Armed with voting rights, native groups join conservation fray

Armed with voting rights, native groups join conservation fray

MARSEILLE: Newly-armed with voting rights, indigenous peoples have come to the world’s leading conservation congress meeting in the French city of Marseille both hopeful and wary. They have demands, and will not go quietly into the night, their representatives say. “It makes no sense for consultants and companies to come to teach us how to protect what we have always successfully protected,” said Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal of COICA, which represents more than two million indigenous people across nine Amazon nations. Their boldest proposal is for a measure to ensure that 80 percent of the Amazon is declared a protected area by 2025.

The reasoning is simple. “Half of [tropical] forests, and 80 percent of biodiversity” in the world are found in indigenous territories, said Peter Seligmann, a veteran conservationist who set up an NGO-Nia Tero (Our Land) — run in part by indigenous leaders. Walter Quertehuari is a leader of the Wachiperi people in southeastern Peru. His commune in the Amarakaeri reserve is recognized on the IUCN Green List for its work in protecting biodiversity.

Unable to attend the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) meet in person due to Covid restrictions, Quertehuari reminded participants by videolink that his