Tag Archives: right to consultation indigenous peoples

Sins of Environmentalism

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During the opening ceremony of the (Conference of the Parties) COP15 of the Biodiversity Convention taking place in early December 2022,  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for a global agreement to protect 30% of the world’s land and water by 2030. This so-called ’30×30′ plan is opposed by a number of groups that promote the rights of indigenous peoples. According to Survival International, an organization campaigning for Indigenous rights, 30 x 30 will be the biggest land grab in history.

Already in many Protected Areas around the world local people, who have called the land home for generations, are no longer allowed to live on and use the natural environment to feed their families, gather medicinal plants or visit sacred sites.

‘Fortress Conservation’ is one example of a conservation model that excludes Indigenous communities. It began with the formation of Yosemite, the world’s first national park, in North America over 150 years ago.  To preserve the ‘pristine wilderness’ humans needed to be expelled so the native Americans, who had lived in and cared for the region for thousands of years, were evicted.

Only 3 per cent of the world’s land remains ecologically intact, and biodiversity loss continues at an alarming rate.  In 2010, member states of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) committed to placing 17 per cent of the world’s land within protected areas by 2020. Yet during that decade global biodiversity actually declined significantly.

There have also been systemic human rights abuses. Rainforest Foundation UK protects the world’s rainforests by supporting and empowering the Indigenous people and local communities which live in them.  But its research into 34 Protected Areas in the Congo Basin showed that without the presence of Indigenous communities, animal populations dwindled, and extractive activities increased. This was despite large investments having been channeled into them.  It also uncovered widespread disregard for local communities’ rights and livelihoods and conflict between forest peoples and conservationists in this region.

According to Joe Eisen, Executive Director of Rainforest Foundation UK, human rights abuses are commonplace in the Congo Basin. “Our research has shown these human rights abuses are not just the isolated actions of rogue park rangers but are rather part of a system in which displacement, torture, gender-based violence and extrajudicial killings are used to control Indigenous peoples and other local communities who live in, and depend on, areas of high conservation value,” he says.

Protected Areas are often managed by major international conservation organizations, who employ armed guards to evict the local population and prevent their return. These actions have long-term consequences and destroy Indigenous livelihoods and cultures.

There are calls for the development of a community-based conservation model, which empowers Indigenous people, rather than removing them from their ancestral lands.

Excerpts from Plans to protect 30% of the planet by 2030 could be ‘devastating’ for Indigenous people, Euronews, Dec. 8, 2022

The Power of Listening: when Indigenous People Win

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 Indigenous traditional owners on Sept. 21, 2022 won a court challenge that prevents an energy company from drilling for gas off Australia’s north coast. The Federal Court decision against Australian oil and gas company Santos Ltd. was a major win for Indigenous rights in the nation. Dennis Murphy Tipakalippa, who was described in court documents as an elder, senior lawman and traditional owner of the Munupi clan on the Tiwi Islands, had challenged the regulator’s approval of Santos’ $3.6 billion plan to drill the Barossa Field beneath the Timor Sea. Justice Mordy Bromberg quashed the February decision by the regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, to allow the drilling.

Tipakalippa had argued that the regulator could not be “reasonably satisfied,” as required by law, that Santos had carried out necessary consultations with indigenous peoples about its drilling plans. Santos had not consulted with his clan, Tipakalippa said, and he feared the project would harm the ocean environment.

See Tipakalippa v National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (No 2) [2022] FCA 1121    

Judge Bromberg went to the Tiwi Islands in August and took evidence about the Munupi people’s connection to the environment. According to indigenous peoples, the court’s willingness  to travel and listen to communities are signs that Australian institutions are increasingly taking  the concerns and heritage of indigenous peoples into account.

ROD McGUIRK, Australian Indigenous traditional owners halt gas drilling, AP, Sept. 21, 2022; Mike Cherney, In Australian Gas-Project Dispute, Sacred Dances Part of Court Hearing, WSJ, Sept. 8, 2022

The Great Green Wall and its Past Mistakes

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The Great Green Wall  aims to transform the lives of some 100 million people by planting a mosaic of trees, shrubs, and grasses along a corridor stretching some 8000 kilometers across Africa by 2030. Since the African Union first launched the Great Green Wall in 2007, the initiative has struggled to make headway. Made up of local efforts across 11 countries, it has reached just 16% of its overall goal to vegetate 150 million hectares.

