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Indigenous Land Tenure and Tropical Forest
Management in Latin America
Shelton H. Davis
Alaka Wali
Indigenous peoples have received much attention as potential resource managers of threatened tropical forest
ecosystems. Using data from Latin America, this article argues that fundamental changes need to take place in
the legal recognition and demarcation of indigenous territories in order for this potential to be fulfilled. A
comparison is made between different national land-tenure models for forest-dwelling indigenous peoples and
a new model proposed by Latin American indigenous organizations. This comparison suggests that not only do
indigenous peoples need to be provided with some degree of control over their territories and resources. but
there needs to be a new type of partnership among indigenous peoples, the scientific community, national
governments and international development agencies for the management of tropical forests.
Introduction
The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of research and writing on the extent and ecological implications
of tropical deforestation in Latin America. Current estimates are that the region's tropical forests are being
cleared at a rate of 0.5% annually in South America and 1.6% annually in Central America. While research and
scientific discussions continue, there is growing evidence that tropical deforestation contributes to adverse
changes in global climate loss of genetic diversity which may be critical to human survival and the
impoverishment of local communities and economies. An international consensus exists on the need to
establish policies and programs for the conservation and sustainable development of these forests (1-3). The
role of indigenous people who live in the forests in managing natural resources is the subject of considerable
debate in scientific circles and negotiations in national and international policy arenas. The issue is of
considerable importance as demonstrated by the fact that the 1993 United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development (UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, focused attention on indigenous peoples and the 48th International
Congress of Americans held in Sweden in July, 1994, was organized around the three of Threatened Peoples
and Environments in the Americas.
This article addresses the issues of indigenous territorial protection in Latin America, and listened to the
broader debate concerning deforestation and tropical forest management. Our contention is that indigenous
peoples positive and active participation in tropical forest management will only occur if: (i) they are provided
with legal security to territories which are sufficiently large for sustainable resource management; (ii) the
governments of Latin America provide adequate legal and police protection to such territories; (iii) the
indigenous peoples have the power to make decisions concerning the sustainable use and management of
natural resources within these territories; and, (iv) they are provided with adequate training and technical
assistance to adapt their traditional land-use systems to modern economic conditions. We further contend that
scientists and public policy-makers cannot afford to overlook these social, juridical and technical issues relating
to indigenous territories if lasting solutions are to be found for the management of tropical forests.
To demonstrate the validity of this argument, case materials are drawn from several Latin American countries.
These cases reflect competing national legal and administrative models for securing indigenous land-tenure.
Most of these models do not recognize indigenous land-use systems and hence are not conducive to sustainable
forest mana
g
ement. However
,
recentl
y
an innovative model has been
p
romul
g
ated b
y
indi
g
enous
p
eo
p
les
themselves which has promise of responding to the tropical forest crisis (4).
Indigenous Land Use and Spatial Conceptions
Extensive anthropological research has been conducted with forest-dwelling in groups in lowland South and
Central America. From this research emerge findings significant to the development of a land-tenure model.
First, the research has consistently highlighted the variability of human adaptation in the lowland tropics. This
variability is due both to the dynamics of the ecosystem and historical factors which have caused massive
changes in demography and settlement patterns since the European conquest of the Americas. Indigenous
peoples have continually created and molded land and resource-use practices to ensure physical and cultural
conceptions survival under harsh conditions. Second, the research has shown the close link between the cultural
conceptions and social institutions of lowland forest dwellers and their land-use practices. We refer here not to
a reductionist relationship between belief systems and subsistence activities, but rather to persistent patterns of
belief and behavior in which conceptions of space, taboos on diet and hunting and cultivation, and the
relationship between the natural and supernatural world would regulate the use of land. These patterns are
evident across the whale span of cultural variation in the region (5-7).
Indigenous cosmologies give primacy to the symbolic configuration of space in both the natural and
supernatural worlds. The creation myths of these societies often contain contemporary place names and provide
a "cultural cartography" of the territorial conceptions of indigenous groups. As Hugh-Jones notes "virtually
every landmark in the forest or along the river has some significance in the myths of origin of one group or
another" (8). Territory for lowland forest dwellers is not necessarily a well-defined or bounded land that lends
itself to mapping in the Western sense. Rather, conceptions of territory are more fluid and indeterminate. Often,
peoples' conception of space is a concentric one which starts with the center where settlement is and expands
outward, becoming more undefined the further one gets from the center (8).
