Title: A Rush to Pave the Peruvian Amazon: Bypassing the Law, a Highway Megadevelopment Project Threatens Indigenous Land Rights and Biocultural Resources

Introduction

The Bellavista-Mazán-Salvador-El Estrecho highway (the Bellavista-El Estrecho highway) in the Peruvian Amazon is a planned megadevelopment project that illustrates the challenges facing Indigenous peoples and their ancestral lands. This project poses significant threats to the biocultural diversity of the region. Historically, Indigenous people and their ancestral lands have routinely been treated as disposable in Peru and other parts of the world. Across Latin America, governments perpetuate the marginalization of Indigenous people by failing to adequately consult them on projects that will affect their lands and lives. This situation highlights the urgent need for genuine consultation with Indigenous people to ensure that proposed megadevelopment projects are approached through a transparent, inclusive, and just process.

The Maijuna People and Biocultural Conservation

The Maijuna are a Western Tucanoan people with a population of approximately 600 individuals. There are four Maijuna communities along the Sucusari, Yanayacu, and Algodón rivers in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon (Figure 1). The Maijuna employ various subsistence strategies, including swidden-fallow agriculture, hunting, fishing, and gathering multiple forest products. Given the central role that Maijuna ancestral forests play in their food security, economic stability, and traditional culture and beliefs, it is critical to manage and protect these forests effectively.

Since Europeans first arrived in their region centuries ago, the Maijuna have faced racial discrimination and marginalization. Their ancestral lands have been sites of environmental injustice, including the forced mass extraction of forest products like rubber, rosewood, and animal pelts, along with a recent influx of illegal loggers and poachers. Despite being one of the smallest and most vulnerable Indigenous groups in the Peruvian Amazon, the Maijuna have worked to build effective political agency over the past two decades. In 2009, the Maijuna and their federation (FECONAMAI) successfully fought to end illegal logging and poaching on their lands. In 2015, with the help of allies, FECONAMAI pushed the Peruvian government to create the Maijuna-Kichwa Regional Conservation Area (MKRCA), a 391,000-hectare protected area.

The Maijuna now co-manages the MKRCA with neighboring Indigenous Kichwa communities and the regional government of Loreto. For over a decade, the Maijuna have prevented incursions into the heart of the MKRCA, protecting it from loggers, miners, and poachers. Their traditional management practices have played a critical role in promoting the ecological health of the protected area, which is a biodiversity hotspot and a globally significant carbon sink.

The Bellavista-El Estrecho Highway

First proposed by the Peruvian government over two decades ago, the approximately 188-km Bellavista-El Estrecho highway would connect Iquitos, the capital city of Loreto, to the town of San Antonio del Estrecho along the Putumayo River, Peru’s border with Colombia. The fourth phase of the highway project would bisect the MKRCA (see Figure 1). Proponents of the project, led by the Ministerio de Transportes y Comunicaciones (MTC), argue that the highway would enhance the quality of life in the region, improve connectivity with communities along the Putumayo River, reduce freight costs, improve the transportation of locally produced goods, and generate a development corridor for Indigenous communities. However, over the past five decades, new roads and development corridors in various parts of the Amazon basin have fragmented the forest, destroyed wildlife habitat, and granted easy access to opportunists eager to log, mine, poach game and fish, clear land for grazing, and set up homesteads. With this history in mind, the Maijuna and Kichwa federations, along with other affected Indigenous communities, view this megadevelopment project as an existential threat to their livelihoods, cultures, and ancestral lands.

Prior Consultation

In 1994, Peru ratified Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention. In 2011, Peru passed its law on prior consultation (Ley N^o 29785), becoming the first Latin American country to do so. This decision aimed to prevent the recurrence of violent clashes between Indigenous land defenders and the government, which had previously been ignited by controversial infrastructure and megadevelopment projects.

Prior consultation in Peru requires the consultation of Indigenous communities whose collective rights may be affected by legislative or administrative measures, such as establishing protected areas or implementing development projects. (Notably, in 2013, Maijuna and Kichwa leaders participated in the first successful implementation of the prior consultation law, leading to the creation of the MKRCA in 2015.) Regarding the planned Bellavista-El Estrecho highway, the Peruvian government has yet to complete a prior consultation with the Maijuna, Kichwa, and other Indigenous communities, despite the completion of the project’s first phase and the current progress of the second phase (see Figure 1). The federations urge the government to suspend this project immediately until the legally required consultation process with all affected Indigenous communities takes place.

