Indigenous governance and conservation of the commons in Bolivia
BY LEONARDO TAMBURINI FOR DEBATES INDÍGENAS
The relationship between Indigenous Peoples and the environmental movement has not always been on the best or terms. Although the communities have protected nature where they have lived for centuries, it took years for conservationist organizations to understand that wild flora and fauna do not only occupy forests. While some conservationists continue to call for the expulsion of Indigenous people from protected areas, others have understood the role Indigenous communities play in the reproduction of life. In Bolivia, the Guarani have created protected areas under their own regulations, while five Amazonian peoples have just created a protected area rich in biodiversity.
Indigenous organizations and international conservation efforts have differed on the protection of nature both practically and conceptually. Indigenous Peoples believe that the best way to conserve biodiversity is to have their territorial rights recognized and to end forced colonization. However, conservationists believe that these demands threaten biodiversity, since any human action implies the alteration of the conditions necessary for the preservation of the natural commons.
Already in the 1980s, alliances between conservations and Indigenous groups began forming against specific threats. An emblematic case was Brazil: under the slogan of "development", the military government began to implement mining and forestry programs aimed at appropriating the Amazon through highways that planned to cross its geography. In this context, environmentalism contacted the Indigenous populations of the region, strengthened their campaigns denouncing the destruction of the environment and positioned them as natural allies of conservation.
For their part, Indigenous Peoples made their demands visible, linked their human rights to the legal recognition of their territory and positioned themselves as the main actors in the protection of forests and jungles. The peak of this alliance came with the 1992 Rio Summit, when the environmental and Indigenous agendas found an echo in an international community sensitized by the natural disasters in the countries of the North. Agenda 21 emphasized the historical relationship of Indigenous Peoples with their territories and their role in the conservation of ecosystems.
View of the Mercedes del Cavitu area. The Indigenous communities of the Bolivian Amazon are fully aware of the importance of protecting their territories. Photo: Ore
The case of Bolivia
In the heat of the social turmoil of the early 21st century, Bolivian social movements came to promote the so-called "shared management" of protected areas, especially in cases of Indigenous presence. At present, however, protected area management is seen as sliding backward following the conflict over the attempted construction of a highway that was to cross the Isiboro Sécure National Park Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS). In the end, two national marches brought this project to a halt.
At the same time, the Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia managed to collectively title 12.5 million hectares in the Lowlands, i.e., the Subtropics, the Chaco and the Amazon. However, property titles have not been able to guarantee the full exercise of territorial rights within the framework of Self-Determination, also recognized in the Political Constitution of the State. In fact, there are territorialities, imposed by private or state entities, that cross Indigenous territories and ignore their collective rights, their authorities and their socio-cultural reality. Needless to say, this is detrimental to governance and management.
In this framework, titled Indigenous territories have disappeared as a unit of analysis and are not considered in the definition of public policies. The State functions through the republic’s territorial units (such as the department and the municipality) and, in the best of cases, the communities are subordinate to the municipal districts. But not through the Indigenous territories, which are only considered from an agrarian point of view, which denies their political entity and their struggles that brought about their legal consolidation.
In addition, there are overlapping protected areas, where management instruments, such as management plans, define the use, access and exploitation of the territory, establishing restrictions that are often far removed from the social and cultural reality of the Indigenous Peoples that inhabit them. Although the process of drafting the management plan tends to be highly participatory, the area's territorial planning is based on its environmental conditions where the cultural and historical elements are considered by the managers, in the best-case scenario, as "conservation objects".
The case of the Multiethnic Indigenous Territory
In this context, the Indigenous peoples' own management instruments have given way to other public planning schemes that make the Indigenous Territories (Territorios Indígena Originario Campesinos - TIOC) invisible. This goes hand in hand with the crisis of representativeness of the Indigenous organizations that led the struggle for the titling of the territories, where their collective spaces for reflection and deliberation with their bases are weakened.
Faced with this situation, the Indigenous Peoples' agenda has been taken up by territorial organizations, which have been proposing tools and processes to autonomously design their own development with a historical perspective. Indigenous Peoples have also been making strategic use of the constitutional competencies established for Indigenous autonomies. One of them is the creation of subnational protected areas and territorial planning, recovering the political initiative and assuming the authorship demanded by the present historical moment.
Located in the Southern Amazon of Bolivia, the Multiethnic Indigenous Territory (TIM for its acronym in Spanish Territorio Indígena Multiétnico) achieved the titling of 600,000 hectares as collective territory of the five Indigenous Peoples that inhabit the 26 communities that compose it: Mojeño Trinitario, Mojeño Ignaciano, Movima, T'simane and Yuracaré. The TIM has creatively employed the technical tools of biodiversity observation and control to put them at the service of governance and autonomous management of its territory through an integrated territorial control system.