These symbolic conceptions of space have persisted despite substantial changes in social organization and
economic and political life. They are integral to the cultural identity, health and continuity of indigenous forest
peoples. Along with indigenous environmental and land-use knowledge, they need to be included in the
determination of land-tenure policies and the delineation of indigenous territories, if these are to have a positive
effect upon the conservation of the forest ecosystems. Linking these cultural conceptions with ecological and
economic considerations provides an integrated approach to the conservation of forest ecosystems and is more
in keeping with the land-extensive subsistence practices of forest-dwelling societies.
To incorporate indigenous environmental knowledge, land-use practices, and conceptions of space into an
indigenous territorial model entails combining detailed ethnographic, historical and ecological research. Only
recently, however, have some preliminary attempts been made to calculate the possible size of such territories.
In Peru, for example, a study among the Achuara Indians demonstrated the existence of two culturally-relevant
ecological zones: one for hunting, fishing, and gathering! based upon the distances traveled by male hunters;
and, the other for shifting cultivation of gardens based upon female work effort. By calculating the minimal
amount of land necessary for each of these activities and combining them, the study provided an estimate of the
minimum size of the "ethnic territory." The study also allowed for demographic growth based upon a 1%
annual growth rate over a generation. For one community, which had a population of 1198 people, the study
calculated that the total indigenous territory would need to be 164 950 ha (9).
While much work still needs to be done on the nature and size of indi
g
enous territories
,
it is clear that national
policy makers have had little understanding of either the dynamics of indigenous land use or the symbolic and
cultural meanings which indigenous forest-dwellers give to space. To the contrary, most national policies until
recently embodied the prejudices of colonial governments, which looked upon indigenous forest dwellers not as
resource managers who possessed sophisticated ecological knowledge, but as "primitive" peoples who should
be pacified, civilized and eventually incorporated into western culture. This is reflected not only in the policies
of colonial governments toward indigenous forest-dwellers, but also in the more recent land-tenure policies of
Latin American countries. These policies have had dire social and ecological consequences.
Model of Land Tenure for Indigenous Peoples
In order to demonstrate the political and administrative obstacles and ecological consequences which have
resulted from government policies towards indigenous people, it is necessary to describe the varying and
sometimes overlapping land-tenure models which have been applied in different national contexts.
Indian Reserves (Brazil): The Brazilian Indian reserve system is the clearest case of a land-tenure model that
resulted from protectionist policies toward forest-dwellers. Protectionism emerged as a policy in the late 19th
and early 20th century as a result of international protests surrounding slavery and other depredations that
accompanied the rubber boom. It was premised on the assumption that indigenous forest-dwellers were
incapable of protecting themselves and needed to be entrusted to outside agents, such as the Catholic Church or
specially created government agencies such as the Indian Protection Service (SPI) established in 1910 in Brazil,
and its successor, the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), established in 1967.
From the 1920s until 1988, when a new Constitution was passed, although there were modifications in the laws
and procedures regulating the demarcation of indigenous lands, the process was consistently influenced by the
protectionist approach, heavily bureaucratic and largely ineffective. Essentially, the process was guided by
political and military considerations while social considerations about the Indian groups' welfare or even
technical considerations that would have allowed more rational land-use planning were given short shrift (10-
14).
Table 1. Legal situation of indigenous areas in Brazil (1990) (15)
Legal situationNo of indigenous areas%Area (ha)%PopulationNot identified 9017.1137598 0.05
..Identified80915.2111,651,33114.72
..Interdicted6712.7430,007,41937.92..Delimited9317.6810,264,11112.97..Demarcated and confirmed
13625.8616,321,22020.62..Regularized6011.4110,853,77313.72..TOTAL526100.079,135,452100.0235,616
Definitions:
Not identified: Lands known to be occupied by indigenous peoples __ formal identification as Indigenous
Areas (IAs) by the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI).