Conducting a consultation process does not guarantee that the wishes of the Maijuna, Kichwa, and other Indigenous communities will be followed. Under the Peruvian prior consultation process, if the government and the affected Indigenous communities cannot reach an agreement, the lead state entity, the MTC in this case, makes the final decision. MTC’s decision must be adequately justified and include an evaluation of the expected impacts on the collective rights of affected Indigenous communities. Giving final decision-making power to the lead state entity has been problematic, and Indigenous organizations in Peru have previously presented multiple critiques of this policy. First, they have reasonable and justified doubts that responsible government entities will protect human rights and balance diverse interests. Second, they envision certain situations where consultation with affected groups should be required, and their free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) should be obligatory for a project to proceed. These concerns are especially acute regarding projects that would negatively impact Indigenous land rights or sources of subsistence—as the Bellavista-El Estrecho highway would undoubtedly do.

Regrettably, other highway projects in Peru have illegally bypassed the consultation process, crossing through Indigenous lands with impunity. Additionally, even when consultations occur for megadevelopment projects, they have typically been carried out ineffectively or unethically. For example, the consultation law governing oil, gas, and mining projects has frequently been misused, resulting in a hollow, pro forma consultation process that perpetuates the Peruvian government’s long history of unjust treatment of Indigenous peoples.

Moving Forward

The issues discussed here point to significant challenges and impediments to successfully implementing Peru’s prior consultation law. Based on an analysis of the law, three basic conditions have been previously identified as lacking in Peru for the effective implementation of prior consultations: state institutions capable of justly balancing the interests of diverse groups, measures that reduce power asymmetries within consultations, and joint decision-making processes with binding agreements.

With these basic conditions in mind, we offer the following five recommendations to ensure that the consultation process for the proposed Bellavista-El Estrecho highway proceeds as respectfully, ethically, and transparently as possible. First, the government should immediately pause construction of the second phase of the highway project to demonstrate that they are serious about following the legally required consultation process with the Maijuna, Kichwa, and other affected Indigenous communities. Second, impartial observers should be present throughout the entire consultation process to ensure that all parties act in good faith and uphold their legally required duties and responsibilities. Third, since many Indigenous leaders and community members affected by this project have neither seen the type of highway proposed nor witnessed its devastating impacts, allies and advisors of the impacted Indigenous communities should be involved in the prior consultation process to provide real-time technical expertise and offer a more balanced understanding of the project’s pros and cons. Fourth, several alternatives to the highway have been identified that also should be considered and explored. These include finishing a partially completed road on the northwestern border of the MKRCA that is shorter in distance and in an already ecologically degraded area (see Figure 1); increasing subsidized public air transportation, for people and cargo, between Iquitos and El Estrecho; and improving river transportation in the region. These alternatives are more cost-effective and would allow the MKRCA ecosystem to remain intact, ultimately protecting Indigenous ancestral lands, communities, and cultures. And fifth, if the Maijuna, Kichwa, and their Indigenous neighbors do not give consent for this highway project in its current form, it must be halted because of the impact it would have on Indigenous land rights and sources of subsistence.

These five measures would balance historical power asymmetries, foster a more comprehensive understanding of the project, and safeguard the collective rights of affected Indigenous communities. Taking the approach we propose in this prior consultation, and others like it, would help to more effectively support the genuine participation of Indigenous people in the process and set a new precedent of transparency, respect, and accountability in the government’s infrastructure development. Furthermore, Peru would clearly acknowledge the importance of its Indigenous citizens, their traditional cultures and livelihoods, and their ancestral lands, ultimately charting a more inclusive and just path forward.

. . .

Michael P. Gilmore is an ethnobiologist and Associate Professor at George Mason University’s School of Integrative Studies. He has worked with the Maijuna Indigenous group of the Peruvian Amazon since 1999 on a wide variety of community-based biocultural conservation and sustainable development projects. In addition to his work at George Mason University, Dr. Gilmore founded and is president of OnePlanet, a non-profit organization that partners with the Maijuna.

Andrew Wingfield is a writer of fiction and literary nonfiction and an Associate Professor at George Mason University’s School of Integrative Studies. With Michael P. Gilmore, Wingfield has coauthored numerous essays about the rich and complex relationship members of the Maijuna Indigenous group in the Peruvian Amazon have with their ancestral rainforest landscape. Wingfield and Gilmore are coauthoring a book about the Maijuna that is forthcoming from University of Georgia Press.

Elizabeth Schierbeek is a doctoral student in George Mason University’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy. Since 2018, she has worked with the Maijuna people to conserve their lands and culture.

Brian M. Griffiths is a human ecologist and faculty member at The Earth Commons Institute at Georgetown University. Since 2017, he has worked closely with the Maijuna people and local NGOs on the conservation of biodiversity, natural resources, and sustainable development.

Image Credit: Hector Mavare, Unsplash, Via Unsplash Content License.