Indigenous people – Cecilia Fernández Castañón

Can COP15 save South America’s most deforested region?

By Cecilia Fernández Castañón on diciembre 29, 2022enero 27, 2023Leave a Comment

The historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework acknowledges the contributions of indigenous peoples and local communities to nature preservation and protects their rights. How could it benefit South America’s most deforested region?

COP 15, which took place between 7 and 19 December in Canada, resulted in a historic agreement to stop the alarming loss of biodiversity worldwide. 196 states agreed on four goals and 23 targets that should guide their actions until 2050.

One of the major highlights of the final document, which is known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, is that for the first time it recognises the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.

This recognition could be key in establishing new conservation strategies in the Chaco Forest, an eco-region of enormous biodiversity, which is home to one of the largest indigenous communities in Argentina, including the Qom, Wichí and Moqoit ethnic groups.

In recent decades, the area has been extensively deforested, which resulted in the conversion of millions of hectares of native bush into fields where soybeans are grown and cattle are raised for export.

This process is leading not only to the loss of the Cacho’s biodiversity and valuable ecosystem services, but also to the elimination of traditional knowledge and ancestral ways of life.

Some believe that the region’s resisting populations could gain now greater protection through the recognition obtained by this unprecedented international agreement.

DEFORESTATION AND DISPLACED COMMUNITIES

The Chaco Forest has one of the highest deforestation rates in South America, and changes in its land use have deepened in the last 20 years, resulting in the displacement of the region’s inhabitants.

Verónica Quiroga is a biologist who has been studying the process of defaunation of the Chaco Forest over the past two decades. In an interview with FairPlanet, she said that the changes in the environment are highly noticeable.

“Habitat for species is being lost throughout the region due to the advance of the agricultural and livestock frontier,” she said.

“Although there is a Forest Law in Argentina, no progress has been made in regulation. The deforestation and the removal of timber from the forests are permanent and these problems continue to worsen.”

According to the specialist, the establishment of protected areas will not be enough to halt these processes, but it will be essential in order to work with the communities. “We need biodiversity conservation corridors to connect these pristine areas, which are very important, with the entire matrix of forests where people are living,” she explained.

In this sense, she stressed that it will be necessary to guarantee respect and improve the quality of life through sustainable productive alternatives, both for local and indigenous communities.

“They are the owners of these lands, and they are the ones who should decide how and how much they are used,” she said. “We need to keep them there to conserve these ecosystems, [and prevent them] from selling their lands to large companies that eliminate native forests and convert them into productive fields that degrade the environment.”

“THEY ARE THE OWNERS OF THESE LANDS, AND THEY ARE THE ONES WHO SHOULD DECIDE HOW AND HOW MUCH THEY ARE USED.”

GUARDIANS OF BIODIVERSITY

According to data from the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues presented at COP 15 in Montreal, indigenous peoples represent 6.2 percent of the global population and protect at least 80 percent of the planet’s remaining biodiversity. This demonstrates their invaluable role in conservation, which was recognised in the new global agreement.

In a press release issued in recent days, the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) welcomed the fact that the text of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework has “strong language on respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities”.

In this regard, one of the IIFB members from Argentina, Viviana Figueroa, said “they are recognising that Indigenous Peoples can also make contributions to biodiversity conservation.”

In particular, she highlighted the inclusion of indigenous rights in Target 3, known as the commitment 30×30. Its goal is to “achieve and enable, by 2030, at least 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water and coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, to be conserved and effectively managed through ecologically representative, well-connected and equitably governed protected area systems, and other effective area-based conservation measures, recognition of indigenous and traditional territories, where appropriate, integrated into wider landscapes, seascapes and oceanscapes, while ensuring that any sustainable use, where appropriate in such areas, is fully consistent with conservation outcomes, recognising and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.”

A FUNDING CHALLENGE

In order to achieve the goals set at COP 15, it will be essential for low and middle income countries, such as Argentina, to be able to access the necessary funding to design mechanisms that protect the biodiversity of environments such as the Chaco Forest.