Identified: IAs formally identified by FUNAI.
Interdicted: IAs where a formal decree has been issues by FUNAI announcing indigenous occupancy and intent
to proceed with delimitation and demarcation.
Delimited: IAs where technical studies have been conducted by FUNAI and boundaries have been formally
noted on government maps.
Demarcated: IAs where the actual physical demarcation of boundaries has been done and confirmed by
p
residential decree.
Regularized: IAs whose titles have been registered in the federal, state and municipal registries.
A Brazilian NGO (Centro Ecumenico de Documentacao e Informacado, CEDI) and a group of anthropologists
at Brazil's National Museum (Projeto Estudo sobre Terras Indigenas no Brasil, PETI) have been systematically
documenting and analyzing this indigenous land-regularization process. In 1990, CEDI/PETI found that there
were 526 indigenous areas of which 90 were not identified, 80 identified but not interdicted, 67 interdicted, 93
delimited, 136 demarcated and confirmed by Presidential decree, and only 60 fully regularized. While the area
of land identified as being Indian occupied totaled 79.1 mill. ha, the amount of land actually registered by this
date was only 10.9 mill. ha, or 13% of the total area of indigenous lands (15, Table 1).
Contrary to conventional wisdom, in those areas where there were internationally-funded regional development
projects, the pace of land regularization was quicker than the national norm. In the Polonoroeste area, for
example, between 1982 and 1988, FUNAI demarcated a total of almost 7 mill. ha of land as indigenous
reserves in 34 indigenous areas, of which 20 totaling 5.4 mill. ha were fully regularized. An additional 2.9 mill.
ha of land were officially identified by the government, but not demarcated; and 16 indigenous areas, with an
estimated 1.9 mill. ha, were still to be identified (16).
However, even where FUNAI was able to regularize relatively large amounts of indigenous land, it was not
able to actually protect them from outside encroachments. Of 518 indigenous areas included in a 1987
CEDI/PETI study, 214 or 41 % experienced or were scheduled to be affected by the impacts of placer mining,
mineral exploration, hydroelectric developments, or highway construction. In areas of rapid economic
expansion, even fully regularized indigenous reserves were vulnerable to encroachment (17).
Recently, there have been several changes in the Brazilian situation, especially as regards land regularization,
principally resulting from provisions in the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, which have facilitated the streamlining
of the demarcation process. In 1991 and 1992, the government demarcated several import indigenous areas,
including the 9.4 mill. ha Yanomami reserve in Roraima and the Menkragnoti-Kayapo reserve in Mato Grosso,
which has a perimeter of 1500 km and borders the Xingu Indian Park (18, 19).
While these steps have improved the administrative process of regularizing indigenous lands, they do not
address the structural problems of a protectionist approach. In fact, a major problem in this model is the
existence of a bureaucratic, centralized agency which lacks the technical competence, financial resources and
political authority to defend indigenous lands. Furthermore, this model impedes the ceding of authority to
indigenous peoples and does not recognize their own models of land tenure, social organization, and resource
management. Those articles in the new Brazilian Constitution relating to Indian rights are general enough to
include an alternative model, but this has yet to be applied in practice (11).
Native Communities (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru): In contrast to the Brazilian model's reliance on a system of
indigenous reserves, an integrationist approach towards indigenous land-tenure was adopted by the Andean
countries. Integrationisim was based on post World War II theories of development and called for the
integration of indigenous peoples into regional plans designed to foster national economic growth (20).
Countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru rely on laws incorporated into the agrarian reform codes under
which land titles are granted to separate Indian communities. In these countries, the majority of indigenous
people live in the highland plateaus. Over time, these highland peoples were settled into nucleated communities
and integrated into the rural market economy, and subjected to the same legal and administrative procedures as
non-Indians
(
21
,
22
)
.
