April 2022
Pastaza province, located in Ecuador’s Amazon, has implemented a $52 million sustainable development plan working with Indigenous nations that includes their ancestral practices, knowledge, and life plans.
The plan relies on curtailing dependence on oil and mining projects for economic development and implementing chakras, an ancestral agroforestry system, and conservation projects to boost food security and value chains.
So far, the Pastaza government has received $1.35 million in funding to implement its strategies and hopes other Amazonian provinces will follow suit to conserve 5 million hectares (12 million acres) of land and water.
However, Indigenous communities do not manage any of the REDD+ funds and are wary of agreements that offer inclusive development in exchange for oil and mining concessions, says Indigenous organization CONFENIAE.
CANELOS, Ecuador — An almost invisible trail snakes through thick buzzing forest leading to a chakra, an ancestral food garden in the Kichwa Cuya community located in Ecuador’s largest province, Pastaza. The Kichwa, like other Indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon, use the cleared space in the forest to cultivate yuca, plantain, peanuts, beans and other Amazonian crops and medicinal plants. Closer to their homes are polycultures of achiote and chilis, ready for the preparation of the local staple stew, uchumanga.
Chakras are an agroforestry method with a limited impact on surrounding ecosystems and have formed the backbone of food systems for Indigenous nations in the Amazon for millennia.
“[When] speaking of ecology and conservation, we also have to guarantee food security,” says Efren Nango, education officer of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadoran Amazon (CONFENIAE). About 86% of Pastaza is covered in tropical forest, a living garden for seven of the country’s eleven Amazonian Indigenous nations.
“Without cutting down many trees we can have a variety of crops,” Nango says.
Now, chakras are being recognized and supported as an integral part of Pastaza province’s sustainable development policy. A plan that officially launched last year is part of a shift over the past decade in how the provincial government is approaching conservation and Indigenous ancestral practices.
For the first time in Ecuador, Pastaza’s provincial government is working with Indigenous communities to create the province’s development and territorial management plan, known as the POT, which will include all seven Indigenous nations’ Planes de Vida — “plans of life,” the community development plans based on Indigenous knowledge and culture.
“The Ecuadoran state always came with an extractivist vision,” Nango says. “If you wanted to stimulate the economy and generate employment, they would say you always had to extract oil or have mines because that’s where the money is.”
Although Pastaza has oil reserves, says David Yedra, director of Pastaza province’s environmental management department, the government took the decision in March 2011 to begin pursuing a conservation-focused development path.
In the neighboring Amazonian provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana, oil production and pollution have impacted surrounding ecosystems and Indigenous communities. One of the biggest and most damning cases, known as the “Amazon Chernobyl,” resulted in Chevron being ordered to pay out $9.5 billion in environmental damages to 30,000 plaintiffs. The company refused to pay and instead launched a strategic lawsuit, known as a SLAPP, against human rights lawyer Steven Donziger who helped with the litigation against the oil giant in the U.S. Today, Donziger has been under house arrest for more than 970 days.
Most of Ecuador’s crude oil deposits are in the country’s Amazon. At the national level, they’re seen as a major source of revenue for economic development and foreign debt repayment. Yet, 70% of Ecuador’s Amazon is designated as Indigenous territory. According to Nango, all leaders of the country’s 11 Indigenous nations, represented by CONFENIAE, stand against extractive activities in their territories.
In a historic court ruling in February, this position received judicial weight when judges declared that Indigenous communities should have more autonomy over their territory and a final say in extractive projects affecting their lands.
According to Felipe Serrano, the Ecuador country director at Nature and Culture International (NCI), the visions and aspirations of Indigenous peoples have historically not been fully included in the planning and management of local governments.
“There has been a divorce between regional governments, local governments and [Indigenous] nationalities,” Serrano tells Mongabay.
A new kind of territorial planning
In May 2021, the Pastaza provincial government and Indigenous nations drew up a $52 million plan as part of a REDD+ program to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Set to run for five years, the plan will use ancestral agroecological practices as the basis for stimulating the bioeconomy in Indigenous territories, as well as forest and water source conservation and restoration.
To date, the Pastaza government has received $1.35 million from the Governors’ Climate and Forests (GCF) Task Force, which will be directed in two parts.
The first strategy will design and implement chakras to bolster food security and sovereignty for 128 families. This year, the strategy will be piloted in five communities and will be expanded to more communities in 2023.
The rest of the article here:
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/04/ec...-conservation/
Ecuador’s Pastaza province, Indigenous groups collaborate on forest conservation. April 2022
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