But in January 2021, the project—which analysts estimate will cost at least $30 billion—got a major boost: a pledge of $14 billion in funding over the next 5 years from a coalition of international development banks and governments. The money is meant to accelerate the effort to sustain livelihoods, conserve biodiversity, and combat desertification and climate change, French President Emmanuel Macron said in announcing the pledges on January 11, 2021.

Environmental restoration and community development specialists welcomed the news. But many are also apprehensive. In recent years, research by ecologists, economists, and social scientists has shown that many forestry projects around the world have failed because they didn’t adequately address fundamental social and ecological issues…Many efforts, particularly those not led by local communities, stumble. Newly planted trees can die of neglect when planners don’t engage communities from the start in discussions about which species to plant, as well as whether residents are willing and able to provide the water, fertilizer, and protection from grazing animals that saplings need. Farmers are often busy and have their own priorities; they “will not … manage trees that they do not value.” …

Elvis Paul Tangem, who coordinates the Great Green Wall Initiative for the African Union Commission, agrees. He says promises to plant huge numbers of trees at low cost, for example at $1 per seedling, can distract from the real challenge. “You can plant a tree for $1,” he says, “but you cannot grow a tree for $1.”

Excerpt from Rachel CernanskyNew funds could help grow Africa’s Great Green Wall. But can the massive forestry effort learn from past mistakes?, Science, Feb. 11, 2021

The Worst Cultural Calamity of 2020: Blowing Up the 46 000-Year-Old Caves at the Juukan Gorge

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In May 2020, mining giant Rio Tinto blasted through two rock shelters in Juukan Gorge in Western Australia in order to mine iron ore. Evidence of human habitation there dates back tens of millennia.  Rio Tinto obtained permission to mine in the area in 2013, a right which was not affected by the discovery of ancient artefacts such as stone relics, faunal remains and human hair in one of the Juukan caves a year later…

Critics of Rio Tinto say there is abundant evidence that the company was aware of the site’s importance before the blasting. For example, the BBC reported that in the days running up to the caves’ destruction in May 2020, Rio Tinto hired lawyers in case opponents tried to seek injunctions to stop them.

Some 7,000 artefacts were discovered during the excavation of one of the Juukan sites.

Excerpt from MERRIT KENNEDY, A Mining Company Blew Up A 46,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Site. Its CEO Is Resigning, NPR, Sept. 11, 2020

How to Create a National Park? Beat Up and Intimidate Indigenous Peoples

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Armed ecoguards partly funded by the conservation group WWF to protect wildlife in the Republic of the Congo beat up and intimidated hundreds of Baka pygmies living deep in the rainforests, according to a UNDP investigation. A team of investigators sent to northern Congo by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to assess allegations of human rights abuses gathered “credible” evidence from different sources that hunter-gatherer Baka tribespeople living close to a proposed national park had been subjected to violence and physical abuse from the guards over years, according to a leaked draft of the report obtain by the Guardian in February 2020.

The allegations, reported to the UN in 2019, included Baka tribespeople being beaten by the ecoguards, the criminalisation and illegal imprisonment of Baka men, summary evictions from the forest, the burning and destruction of property, and the confiscation of food.  In addition, the UNDP’s social and environmental compliance unit heard how the ecoguards allegedly treated the Baka men as “sub-human” and humiliated some Baka women by forcing them to take off their clothes and “be like naked children”.

The report says: “These beatings occur when the Baka are in their camps along the road as well as when they are in the forest. They affect men, women and children. Other reports refer to ecoguards pointing a gun at one Baka to force him to beat another and guards taking away the machetes of the Baka, then beating them with those machetes.

“There are reports of Baka men having been taken to prison and of torture and rape inside prison. The widow of one Baka man spoke about her husband being so ill-treated in prison that he died shortly after his release. He had been transported to the prison in a WWF-marked vehicle.”

The draft report, dated 6 January 2020, adds: “The violence and threats are leading to trauma and suffering in the Baka communities. It is also preventing the Baka from pursuing their customary livelihoods, which in turn is contributing to their further marginalisation and impoverishment.”

The $21.4m (£16.6m) flagship Tridom 11 project in northern Congo set up in 2017 with money from the WWF, UNDP, the European commission, US and Congolese governments and the Global Environment Facility, as well as logging and palm oil conglomerates, includes as its centrepiece a 1,456 sq km area of forest known as Messok Dja.

This global biodiversity hotspot is rich in wildlife, including elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees, and has been lived in and used for the hunting of small game by the semi-nomadic Baka tribes for millennia. The WWF has pressed for it to be designated a protected area, or national park, for 10 years, on the grounds that it will reduce wildlife crime and act as an ecological corridor linking national parks in neighbouring Cameroon.