The Andean agrarian reform laws defined Indian communities not in terms of indigenous forms of political
organization (e.g., the "ayllus" inherited from the pre-Colombian Incaic period), but according to a nationally
uniform model of peasant organization. Thus, in Bolivia after the 1952 Revolution where peasant and miner
movements were strong, the rural syndicate was the major form of community organization introduced to
obtain lands. In Ecuador, after the 1964 Agrarian Reform, indigenous communities had to form cooperatives to
gain title, although the cooperative here is not the native political structure. Similarly in Peru, following the
1969 Agrarian Reform, to receive land titles and government agricultural credit, local communities had to form
into cooperatives (21, 23).
This procedure is problematic for the forest-dwelling indigenous groups who are minority populations in these
countries. They are not necessarily organized into discrete communities and their subsistence practices require
access to large tracts of land. In Peru, the government passed a special Jungle Law in 1974 (amended in 1978)
which enabled native communities to register as legal entities, but limited the size of traditionally occupied or
used land which could be titled (24, 25). For 20 Peruvian ethnic groups for which data are available, the
government titled an average of only 45.6 ha per family (Table 2). The arbitrariness of the size of average land
allocations is also noteworthy. For example, for 61 Shipibo-Conibo communities, the range is from 2.86 ha to
66.87 ha per family. These small communal and family parcels often become overpopulated and fragmented
within a single generation and make it difficult for indigenous groups to practice sustainable natural resource
management (9). These lowland forest-dwellers also face serious administrative problems in gaining titles to
their lands (26).
Again, it should be stressed that some countries are in the process of changing their laws and procedures as a
result of activism by indigenous organizations. In April 1990. for example, the Ecuadoran government granted
a 612, 000 ha continuous territory to the Huaorani Indians in the Amazonian province of Napo; and, in May
1992, outgoing President Rodrigo Borja granted 1. 15 mill. ha of land in Pastaza Province to three indigenous
groups. In Bolivia, there is also a new law under study which recognizes indigenous territories and defines the
specific land and resource rights of lowland indigenous groups.
Protected Areas (Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia): In the 1960s, as the international conservation movement
gained momentum, a number of protected areas were created in Latin America which contained indigenous
groups within their boundaries. This approach was based on preservationism, a trend which emerged in the
1960s. Unlike in Africa, where indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from national parks and wildlife
refuges, in Latin America the tendency was to leave them within the parks so long as they maintained their
traditional subsistence practices. The classic model was the Xingu Indian Park in Brazil which, throughout the
1960s, received a great amount of international attention as a result of the attempts of the founders of the park,
Orlando and Claudio Villas Boas, to protect both the indigenous tribes and the ecology of the area (27).
Under impetus from such organizations as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources (IUCN), several other South American countries followed Brazil in creating protected areas which
contained indigenous populations, some of whom had not been contacted by missionaries or government
authorities. One case was the Manu Park which the Peruvian government established in 1973. This park covers
1.5 mill. ha of remote highland and lowland rain forest and contains six or seven indigenous groups, among
them the Matsigenka, Yaminahua, and several unknown tribes (28).
In the 1970s
,
the Venezuelan
g
overnment established a number of national
p
arks and other t
yp
es of
p
rotected
areas in the Orinoco and Amazon regions in order to conserve and develop the resources of the southern part of
the country. Many of these reserves contain indigenous peoples who have not received any prior legal
protection under the Venezuelan agrarian reform laws. During this period, the government's new Ministry of
Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (MARNR) established five national parks totaling, 5.2 mill. ha
in the State of Bolivar and Territory of Amazons all of which coincide with indigenous territories In the 1980s,
a number of Venezuelan scientists and environmentalists petitioned the government to establish a joint National
Park and indigenous area for the Yanomami Indians (29).
