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“The forest is our market, it is our pharmacy, it is everything,” says Teresita Antazú, a woman of the Yanesha ethnic group.
She speaks with great concern and mentions some agents that, in recent years, have impacted the Peruvian Amazon forest: illegal logging, coca cultivation, small agriculture that demolishes forest mass or the massive planting of oil palm.
What Antazú sees is reflected in official statistics: according to the Andean Amazon Monitoring Project, in 2022, deforestation in Peru reached 144,683 hectares;
and between 2021 and 2020, nearly 2.4 million hectares of forested areas were lost, according to data from the Ministry of the Environment (Minam).
But voices like that of this leader of the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (Aidesep) do not seem to be being heard in Lima, as reflected in the reform of a law that, according to environmentalists, will encourage deforestation.
Last December, the Congress of the Republic modified Forest Law 29763, in force since 2015, after four years of consultation with various organizations, including indigenous ones.
The modification has already been approved by the Legislature, while the Executive of Dina Boluarte has asked the Ministry of Justice to examine it to determine whether it is in accordance with the Constitution or not.
But, at the moment, there are no public signs that she has done so.
The creation of the regulations that determine how the reform would be applied also depends on the Executive, something that can take months.
Meanwhile, environmental groups, indigenous and international organizations raise their voices about the possible harmful effects of the norm for indigenous peoples and nature.
One of the modifications to the law takes away Minam's power to decide which forests are “permanent production”, in which forestry and wildlife resources can be used.
This power now depends on the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation (Midagri), an institution to which the Forestry and Wildlife Service (Serfor) belongs.
For José Luis Capella, from the Peruvian Society of Environmental Law (SPDA), the most worrying thing is a provision that considers that private properties with 'proof of possession', a title given by regional authorities when someone settles on a property, They are now “areas of exclusion for agricultural purposes.”
This implies that the owners of these properties are no longer obliged to complete the Land Use Classification process based on their Higher Use Capacity, a mechanism by which it is determined whether a land is suitable for agricultural or forestry purposes.
Thus, those who occupied forests without any prior zoning—the offenders—can breathe easy.
According to Capella, all this generates “the message of impunity and a clean slate.”
People transport wooden planks in the port of Pucallpa on the Ucayali River, in Pucallpa, Peru, in 2019.Leonardo Fernandez (Getty Images for UNDP)
Silences and protests
A Peruvian government source who requested anonymity seems to agree with him.
As she told América Futura, in a meeting of the Permanent Multisectoral Commission to Fight Illegal Logging, the environmental prosecutor, Flor de María Vega, opposed the modification, crying: “If they approve it, many are going to fall.” cases!”
She ignored him.
Serfor itself is against the modification.
On December 20, the director of this organization, Luis Alberto Gonzales, prepared a statement that warned about the “serious risk to forest heritage, wildlife and forest ecosystem services.”
Midagri did not authorize its publication and a desert silence prevailed throughout the Executive Branch, according to an official from this ministry who asked not to be named.
On February 13, President Dina Boluarte, who has not spoken publicly on the issue, changed four ministers, including Albina Ruiz, the Environment Minister.
While she was in office, Ruiz warned in a meeting that the reform “constitutes a threat to the right of human beings to enjoy a healthy and balanced environment.”
Her words were lost in the forest.
Juan Carlos Castro, a state official who agrees with the new norm, came in to replace her.
The changes to the Forest Law also have their supporters.
In communication with América Futura, the former Minister of Midagri, Juan Manuel Benites, defended that the trigger of poverty is deforestation.
“If we do not generate incentives for the small farmer, it will continue,” he declared.
The large business unions are also in that line.
Julia Urrunaga, from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), points out, however, that the new standard does not talk about incentives for producers, and that part of the deforestation that occurred between 2001 and 2020 It happened when Benites was minister (2014-2016).
Members of the Urarina native community, an indigenous nation of the Peruvian Amazon that lives in the Ucayali region.
SebastianCastaneda
The indigenous front
Julio Cusurichi, another leader of Aidesep, regrets that there are settlers who occupy their territories to do agriculture to whom they quickly give a certificate of possession, while the indigenous people, when they request titling of their lands to prevent this from continuing to happen, "They don't pay attention to them."
He believes that the new rule can further encourage these incursions without there being legal consequences.
And it denounces that the State has not carried out prior consultation with the indigenous peoples, as was done before approving the original law and as indicated in Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), to which Peru is a subscriber.
There will be resistance measures, Cusurichi announced.
The UN special rapporteur, Francisco Calí Tzay, recently agreed that the modification of the law “will negatively affect the ancestral territories of indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon,” especially the peoples in voluntary isolation.
The official recalled that approximately one third of the indigenous Amazonian peoples of Peru have not received title to their lands, which leaves them “insecure and vulnerable to third parties.”
Mariano Castro, former vice minister of Environmental Management, also warns that this change “will increase the legal insecurity of the rights of indigenous peoples over their territories, especially those that have been invaded by illicit activities.”
Since 2013, more than 30 indigenous leaders have been murdered, according to Aidesep.
The EIA records a case that occurred in Nueva Requena (department of Ucayali), where it warned that the company Plantaciones de Pucallpa has deforested 5,000 hectares of Shipibo territories.
The company presented its defenses, but Michel Forst, UN rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders, declared that it was not an isolated case.
A logger goes into the jungle with his chainsaw.
Angel Tailor
Shaking the weather
“It is not just about deforestation, but about the disconnection of the forest mass,” explains Ana Sabogal, Geography and Environment researcher at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), shedding light on another expected problem.
Usually, it is believed that misfortune lies in losing an entire forest, but this is not the case.
Something that could happen if the new law promotes the growth of patches of agricultural areas in the middle of the forest is that the Amazon ecosystem (94.6% of Peruvian forests) loses its value.
Sabogal remembers that, apart from being a shelter for enormous biodiversity, the forest provides shade and produces rain.
In addition, the largest source of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in the country is precisely deforestation.
A joint statement from the embassies of Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Norway in Peru warns, regarding the modification, about the potential impacts of the reform.
In 2014, two of these countries (Germany and Norway) signed an agreement with Peru to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation.
But law enthusiasts don't seem to have eyes for these outside glances, Capella maintains.
In addition, the Paris Agreement, the Free Trade Agreement between Peru and the United States, and the Trade Agreement with the European Union could also be affected.
Community regulations prevent the entry of agricultural products that do not come from lands that have zero deforestation.
The modification of the forestry law, which is supposed to help farmers, could rather affect them and damage the country's image internationally.
“We cannot forget the people in voluntary isolation either,” says Cusurichi.
The 109 indigenous federations and 2,439 native communities have requested that the State step back.
Benites, for his part, calls for an “informed debate.”
But the legal sawmill has already passed on the previous rule, without further debate.
Meanwhile, the Executive, which did not observe the new law, remains silent about the next steps.
All this while each tree that falls could put Peru in a pit of unprecedented environmental degradation.
Trees felled in the Cordillera Azul National Park, in the Peruvian Amazon, in October 2022.Martin Mejia (AP)