Taking care of forests to preserve the future: The experience of territorial governance and the use of the book of operations in Loreto

WWF Peru, within the framework of the "Alliance for Wildlife and Forests", seeks to strengthen the capacities of indigenous territorial governance of the native communities of Loreto. In 2020, in coordination with the Bilingual Teachers Training Program of the Peruvian Amazon (FORMABIAP by its Spanish initials), the Regional Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the East (ORPIO by its Spanish initials), the Loreto Public Pedagogical Higher Education Institute and other entities, a group of members from the community of Centro Arenal was part of the Indigenous Territorial Governance Training Program, in which the control and surveillance module has served for the community to form its Community Control and Surveillance Committee and seek to strengthen its organization under an approach that is preventive, pro-sustainability and works for the well-being of its forests.

Teacher life

On the edge of the Zungarococha lagoon, in Iquitos, the FORMABIAP premises stand on a16-hectare plot of land. It is managed by the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP by its Spanish initials), the most powerful indigenous federation in the Peruvian jungle, in alliance with a pedagogical institute in Loreto.

Here, between trees that reach up to touch the sky and agricultural experimentation fields, more than 1,200 bilingual teachers have been trained for 32 years, serving more than 300 thousand boys and girls from the department's native communities.

"I wanted to be a teacher and that's why I came to FORMABIAP. It was only then that I understood what it was like to be Kukama. I had spent my whole life believing that the word by which my town is known was an insulting adjective. In this school I began to recover my dignity and see the world from another reality.” Juan Manuel Vásquez Murayaria said while standing on the terrace of one of the many cabins occupied by the 58 Kukama and Kichwa students who are preparing to be teachers in their hometowns. He is a Kukama Kukamiria teacher trained in these classrooms who now directs the institution.

Vásquez Murayari told us that it is clear for the teachers who graduate from the intercultural-bilingual program that the territory they inherited is unique and that it must be defended from those who continue to believe that natural resources are there to exhaust them. "In the communities of our students, the forests are being cut down abusively, the companies deceive the leaders and they practically give them away."

This absurd reality encouraged by the illegal timber trade - in Peru, 37 percent of the monitored timber is of illegal origin - was what motivated ORPIO, the local federation associated with AIDESEP, to promote the Indigenous Territorial Governance Program, an initiative supported by WWF Peru and financed by the European Union, that seeks to improve the capacities of indigenous leaders to manage their territories and mitigate threats and to develop the project through the teachers and the methodologies put into practice by FORMABIAP.

Rider Moncada and Zoila Merino, leaders of ORPIO, mentioned that their organization summoned 32 indigenous leaders for this course: 4 for each of the federations that exist in Loreto. Logically, the ones that had received the most impacts from loggers, land traffickers and other aggressors were chosen. The idea was simple: to strengthen the knowledge of indigenous leaders regarding the recognition of their fundamental rights and give them the necessary tools to control and monitor their territories.

“In June 2019, we received the leaders of the Secoyas, Kukamas, Kichwas, Ticunas, Murui-muinani, Yaguas and Iquitos de Loreto communities to provide them with the skills that would make them forest custodians of their communities and to be able to replicate what they have learned among siblings.” Rider recalled. 

New Amazon

To verify the progress of the efforts by ORPIO and its allies, we visited Centro Arenal, a Murui-muinani village located 30 minutes from the city of Iquitos. On the pier of the orderly town center, on the banks of the Itaya River, we were welcomed by Artur Cruz Ochoa, who is the community apu, one of the young participants in the governance program taught at FORMABIAP and the president of the recently installed Community Control and Surveillance Committee.

His mother, the historical leader of the Murui-muinani people, Zoila Ochoa, took us to one of the classrooms of the bilingual school 60839 where boys and girls from primary and secondary schools showed us the songs and dances of a nation's culture that could barely survive the horrors of rubber and whose population barely reaches two thousand people in the present.

“We are fighting to revitalize our culture." Artur told us. “Our grandparents hid their traditions and stories from us, thinking that if we forgot them we would integrate better into the national society. They were wrong. When we lose our customs, we stop caring for our forests.”