Table 2. Number of hectares per family in Peruvian native communities by ethnic group (9)
Ethnic groupNumber of native communities titledMinimum number of hectares per family Maximum number
of hectares per familyAverage number of hectares per familyAchuara330.47 63.66 41.58Aguaruna428.86
143.28112.75Arabela150.00 50.0050.00Arahuaca1104.09 104.09104.09Bora-Ocaina 7 7.00 95.0032.32Campa-
Ashaninka56.9933.1917.40Candoshi
S.M.2112.99128.23121.11Cashinahua24.1135.0319.57Culina214.4320.4217.25Huitoto93.79161.4645.32Kich
wa Napo367.1665.2737.18Kichwa226.4989.1757.83Pastaza Piro63.0276.8720.50Orejon-
Coto213.11196.61104.50Secoya222.0034.4828.24Sharanahua26.5923.2414.92Shipibo-
Conibo612.8666.8715.96Ticuna63.7357.4124.42Yagua124.0064.0929.67Yaminahua
Amahuaca/Piro115.5715.5715.57
Total average for all ethnic groups: 45.63 ha per family
More recently, as part of the UNESCO "Man and the Biosphere" Program, governments in collaboration with
international conservation organizations have created several parks which contain indigenous communities in
their core areas or buffer zones. The earliest of these parks were established in Central America, e.g., La
Amistad in Costa Rica and the Rio Platano reserve in Honduras. but there have also been attempts to establish
integrated biosphere reserves in parts of lowland South America. The most well-known of these is the Beni
Biosphere Reserve in Bolivia. which was the object of the world's first "debt-for-nature" swap and contains
several settlements of Chimanes and Moxeno Indians.
While these parks can satisfy the territorial needs of indigenous groups, they pose several problems for
sustainable resource management. First, in all of these areas, the indigenous peoples do not possess legal title
which would secure their permanent rights to the use of lands and natural resources. To the contrary, the
assumption is that if these lands are legally granted to the indigenous peoples, they will eventually exploit them
in the same ways as other populations or lease their resources to outsiders. Therefore, all rights are invested in
the government for the purpose of preserving these lands as examples of pristine nature.
Apparently, this was the assumption in the Beni Biosphere Reserve where the Bolivian Forestry Institute and
the private environment organization Conservation International designed the park with limited participation by
the region's indigenous inhabitants. After the Bolivian government announced the "debt-for-nature" swap
agreement, the indigenous peoples through their regional organizations protested the idea behind the reserve,
including the granting of timber concessions in the buffer zone to private companies. The Indians also protested
the lack of recognition of their ancestral territorial claims and, through a march to La Paz, persuaded the
g
overnment to reco
g
nize their land ri
g
hts
(
30
)
.
The conventional parks or preserved area model considers indigenous peoples as part of the natural
environment and as contributing to the scientific and tourist interest of the park. Rarely do indigenous peoples
participate in the design or management of these protected areas, except in minimal roles as park employees or
tourist guides. The designers of these parks view Indians as static "stone-age" inhabitants of the forest, rather
than as active managers of the environment and its resources. Furthermore. there is an assumption that if
indigenous peoples change their traditional modes of livelihood, they will become a threat to the park and
hence subject to fines or relocation.
Increasingly, conservation organizations are seeing the fallacy of these assumptions, especially given the
inability of government wildlife agencies to protect these parks from colonization and other forms of outside
encroachment. An emerging position is that indigenous peoples should be given a co-equal role in the design
and implementation of protected-area management plans. The terms of such co-management arrangements,
however, have still to be worked out and are a subject of contention between indigenous peoples,
environmentalists and policy makers (28. 31).
In summary, a large amount of land has been recognized as being Indian occupied in lowland Central and South
America, but not yet legally secured. Table 3 shows data on the amount of indigenous lands recognized by the
Amazon Treaty Organization countries (32). With a few exceptions, however, the majority of countries still
look at land allocation outside of a framework of indigenous resource management and self-determination. As a
result, neither indigenous territorial rights or the ecosystem have been adequately protected. The pace of
deforestation has not abated an many indigenous groups face pressure to degrade the land left to them in order
to survive. As we shall see, this approach is being challenged by new indigenous organizations which have
gained increasing influence throughout Latin America in recent years.
The Indigenous Territory Mode
In the 1960s, lowland indigenous peoples stated to form local and regional organizations to defend their
interests and resources, beginning a new phase in the long history of their resistance to conquest. While in this
paper we focused on the organization of indigenous people, it is important to note that the social movement has
wider social and political consequences.
The first of these modern lowland indigenous movements occurred among the Shuar of Eastern Ecuador, who
organized a federation to represent the interests of their affiliated centros (centers) and established a bilingual
radio station to increase communication among their widely dispersed settlements. Throughout the 1970s,
similar organizations appeared in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia. and Venezuela as a means by which
Indians could represent their interests before the government and gain titles for their communal lands.