Concurrently, a series of studies were carried out that concluded with a Natural Resources Management Plan that includes the zoning of its territory and assigns priority levels for its conservation and protection. This Management Plan decided to create a conservation area called "Loma Santa" because it meets environmental conditions, vulnerability and high biological value. Lom Santa is strategic for the reproduction of biodiversity and life systems within this territory.
Jorori community of the Tsimane people, located in the Multiethnic Indigenous Territory (TIM). The five TIM villages use technical tools creatively. Photo: Ore
The Loma Santa Protected Area
Through the Political Constitution of the State and the norms of the Autonomous Statute Loma Santa was created within the framework of the free exercise of self-determination that upholds the obligation to take actions for territorial control and defense in the face of threats. This political decision expresses a historical affirmation because the Loma Santa conservation area includes almost 200,000 hectares successfully acquired through Supreme Decree 22,611, after the First Indigenous March of 1990.
On the other hand, this conservation area aims to consolidate a territory that, for many years, was the target of illegal timber and native fauna extraction. Thus, the creation of Loma Santa acquires the characteristics of territorial defense because it attempts to counteract a set of threats: the construction of the TIPNIS highway, encroachment, and the illegal exploitation of minerals and gravel in the headwaters of the rivers.
All of this translates into a political affirmation that integrates environmental issues within the framework of the historical life project of the five Indigenous Peoples that inhabit the region. Thus, the communities are positioned as relevant social stakeholders in the Gran Mojos region, harmonizing their historical and social construction with environmental conservation priorities that, in turn, allow them to reproduce as Indigenous Peoples.
The objective of the Loma Santa Conservation Area is to consolidate the territory and defend it from subjugation and illegal logging. Photo: Ore
The "Kaa-Iya" National Park in the Bolivian Chaco
The autonomy of the Guaraní people, Charagua Iyambae, has been operating since 2016 and is the first Indigenous government of the Plurinational State. Charagua is located in the semi-arid Chaco region and its extension totals more than 7,000,000 hectares, 68% of which are declared as a protected area. As the titling process of their collective territories was not successful, the Guaraní people's strategy to recover them was to create protected or ecological conservation areas, in parallel to their demand for autonomy. Thus, territorial reconstitution as a means to achieve ivi mareï or land without evil was not achieved through the return of their ancestral spaces, but through their own government.
It was a long road. In the 1990s, the Gran Chaco Kaa-Iya (owner of the forest, in Guaraní) National Park was established with the aim of recovering this ancestral territory of 3.4 million hectares, the largest in Bolivia. This National Park has three particularities: its extraordinary tropical forest area, the presence of big cats such as the jaguar and the taguá, and the territory as a transit zone for the last Ayoreos in voluntary isolation. Although it was originally co-managed by the Isoso Capitanías and SERNAP, it is now exclusively administered by the State. Indigenous participation is minimal through the Management Committee.
In addition, Charagua Iyambae has three other conservation areas created by the autonomous government. These are Irenda (Place of Water), Guajukaka (Guanaco) and Ñembi Guasu (Large Refuge). In addition to its ecological interest, the latter is also a transit area for the Ayoreo in voluntary isolation. In these cases, the governance and management models are under debate within the context of a draft of the Protected Areas Law. In the draft of the Protected Areas Law, they are discussing a system of management and administration by the autonomous government in order to maintain an Indigenous imprint and perspective.
With its 3.4 million hectares, Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park is the largest in Bolivia. Photo: Ore
Biodiversity governance under Indigenous rationale
The Loma Santa conservation area and the "Kaa-Iya" National Park demonstrate how Indigenous Peoples are at the forefront of biodiversity protection. For them, this is not a novelty. On the contrary, the creation of protected areas is one more instrument to implement a cosmovision that understands that man and nature are complementary. They are clear that overexploitation of the territory threatens their very existence.
The major challenge facing Indigenous Peoples today is how within their own rationale and their own traditional authorities, their territories and areas of great biodiversity richness can be governed. In this context, Indigenous Peoples also have the enormous responsibility of becoming conservation stakeholders, since their economic and social reproduction depends on the preservation of nature's environmental functions.
In a situation that once again attempts to marginalize them, Indigenous organizations must create a new political agenda that will allow them to position themselves in the public debate on climate change and conservation. Indigenous Peoples have centuries of experience to contribute to the management of protected areas. Looking to the future, they must play a leading role in the global fight against climate change.
Leonardo Tamburini is Executive Director of Ore (Organization for Legal and Social Support) and a lawyer. He has a 30-year career in Indigenous law and is legal advisor to the Guarani Autonomy of Charagua Iyambae.
Cover Photo: National Park "Kaa-Iya". Photo: Ore
Tags: Indigenous Debates
