The project Ampiyacu Algodón responds to the initiative of the indigenous communities of the Ampiyacu (the grassroots base of the Federation of Native Communities of the Ampiyacu – FECONA), which requested support from IBC at the end of the 1990s to create a Communal Reserve in the Ampiyacu River Basin as a way of restraining the influx of foreign extractors who were destroying the timber and fishing resources of that watershed. Later the initiative was supported by the Apayacu River communities (belonging to the Federation of the Yaguas Peoples of the Orosa and Apayacu Rivers – FEPYROA), those of the middle part of the Putumayo River (belonging to FECONAFROPU – Federation of Border Native Communities of the Putumayo) and by the Regional Organization AIDESEP Iquitos (ORAI), which is the grassroots organization that groups together the great majority of indigenous communities of Loreto.

This project seeks the approval of the Peruvian State (and the regional government of Loreto) for the creation of a Mosaic of Use and Conservation Areas of a little more than one million nine hundred thousand hectares that will be then be zoned so that the communities so requiring can expand their territories, and their inhabitants can have access to the natural resources for commercial exploitation in an orderly way, under planned management.

The mosaic of areas that is being considered will ideally be composed of community territories titled by the State, a complex of areas for using natural resources that allows the commercial extraction of timber, a complex of Communal Reserves (a Communal Reserve for the communities of each river basin, including those that are found at the mouth of the Yaguas River) and a strictly protected area in the central part to help protect the headwaters of the rivers and act as the source for recovering hydric sources and the natural resources that are extracted in other zones.

The importance of protecting the Ampiyacu and Apayacu basins

While the Plan for Natural Protected Areas states that the Ampiyacu and Apayacu basins are priority zones for the conservation of Peru’s biological diversity, they are not covered by any system that promotes conservation. The principal reasons for prioritizing these reasons is endemism, the inclusion of plant and animal species that occur exclusively in this space and are not found anywhere else.    

The biological communities found within the Mosaic of Use and Conservation Area are among the most diverse on the planet, with nearly 1,500 vertebrate and 3,500 plant species.  The Rapid Biological Inventory conducted by The Field Museum of Chicago in August 2003 determined that the Ampiyacu and Apayacu basins are the richest in terms of hydro-biological resources, both ornamental and edible, in the Peruvian Amazon. In addition, the concentration of ligneous plants in this region is probable the highest on the planet.  It is also probably that the zone has allowed for the development of endemic species, because it is found between the two large rivers, the Putumayo and the Amazon, which act as bio-geographic buffers.  

A number of indigenous peoples live in the area covered by the project, including the Boras, Huitotos, Ocainas, Yaguas, Ticunas, Maijunas, Quichuas and Cocamas.  These indigenous peoples live in 41 native communities that received title from the Peruvian state between the 1970s and early 1990s.  The IBC has been supporting processes to expand the territories of native communities in the Ampiyacu and Apayacu river basins in response to the population growth over the last decade and pressure on farm lands.

The first area created in the use and conservation mosaic was the Ampiyacu Apayacu Regional Conservation Area (ACRAA), which was approved in December 2007 by the Loreto regional government. This conservation area covers 433,100 hectares and is located in Maynas and Mariscal Ramón Castila provinces. Its recognition was the result more than 20 years of actions by five indigenous peoples.  It still requires approval from the executive branch.    

The ACRAA will allow for the conservation of ecosystems in the low Amazonian forest, north of the Amazon River and between the Ampiyacu and Apayacu river basins.  It will guarantee indigenous populations access to ancestral territories and the natural resources offered by these lands. Encompassing areas around the Ampiyacu, Apayacu, Yaguasyacu and Zumún, the ACRAA also represent an important zone for the permanent conservation of sources of clean water for indigenous populations and nearby cities.

Why a mosaic area for use and conservation?

The Ampiyacu and Apayacu river basins are home to an immense biological and cultural diversity, factors that have been inter-related for centuries and the indigenous peoples who live in these basins continue obtaining resources from the forests, rivers and lakes for food, medicines and building materials, among other uses. The need to conserve Ampiyacu and Apayacu basins also responds to a social and cultural dependence indigenous peoples have with respect to the forest.  The indigenous residents in these basins have considerable interest in the intangibility of some spaces they consider sacred.  These areas, or “sachamamas,” play a fundamental role in indigenous cultural and world view.  They contain the zones where ancestors are buried and are, in general, spaces respected by the population. Access to these areas is prohibited, constituting a kind of cultural mechanism to protect natural resources.  

The residents of native communities in the Ampiyacu and Apayacu basins have been organizing and struggling since 1990 to defend the forest resources that surround their communities from illegal loggers, fishermen and poachers in the area. Their efforts, however, have been unsuccessful because of the lack of a legal mandate that allows the communities to exercise effective control over access to areas that do not fall strictly under titled native communities.    

The area covered by the Ampiyacu Algodón Project is vast and heterogeneous, and the different proposals for the mosaic face different kinds of threats.  The principal threat to the north is the chronic political instability along the border with Colombia.  On the Peruvian side, illegal loggers are an intimidating force and given the state’s absence is basically a no-man’s land. The creation of a conservation area in the north of the mosaic is problematic if attention and resources are not given to the communities along the Putumayo. The principal concern in the south is unregulated logging along the Ampiyacu and Apayacu rivers.  Wood resources in the zone are among the most affected and illegal logging leads to further impoverishment of native communities, which are the lowest rung in this extractive industry.    

Challenges for the creation of a mosaic of use and conservation areas  

The greatest challenge facing the mosaic area once it has been created will be establishing links for direct work between the local population, indigenous federation, Loreto regional government and INRENA to sustainably manage it.
The creation and administration of this mosaic requires the creation of a legal framework that regulates the use of natural resources and management of the different territories created based on a local vision and with the participation of regional and national authorities.  While the proposal for creating this mosaic of use and conservation areas is based on existing legislation (Natural Protected Areas Law and its regulation), the inclusion of the proposal in a system for regional conservation would also allow for the area to be protected and would guarantee use by indigenous people inhabiting the basin.

Other major challenge is confronting and mitigating the pressure from the logging industry’s increased interest in the area’s resources.  The forestry sector views the creation of this use and conservation mosaic area and its zoning as a stumbling block to accessing wood resources remaining in these river basins.  The mosaic, however, is aimed at demarcating areas for orderly and sustainable exploitation of forest resources (wood and non-wood) that would be undertaken by the local communities for their benefit.  Sale of wood removed from these forests would benefit the local residents and provide raw material to regional industries.  Under this plan, the residents themselves would exercise control over forest resources, thereby breaking the long cycle of peonage.  

Finally, it is necessary to ensure and strengthen the participation of other stakeholders in the management of these use and conservation areas. It is important for regional authorities to become involved with proposals for regional territorial ordering that are developed by the Loreto population.  This proposal allows indigenous people the opportunity create a model for shared administration in which regional authorities and the local population work together for orderly territorial management.