Indigenous Affairs 1/09: Turning timber into rights? A case study on Indigenous communities' sustainable and income generating forest management in Nicaragua

In the central RAAN department of Nicaragua,2 the Danish NGO Nepenthes is supporting the Mayangna and Miskitu peoples of seven indigenous communities to develop sustainable forest management in cooperation with the national NGO IPADE (Instituto Para el Desarrollo y la Democracia). Each community has official territorial rights to the surrounding forest, but illegal timber companies and an increasing number of new settlers are violating these territorial rights. The government has still not taken any action to stop new settlement or timber companies in the indigenous territories. The local indigenous organizations have a hard time coping with these challenges, and the absence of a powerful national indigenous coordination leaves the local indigenous communities pretty much on their own in their struggle against time, while the invasions and destruction of their natural resources and basis of living continues at high speed.