Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have played a critical role in the fight to secure title to ancestral Indigenous lands in the Amazon. They can provide financial assistance and legal representation in court, but new research shows that for groups that do not benefit from this support, the arrival of NGOs may cause more harm than good.
A recent paper, published in Political Geography, highlights how this dynamic has played out in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon. There, with the backing of the NGO Amazon Frontlines, the Siekopai community of San Pablo de Katëtsiaya won title to 42,360 hectares (104,674 acres) of their ancestral land. However, the area had long been occupied by another Indigenous group, the Kichwa community of Zancudo Cocha, or Zancudo, which also had deep cultural and spiritual ties to the land but was not included in Amazon Frontline’s efforts.
Such unequal support is termed “uneven territorial sponsorship” by the study authors. It can come from third parties including NGOs, states, religious organizations and others when they support one community at the disadvantage of another that may have a similar ancestral claim to the land. In Ecuador, it has led to tensions between the two communities, with reported incidents of violence and a lack of compromise.
Amazon Frontlines helped the Siekopai secure title to the territory by framing their claim in a more non-Indigenous, Western, legal tradition, which defines territory as sovereign, sacred and timeless, according to the paper. In contrast, Amazonian communities tend to see territorial claims as more fluid; co-occupation is common as families relocate periodically due to conflicts or pandemics.
Mitch Anderson, the founder and executive director of Amazon Frontlines, told Mongabay in a statement that tension in the region was not due to the NGO’s involvement but because of the “Ecuadorian Government’s reckless approach to the creation of ‘protected areas’ that overlap Indigenous ancestral lands, and the doling out of ‘use and access’ agreements to diverse Indigenous communities without sufficient consideration to the historical and cultural connections to the land.”
Mongabay covered the case in a four-part series.
“I think one key lesson for NGOs working in the Amazon (and donors and beneficiaries) is that legal rulings to resolve territorial disputes may not have any real effect if they lack legitimacy on the ground or among the interested parties,” co-author of the paper Angus Lyall, an anthropologist at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, told Mongabay via WhatsApp messages. “In addition, trials can even make those disputes more contentious and more difficult to resolve.”
Lyall said that “although mediation can be long, frustrating, and unproductive, an overarching principle to consider is that NGOs avoid worsening divisions between communities or nationalities, particularly as they confront shared challenges and threats.”
Banner image: Members of Siekopai communities gather together to talk about gaining the land, known as Pë’këya. Image by Amazon Frontlines.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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