within five years that at least half their
“empty” homestead had been brought into cultivation.
With limited labor at their disposal, most
settlers not only clear-cut forest but had to adopt
an easily managed production strategy to maintain
tenure. A policy to provide bank loans for
cattle raising ensured that vast extensions of forest
would become pasture in an eye-blink.
Caught in the same vice, Runa families who
obtained title under this system also had to clear
their lands to hold onto them (Macdonald 1999).
Privatization of tenure to “reinvigorate” the agricultural
sector and promote large-scale export
crops has gained speed in Ecuador in the past
five years, further complicating indigenous
recourse to this body of law. The 1994 Agrarian
Development Law (Ley de Desarrollo Agrario)
abolished both the 1964 Agrarian Reform Law
and the land-titling agency IERAC. The new
implementing agency is the Instituto Nacional de
Desarrollo Agrario (INDA). INDA continues to
register and confer legal title; but, unlike its predecessor
IERAC, it has no mandate to delimit
land, and prospective owners must hire approved
surveyors. Even applicants who can afford the
new costs face serious delays since regional
offices took as long as three years to open,
thereby stalling land-titling. The office in Tena,
capital of Napo Province, only opened in
February 1997; the Coca office for Sucumbios
Province was still unopened in late 1997.
Forests. The Law of Forestry and Conservation
of Natural Areas and Wildlife 9 puts usufructuary
rights to forests under the administration of
INEFAN, the Ecuadorian Institute for Forestry and
Natural Areas. 10 The law has two broad
branches—one for production forests and one for
protected areas. Indigenous peoples whose lands
fall within INEFAN’s purview obtain title or use