Centro Arenal is one of the most impacted communities by the urban growth of Iquitos. The construction of the gigantic bridge over the Nanay River that encouraged the regional government to extend the route of the Bellavista-Mazan-Salvador-El Estrecho highway, has brought illegal loggers and land traffickers into the daily lives of its inhabitants. "That is why we decided to participate in the governance program,” he added. “Today, more than ever, we have the obligation to take care of our forests and sources of life."

Artur Cruz and three young Murui-muinani from Centro Arenal returned from the FORMABIAP course trained and ready to become forest custodians, and they immediately called on the population to set up the first Community Surveillance and Control Committee in their community. “I feel proud to be a forest custodian,” he told us in a clearing of the forest that we crossed with his mother and the other custodians. “I am trained to use the tools that the State has created to combat the actions of loggers, land invaders and thieves."

According to the Ministry of the Environment, the control and surveillance committees play a key role in ensuring the sustainability of forests, since these are tools that allow civil society to organize and ensure territorial integrity, while enforcing forest regulations.

According to the engineer Sixto Luna, head of the Forest Management Functional Unit of the Regional Management of Forestry and Wildlife Development - GERFOR Loreto - and the team of officials who accompanied us during our tour, "The custodians of the Nation's forest heritage - this is their official name - are the best guardians for these forests because they are the ones who love them the most.” So training them to carry out their work is an urgent task for the regional authority. “In Loreto, we have managed to set up 200 control committees. We currently have 700 forest custodians with the capacity to act,” he added.

In mainland

WWF Peru has been coordinating actions to strengthen capacities and technical assistance to ensure the legal origin of the wood with SERFOR as the governing body of the forestry and wildlife sector. SERFOR has been working to strengthen its control and surveillance systems through the control module and has also been promoting the implementation of the forest operations book as part of the tools for the traceability of wood in Peru, in coordination with regional governments.

Little by little, proper forest management is being resumed in Loreto, whose forest cover continues to be in good condition. In Iquitos, officials from GERFOR Loreto, the forestry authority in the region, highlighted that WWF Peru has been behind the strengthening of the institution's capacities with the aim of incorporating a fundamental tool into the forestry market, to contribute to the fight against timber trafficking and the regulation of the sector: the "book of operations of licenses".

This is the record of the information obtained in each of the processes of timber harvesting.

According to Laura Noriega, a GERFOR Loreto specialist who is an expert in the use of a fundamental instrument to guarantee the traceability of the wood extracted from the region's forests, the implementation of the book of operations in the Loreto forestry industry is beginning to take shape. To verify this, we visited one of the best-known sawmills in the Nanay River sector, Industria Maderera San Juan SAC, a leading company in the region that has implemented the use of the aforementioned registry in its operations.

Its general manager, forestry engineer Mari Pezo, is convinced that the book of operations is useful - whether in manual or digital format - for the work of formal companies in the Amazon. "If we want to build a legal timber market in which traceability is guaranteed, we have to adapt to the dispositions of the forestry authority and guarantee cleanliness in all production stages”. We actually saw the women in charge of this control in the storage yard where the wood arrives. They were writing down the codes of each of the logs that arrived from the forests in an immense ship on the river bank. The coming and going of forestry workers is impressive.

"Acting hand in hand with the forest authority will allow us to obtain the certifications that the company needs to access international markets," she said. As simple as that.

“It's necessary to convince ourselves of the importance of enforcing the norm issued by SERFOR,” complemented Laura Noriega. And this is what the community members of Centro Arenal and the other communities that have set up their forest control and surveillance committees are doing in the countryside.

If we join hands in the city and in the rural area to defeat the scourge of illegal logging, the health of the Amazon forests will once again be the best. WWF and SERFOR have understood this very well. Both institutions have joined forces to train more than 200 people linked to the use and transformation of wood and more than 50 State technicians in the use of the books of operations.

"Our life, our oxygen, our plants, our animals, everything is in the forest," said Artur Cruz, the apu of the Murui-Muinani community, while traveling in the boat that took us back to Iquitos. “The trees and we are a whole. This is why we must protect what we have left.”

Original version in Spanish

 

©  Gabriel Herrera/WWF Perú

©  Gabriel Herrera/WWF Perú