The WWF says the ecoguards were employed by the Congolese government, but admits contributing to their training and wages along with other funders through the Tridom interzone project (ETIC), a Congo government collaboration with WWF. It adds that there are no legal restrictions preventing Baka using the forests….The investigators also identified multiple failures of the UNDP to adhere to human rights policies and standards, and said little consideration had been given to the impact of the project on the Baka peoples….Investigators also said they found no evidence that the UNDP had taken into account the risk of co-financing the project with palm oil and logging companies whose work by its nature threatens large-scale biodiversity loss.

The report strongly criticises the way conservation is practised in central Africa. “The goal of establishing Messok Dja as a protected area was pursued by following the established patterns of conservation projects in the Congo Basin, which largely exclude indigenous peoples and treat them as threats rather than partners,” it says.

Excerpts from John Vidal, Armed ecoguards funded by WWF ‘beat up Congo tribespeople’, Guardian, Feb, 3, 2020

A Way to Monetize African People: their DNA

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Whistleblowers who formerly worked at the Cambridge-based Wellcome Sanger Institute claimed in October 2019 the institute wanted  to use the DNA samples it obtained from universities across Africa to make money.  They said staff there planned to build a medical research tool, gene chips , based on the DNA, which it could then have sold commercially.

As a result the Stellenbosch University in Western Cape has called for the Sanger Institute to return the DNA samples to the African universities it got them from.  Critics argued the people who donated the samples – members of indigenous communities such as the Nama people – did not consent to it being used this way.    The DNA samples were collected by various African universities and the Lebanese American University in Beirutl.  The samples were shared under so-called ‘material transfer arrangements.’   DNA donors included members of indigenous communities — such as the Nama people of Botswana, Namibia, Uganda, and South Africa.

Participants were reportedly told samples would only be used to study ‘population history and human evolution.’…  The Stellenbosch University in South Africa reportedly wrote that it had provided DNA samples from the Nama people ‘to be used solely for research purposes.’  ‘It was recently brought to [the university’s] attention that […] the Wellcome Sanger Institute intends to proceed with commercialisation of the research, data and Nama DNA,’ they continued.  ‘This conduct of the Wellcome Sanger Institute raises serious legal and ethical consequences.

South African scientists demand the return of hundreds of tribal DNA samples after a British institute was accused of trying to use them to make money, Daily Mail, Oct. 14, 2019

By Hook or By Crook: Harvesting DNA of Indigenous Peoples

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Tensions between Western scientists and Indigenous communities around the world. (“Indigenous” is an internationally inclusive term for the original inhabitants, and their descendants, of regions later colonized by other groups.) Scientists have used Indigenous samples without permission, disregarded their customs around the dead, and resisted returning samples, data, and human remains to those who claim them. Indigenous communities have often responded by severely restricting scientists’ sampling of their bodies and their ancestors, even as genomics has boomed, with increasing relevance for health….

The  Indigenous Peoples in Genomics (SING) aims to train Indigenous scientists in genomics so that they can introduce that field’s tools to their communities as well as bring a sorely needed Indigenous perspective to research. Since Malhi helped found it at UI in 2011, SING has trained more than 100 graduates and has expanded to New Zealand and Canada. The program has created a strong community of Indigenous scientists and non-Indigenous allies who are raising the profile of these ethical issues and developing ways to improve a historically fraught relationship…

Some Indigenous communities, such as the Navajo Nation, decline to participate in genetic research at all. And many tribes don’t permit research on their ancestors’ remains. Such opposition can feel like a hostile stumbling block to Western scientists, some of whom have gone to court to gain or maintain access to Indigenous samples. Not being able to study at least some early samples would “result in a world heritage disaster of unprecedented proportions,” the American Association of Physical Anthropologists said in 2007 in a debate over an amendment to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

To understand why so many Indigenous people distrust Western scientists, consider how intertwined science has been with colonialism, says SING co-founder Kim TallBear, an anthropologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate in North and South Dakota. “While the U.S. was moving westward, stealing land, and massacring Indians, you had contract grave robbers coming out onto the battlefields and immediately picking up the dead—Native people—and boiling them down to bone, and sending their bones back east,” she says. Many of those skeletons were displayed and studied in museums by researchers who used them to argue for the biological inferiority of Indigenous people. Some of those skeletons are still there.  “Science was there, always. It’s part of that power structure,”

