Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

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The Runa in Ecuador 41 small or large—from household-based to regional in scope. However, difficulty in developing new structures and coordinating multiple layers of organization rises with the grandeur of the conceptualization. Second, is the continuity of support adequate? The more complicated the project is, the longer technical and economic assistance will likely be needed. Finally, does the technical advice match the social conditions? Even in relatively simple projects, planning a time frame that permits communities and organizations to evolve culturally appropriate structures for ongoing management is tricky. Two international NGOs played a critical role in PUMAREN. Cultural Survival, an indigenous rights organization, helped to establish the project and saw it as an opportunity to strengthen federation capacity to serve member communities. CS focused assistance at the federation level. World Wildlife Fund–US, an environmental NGO, started to work in partnership with CS when PUMAREN zeroed in on community forestry. Together they provided direct financial and technical assistance to FOIN, and helped to establish links with other indigenous projects and support institutions. Although initially conceived as a small-scale project based on individual communities, PUMAREN soon developed into a formal enterprise requiring the coordination of multiple communities to achieve economies of scale and continuity of supply. To project advisers, the proposed structure was still small-scale and seemed manageable with appropriate training. However the communities had no administrative experience, no commercial forestry expertise, no experience with marketing, and no contacts to build such a network. Furthermore the cost of adding value to harvested timber quickly scaled the project out of direct community control. Local participants were dependent on outsiders not only for training, but for market links and start-up capital. Development of new regional economic structures creates these kinds of dependencies, which require sustained investment most NGOs are unwilling or unable to give. Where a group of NGOs is involved, support must be coordinated so that delay in one project component doesn’t derail the rest. In the case of PUMAREN, CS was able to leverage significant support early on, and was institutionally committed to a long-term relationship with FOIN. However, unexpected cutbacks in its own funding forced CS to withdraw precipitously in 1994. The other major NGO, WWF, had a narrower, short-term commitment to the community forestry project. Unfortunately its support ended at a critical juncture—soon after CS’s departure and just before the large UNDP grant arrived. Equipment-buying decisions had to be made, but were made in the absence of agreed-upon relationships with clear responsibilities and an agreedupon distribution of benefits. The decisions were made despite the problem of appropriate scale, which had been highlighted but not yet resolved. NGOs often think of a pilot project in conservation and development as a stand-alone model and assume it will be self-replicating once it is shown to work. PUMAREN suggests that the model has to fit the needs of the community implementing it and mesh with a larger matrix of social structures if it is to survive and replicate. In this case, the design did not mesh with either the communities or the federation. 4.3 Government, Communities, and the Pyrrhic Victory of National Parks Since development of a protected area around Sumaco, interactions between government institutions and local indigenous peoples have varied significantly, showing progress on some fronts and persistent problems in others. First, some policy changes have been beneficial. Longstanding federation efforts to acquire tenure for member communities were expedited by application of land-titling categories new to the region. Furthermore, the shift in institutional responsibility away from the agrarian reform agency to the forestry and natural resources divisions (DINAF/INEFAN) constructively linked land titling with resource use. It facilitated the federation’s efforts to steer community management plans away from destructive cattle herding and toward potentially sustainable forestry and agriculture. The relationship between INEFAN and PUMAREN also improved at the local level as INEFAN provided technical support and training to the project team in the development of management plans. Frequent communication has led
42 The Runa in Ecuador to greater trust and better coordination. These links have also provided FOIN with a potentially positive channel for pushing proposals for comanagement based on the practical aspects of community economic development, rather than the highly charged politics that characterized previous contacts. But at the same time, development of a protected-area model has weakened indigenous control over this territory. Establishment of a national park has made indigenous communities and federations just one of many stakeholders. Although able to influence decisions about resource use in the region, they lack the deciding voice that would come from establishment and recognition of an indigenous territory. The government’s Gran Sumaco Project to help establish the park has had a number of side effects. One of them seems ironically beneficial. In working with the single community of Huahua Sumaco, the Gran Sumaco Project showed that PUMAREN’s original simple structure for a forestry project was probably on track. Yet by tending to focus its efforts (as has INEFAN) on individual communities within the park buffer zone, the government undermines the coordinating role played by the federation and arbitrarily divides the social fabric of the region by excluding communities in the much larger area outside the park. Because it sees the indigenous population as one among many with interests in the area, the Gran Sumaco Project has also elevated the claims of others within the region. One day the established park may be as magnificently unique as Sumaco Volcano, standing in splendid isolation as a green island in a landscape devastated by unbridled development. V. The Future of the Region Indigenous federations have made great strides to be included in the political life of Ecuador. Their leaders have become adept at organizing a variety of successful campaigns that have raised awareness about issues ranging from land claims to the impacts of oil development on indigenous communities. In building a regional, national, and international movement, they have also forged a broader “indigenous” identity that cuts across ethnic boundaries. Their struggle has gone a long way to transform the public’s image of indigenous peoples. A vital part of the campaign for indigenous rights has been the ongoing fight for legal recognition that Ecuador is a “plurinational state”—a country that comprises different ethnic “nations.” Indigenous organizations have proposed amending the national Constitution to mandate a decentralized political and administrative structure. The amendment would recognize the cultural heterogeneity of the country and allow local control over economic and cultural development. 16 That would have significant consequences for the Ecuadorian Amazon, much of which indigenous peoples claim as ancestral land. In the past quarter century, they have already achieved remarkable success in obtaining title to large segments of this territory, largely through the work of indigenous organizations formed in response to development pressures. The proposed political changes would have a greater impact on conservation of the region than any activities with individual communities are likely to achieve. Those interested in conservation of the region’s rain forests cannot ignore the indigenous movement as a primary ally in making the changes needed to conserve resources on a landscape scale. However, implementation of such a far-reaching amendment, or even the less radical proposal to comanage protected areas that make up a quarter of the region, will require integration of the larger indigenous movement with community economic initiatives. The social landscape has changed drastically during the past quarter century, with significant implications for conservation. The relationship of most Runa communities to their environment has been irrevocably altered by development pressures and extensive deforestation that have tied indigenous people more closely to a market economy. Simultaneously, the changing policy terrain has incorporated even remote communities into the national legal structure. In order to conserve the resource base indigenous people have depended on for generations, new economic models—ones that build on an extensive traditional knowledge and practice of forest management—must be created. As PUMAREN showed, that will require new governance structures. The federations that have played such an important part in protecting indigenous rights and resources have also added new layers to the regional social structure.
Page 1 and 2: Indigenous Peoples and Conservation
Page 3 and 4: Support for this publication was pr
Page 5 and 6: iv Acknowledgments The editors woul
Page 8: PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
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Page 28 and 29: CHAPTER 3 Indigenous Federations an
Page 30 and 31: The Runa in Ecuador 23 Loreto Chont
Page 32 and 33: The Runa in Ecuador 25 Lower elevat
Page 34 and 35: The Runa in Ecuador 27 Figure 3.1 I
Page 36 and 37: The Runa in Ecuador 29 game animals
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Page 40 and 41: The Runa in Ecuador 33 Pacto Sumaco
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Page 44 and 45: The Runa in Ecuador 37 agement cost
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Page 52 and 53: The Runa in Ecuador 45 References B
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CHAPTER 6 WWF’s Partnership with
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PART THREE: CONCLUSIONS
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140 Signposts for the Road Ahead we
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Contributors JOHN BUTLER holds a Ph
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Indigenous Peoples and Conservation
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Annex 151 Indigenous Peoples 1 and
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Annex 153 19. WWF seeks out partner
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Annex 155 31. WWF commits itself to
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World Wildlife Fund 1250 24th Stree
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