This is the view of Ana Di Pangracio, director of Argentina’s Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), who participated as an observer in the negotiations in Montreal.

“To reduce poverty, we need a healthy biodiversity,” she told FairPlanet. “All countries have to commit more of their national budgets to both conservation and sustainable use and restoration of biodiversity. Developed countries need to rise to the challenge and mobilise the resources needed to make the commitments a reality.”

She added, “UN reports indicate that only 20 percent of the money needed to make the Aichi Targets a reality was mobilised. That cannot be repeated this time.”

Di Pangracio believes that follow-up will be crucial. “What has been established are global targets, but the real challenge will be to follow them up and work together with other states, for example, in the case of the conservation of the Chaqueño Forest, which extends across different countries in South America.”

Article published in Fair Planet https://www.fairplanet.org/story/can-cop15-save-south-americas-most-deforested-region/

The tue cost of Argentina’s lithium rush

By Cecilia Fernández Castañón on octubre 31, 2022noviembre 18, 2022Leave a Comment

Lithium, a key mineral in the manufacturing of batteries powering electric vehicles, is found in abundance in northern Argentina, and companies from across the world are eager to exploit it. As provincial governments get their hopes up, indigenous communities and activists warn of the risks.

Along with Bolivia and Chile, Argentina has one of the world’s largest lithium reserves.

The mineral has been garnering rising attention in recent decades as it is one of the main components in the manufacturing of batteries, primarily ones used to store power in electric vehicles – a central pillar in the energy transition away from hydrocarbons.

Since the 1990s, foreign companies have been setting up operations in the country’s northwestern region to extract lithium, generating extraordinary profits that are not reflected in the local communities. All the while, the environmental implications of these extractive activities remain unknown, as the impact studies available are insufficient and outdated.

In Salta and Jujuy, two of the provinces where the salars from which lithium is extracted are located, indigenous communities are mobilising and demanding their right to determine what type of activities take place on their own territories. Some agree with the exploitation of lithium, while others reject it outright, claiming it threatens their way of life, traditions and ecosystems.

HIGH-ANDEAN WETLANDS

Unlike other places in the world where lithium is extracted from rocks, in the South American salars the mineral is easily accessible. It is obtained through a brine decanting process which despite involving some complexities is significantly cheaper.

However, the method has a high hydrogeological impact, as large volumes of water are used. The environments in which these salars are found are high-Andean wetlands, which are oases in the arid desert of the altiplano, and reservoirs of carbon that serve to regulate climate on both a regional and global scale.

In recent years, there have been unsuccessful attempts in Argentina to mount legislative protections for the country’s great diversity of wetlands. The latest setback came last month, when the governors of the Norte Grande succeeded in stopping a bill from advancing in the Lower House of Parliament.

The group, made up of representatives from ten provinces, including those with lithium reserves, issued a statement explaining why they believe that the current bill, which has been widely debated and analysed, should not go forward.

Meanwhile, around two thousand scientists and academics issued a public petition in which they refute each of the provincial leaders’ arguments.

ENTHUSIASM RISES AMONG LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

While the price of lithium continues to rise and reach historic records around the world, internal debates in Argentina on the issue persist. With several nuances, different national and provincial governments in recent years have considered lithium as an opportunity, but there is no social consensus on what are the best ways to mine it.

The Constitution of the Argentine Republic establishes that natural resources belong to the provinces. This is the main tool that governors have to consider: That they have decision-making autonomy and establish their own agreements with companies. One of them, Gerardo Morales of Jujuy, went so far as to offer Elon Musk – the owner of Tesla – the lithium reserves of his province via Twitter.

Argentina’s mining laws date back to the 1990s and have not been updated since. They establish very low royalty margins, which means that companies that set up operations in the country make extraordinary profits with little oversight by the state.

For the time being, lithium has not been declared a strategic mineral in Argentina, which would allow for greater regulation of its exploitation. One of the more salient state actions in recent years has been the state-owned company Y-TEC‘s construction of a factory for the design and manufacture of lithium cells and batteries. This, however, is a long-term project.

