Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

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.