Many Indigenous communities see echoes of this painful history reverberating in the 21st century. In 2003, the Havasupai Tribe in Arizona discovered that samples taken for a study on diabetes had been used for research projects they had never consented to, including on population genetics and schizophrenia. They sued Arizona State University in Tempe, which eventually returned the samples and paid $700,000 to the tribe (Science, 30 April 2010)…

Researchers working for the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), a major international effort, were collecting samples from around the world to build a public database of global genetic variation. The project publicly emphasized the importance of collecting DNA from genetically isolated Indigenous populations before they “went extinct.”  That rationale “was offensive to Indigenous populations worldwide,” Gachupin says. “Resources for infrastructure and for the wellbeing of the community were not forthcoming, and yet now here were these millions and millions of dollars being invested to ‘save’ their DNA.” The message from the scientific establishment was, she says, “We don’t care about the person. We just want your DNA.” Some activists dubbed the HGDP “the Vampire Project,” believing the only beneficiaries would be Western scientists and people who could afford costly medical treatments.

Excerpts from Lizzie Wade, Bridging the Gap, Science,  Sept. 28, 2018

Neither Free, Nor Informed: indigenous peoples in Ecuador

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The Constitution of Ecuador adopted in 2008 establishes a broad range of rights for indigenous peoples and nationalities, including the right to prior consultation, which gives them the opportunity to influence decisions that affect their lives. But this right has yet to be fully translated into legislation, as the bill for a Law on Consultation with Indigenous Communities, Peoples and Nationalities is still being studied by the National Assembly.

Article 57, section 7 of the constitution guarantees “free, prior and informed consultation, within a reasonable period of time, on plans and programmes for exploration, exploitation and sale of non-renewable resources located on their lands which could have environmental or cultural impacts on them.” The constitution also stipulates the right of indigenous peoples “to share in the profits earned from these projects and to receive compensation for social, cultural and environmental damages caused to them. The consultation that must be conducted by the competent authorities shall be mandatory and timely.”  “If the consent of the consulted community is not obtained, steps provided for by the Constitution and the law shall be taken,” it adds.  Legal grounds for consultation are also established in Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO), which Ecuador ratified in 1998, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007.

Nevertheless, recent mining and oil drilling projects have put the government’s commitment to respecting the right to consultation to the test, and spurred indigenous organisations to take action.  On Nov. 28, 2012, hundreds of indigenous representatives converged in Quito to protest the lack of consultation prior to the 11th oil auction round, in which exploration blocks containing an estimated total of 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil would be put up for bids from private companies. At the time, Domingo Peas, a leader of the Achuar indigenous ethnic group, declared that “the government says it has carried out prior consultation, but this is not true.”  “The consultations carried out among the peoples and nationalities in the areas of influence are invalid, because there was no participation by indigenous peoples and nationalities in determining the way they were conducted, they did not respect their traditional methods of decision-making, and cultural aspects, such as language, were not adequately taken into account,” he stressed.  Overall, said Peas, the consultations “were neither prior, nor free, nor informed, and were conducted in bad faith.”

The president of the influential Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), Humberto Cholango, believes that the authorities have not done enough. “Prior consultation is still pending, we have still not seen the results we would like to see. We need the law to be approved; that would be a major advance,” he told Tierramérica*.

The draft law, comprising 29 articles, refers to consultation on legislative measures and establishes four stages: preparation; a public call for participation and registration; the actual holding of the consultation; and analysis of the results and conclusion.  In accordance with the law, the government will determine if a proposed bill affects the rights of certain communities, in which case the National Assembly will convene a prior consultation that will be conducted through the National Electoral Council…

One year ago, President Rafael Correa stated in one of his regular Saturday broadcasts that non-governmental organisations “want prior consultations to be popular consultations and to be binding; that means that for every step we want to take, we will need to ask the community for permission.”  “This is extremely serious. This is not what the international agreements say. This would not mean acting in the interests of the majorities, but rather in the interest of unanimity. It would be impossible to govern that way,” he declared.  In response to these statements, indigenous organisations sought reinforcement, calling on agencies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the ILO to supervise the implementation of prior consultation.

In fact, indigenous communities in Ecuador have already turned to some of these mechanisms in the past. In 2003, the Quechua community of Sarayaku filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the state for authorising oil exploration in their territory, without prior consultation.  The community, located in the province of Pastaza, in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest region, denounced damages to their territory, culture and economy. In June 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of the community and against the state. The government is still studying how to pay the required compensation – a total of 1,398,000 dollars for material and moral damages and legal costs – and how to finish repairing the physical damage caused

By Ángela Meléndez, Ecuador’s Indigenous People Still Waiting to Be Consulted, Inter Press Service, May 2, 2012