EXTRACTIVISM AND GEOPOLITICS

“The lithium issue seems to be replicating in a new way patterns of Argentina’s insertion in international trade that we have historically seen in other primary products,” Ariel Slipak, coordinator of the research area of the Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), told FairPlanet.

“These are the same asymmetrical patterns where the economic benefits go to a few and the country is left with the socio-environmental problems linked to their exploitation.”

For a decade, the economist has been involved with groups that study the geopolitics of lithium in South America, and claims that this is an opportunity for a very limited group of actors.

“Only large transnationals and some very small local groups are benefiting,” he said. “The contributions that communities receive are very marginal, with mechanisms that are limited to a very small donation, such as a health centre or a community club, which appear in towns with the corporate branding.” He added, “This shows that power is very asymmetrical and that the social and economic relations that are established reproduce paternalistic patterns.”

According to Slipak, in order to reverse these models, it is necessary to increase the mechanisms for participation, consultation and information for communities and civil society.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE UNDER PRESSURE

The Salinas Grandes, located in Salta and Jujuy, is the fourth largest salar in the world, and is home to 33 communities of indigenous peoples who are demanding their right to decide on their territories. Their petition has reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).

While waiting for a response on the case, they are trying to go on living with a semblance of normalcy. “The communities are facing enormous pressure, both from the companies that come daily to their territories to hand over folders with promises and requests for exploitation, as well as from the governments,” said Alicia Chalabe, a lawyer who specialises in human rights and represents the communities in their claim.

“There is an overwhelming urgency to implement projects to exploit lithium that conflict with the way of life of these peoples.”

These emergencies represent a gap for indigenous communities. “These are groups that continue to work salt in ancestral ways. They are mining cooperatives dedicated to the production and extraction of salt with a very particular harvesting method. They are also involved in tourism, which is very intense in the area” Slipak said.

“They are communities that stand out because they carry out permanent territorial management and oppose these projects because they believe that the arrival of the companies will produce changes in their culture, in their modes of production and in their way of inhabiting the territory.”

Published on Fair Planet https://www.fairplanet.org/story/the-true-cost-of-argentinas-lithium-rush/

98 years on, Napalpi Indigenous Massacre trial opens in Argentina

By Cecilia Fernández Castañón on mayo 6, 2022septiembre 22, 2022Leave a Comment

The killing of hundreds of people at Napalpí in Argentina’s Chaco province in 1924 is now being prosecuted as a crime against humanity. This is an unprecedented lawsuit in Latin America that could mark a milestone in the acknowledgment of and compensation for the indigenous genocide.

In an unprecedented trial for Latin America, Argentina is trying as a crime against humanity the Napalpí Massacre, an attack committed in 1924 against indigenous people of the Qom and Moqoit ethnic groups in the current territory of the province of Chaco, which resulted in the death of between 300 and 500 people.

At that time, the government – supported by the police and landowners in the area – shot down from a plane a community that was subjected to a regime of semi-slavery and was demanding better working conditions.

The consequences of this massacre were ignored by both the authorities and official media at the time, and survivors were persecuted and silenced for nearly a hundred years. The trial will constitute a new milestone in history and, as many believe, help pave the way to recognition and reparation for the the atrocities committed against the indigenous communities of Argentina and the Americas.

Fundamental in effecting this momentous opportunity for justice was the contribution of a diverse group of researchers, indigenous community representatives and federal prosecutors who managed to gather valuable testimonies and pen academic works referring to this horrific event. It is a “trial for truth” that is intended to become a stage for reflection and learning for the whole of society, which is why all the hearings are being broadcast live on streaming platforms, making them accessible to the entire country and the world.

TRUTH TRIALS: FROM DICTATORSHIP TO INDIGENOUS GENOCIDE

Argentina’s experience with truth trials dates back to the late 1990s, when lawsuits were filed in different cities to determine the state’s responsibility for crimes committed during the military dictatorship that governed the country between 1976 and 1983. In compliance with the recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the state began to respond to the truth claims of the victims of state terrorism.

In the Napalpí case, the truth trial was promoted by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, considering that it is the appropriate mechanism to judge this case since the perpetrators are no longer alive. Therefore, the ultimate objective will be to fulfil the victims’ rights to the truth.

The hearings began on 19 April and will continue through 19 May, moving between different public auditoriums in Chaco and Buenos Aires. More than 50 witnesses have been called to testify to make diverse contributions to the case, including a survivor of the massacre, Rosa Grillo, who is over 110 years old and witnessed the attack as a child.

The case also includes reports made by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), a pioneering body in the application of archaeological techniques to cases of human rights violations. The excavations they carried out in Napalpí in 2019 confirmed the presence of human remains in places that coincide with survivors’ descriptions.

The contribution of researchers who tackled the indigenous question in Argentina was also fundamental to the cause. Academic studies carried out by historians and different social scientists over the last decades indicate that an indigenous genocide had been perpetrated in Chaco; one which some of them contend still persists today through, for instance, the erasure of indigenous languages.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ORAL TESTIMONIES

To put together the puzzle of what happened in Napalpí on 19 July, 1924, it was essential to gather testimonies from indigenous communities. Survivors recounted that on that day a plane flew over an area where about a thousand women, children, men and elderly people were living and began to drop food and sweets. When the indigenous people came out to pick them up, claimed the survivors, the plane began to shoot at the crowd – killing most of them. Those who survived the torrent of bullets hid in the bushes until they managed to escape. Many of the survivors never spoke again of the macabre atrocity they had experienced.

One of the main figures in this reconstruction process was Juan Chico, a Qom historian who was the link between all the various actors who managed to make the Napalpí Massacre visible. Chico died in June 2021 due to complications from COVID-19, but his legacy reached the trial through his colleagues.

“The function that orality has within our community is fundamental and it is what we will present in the trial as a testimony of what our communities lived through,” Raquel Esquivel, a member of the Qom community who accompanied Juan during fieldwork, told FairPlanet.

Esquivel is presenting the results of interviews she had conducted in her community starting in 2007 when she was a political science student and began to ask herself questions about the past. “My maternal grandmother is Qom and speaks the language, but my mother does not. When I asked her why they hadn’t taught it to her, they told me ‘it was wrong’ and that many people had died because of it,” she recalled. “I didn’t understand much, but when I grew up and studied I found a short text about what had happened in Napalpí and started to investigate. This was a topic that was not talked about in our community.”

Since then, Raquel has been able to conduct interviews with many of the survivors of the massacre and their families. “More than an investigation, for me it was a search for my identity. I went to a school in a city, outside the community. My parents took us out of the countryside to [integrate us with] society, but my skin and my features never allowed me to deny my origin,” she said.

“From the age of 6 I had to face discrimination and although some things have changed, society is still unfair to us. That is why I am confident that this process will help us to begin to heal wounds and overcome the stigmatisation that exists towards indigenous people.”

JUSTICE FOR COLLECTIVE MEMORY

Zunilda Niremperger is the judge presiding over the trial that is trying to reconstruct the historic event in Chaco. “The intervention of the justice system in cases such as this one is very relevant for the revindication of collective memory. Mainly because it legitimises the voice of the communities, who are often excluded, like so many other vulnerable groups,” Niremperger told FairPlanet.

The trial represents a procedural challenge, however, as it attempts to reconstruct and probe events that occurred more than 90 years ago; furthermore, there are no living defendants. “As a national judge it is a privilege to be able to lead this process which, if what the prosecution and the plaintiffs claim is proven, represents a crime against humanity committed towards a group that presents an intersectionality of vulnerability,” judge Niremperger said.

“Indigenous communities have not only been historically neglected, but have also been victims of violations of all their rights through massacres, policies of extermination and abandonment, which have placed them in socio-economic situations of maximum vulnerability that should be taken into account by all those who work in the state,” she added. “Our goal must be to help balance all these existing asymmetries.”

Published in Fair Planet https://www.fairplanet.org/story/98-years-on-indigenous-massacre-trial-opens-in-argentina/