As they gained strength, these regional organizations formed alliances among themselves and across national
boundaries. In 1984, the various lowland Indian organizations formed a Coordinating Body of Indigenous
Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), which presented a united indigenous position before such
international bodies as the Amazon Treaty Commission, the International Labor Organization, the UN Working
Group on Indigenous Populations, and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and Inter-American
Development Bank. In May 1990, COICA called a summit of environmental organizations in order to promote
the participation of indigenous peoples in the international defense of the Amazonian ecosystem.
It was out of these organizational initiatives that a new model of indigenous land-tenure and resource
management emerged. The central concept in this model is the idea of the "indigenous territory." This concept
differs from the previous models in that it integrates the land and resources which Indians need in terms of their
economic survival with their cultural conceptions of space and their forms of social and political organization.
The indigenous organizations affiliated with COICA are attempting to create a new vision of Indian lands, in
which indigenous peoples have the capability of protecting forest ecosystems with a greater degree of
autonomy (4). The model holds out the possibility for a more equal partnership for ecological preservation
between indigenous people, and the national and international community.
There are several implications of this indigenous territorial model which differentiates it from previous efforts.
First, indigenous organizations are seeking land areas which are large enough to provide for the conservation.
use and management of tropical-forest ecosystems. Some organizations are using existing forestry and
conservation laws to make territorial claims which are not recognized under conventional agrarian or Indian
laws. A case in point is the establishment of the Awa Ethnic Forest Reserve on the border between Ecuador and
Colombia.
In the face of expanding colonization and lumber extraction activities, the Ecuadoran Awa claimed a 100,000
ha area which extends over 250 km of rain forest. They circumvented the Ecuadoran agrarian reform law which
favors small titles and, with the assistance of the National Indian Confederation of Ecuador (CONAIE),
convinced the government to provide them with lands that were designated as an "ethnic forest reserve."
Table 3. Land set aside in Amazon cooperation treaty member countries for indigenous populations (32).
CountryNumber of ethnic groups Estimated indigenous populationExtent of lands set aside (ha)
Bolivia131171, 227 253,000Brazil200213,352
74,466,149Colombia5270,00018,507,793Ecuador694,7001,918,706Peru60300,0003,822,302Guyana940,000
NASuriname5 7,400NAVenezuela16386,7008,870,000TOTAL379935,949109,637,950
This is the first such reserve in the history of Ecuador. In exchange for the Awa's agreement to protect the forest
resources of the area, the government resettled and provided land titles to colonists on the periphery of the
reserve. It has also opened up discussions with the Colombian government to create an "Indigenous Territory
and Binational Biosphere Reserve" which will recognize indigenous land rights and protect the ecosystem on
both sides of the frontier (4).
In Peru, regional Indian organizations, led by the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian
Amazon (AIDESEP), have been actively involved in consolidating small parcels of land titled to native
communities into larger territories. They are also making claims, under the country's Forestry laws, for larger
areas which are more conducive to sustainable resource management. A number of Ashanika communities in
the Pichis Valley of the Central Jungle have proposed to the government the establishment of a million hectare
Communal Reserve in the Cordillera de "El Sira" in which they would have usufruct rights in exchange for
protecting the flora and fauna of the region.
A second aspect of this model is that it provides for both indigenous participation and state cooperation in the
definition and delimitation of territories. Perhaps the clearest example of this trend is among the Shuar
Fe
d
eration of Ecuador
,
which has formed its own native to
p
o
g
ra
p
hic teams to demarcate their lands. Usin
g
community labor and working closely with the Ecuadoran Agrarian Reform Agency (IERAC), the Federation
has been able to physically demarcate the lands of numerous communities which would have remained
undemarcated if left to government topographers alone.
Similar initiatives are taking place in Peru. Indian organizations, under the leadership of AIDESEP and with
financial assistance from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), are carrying out a land
titling project in the Ucayali Department which includes the active participation of indigenous communities in
the identification and demarcation process. These efforts, which are less costly than those carried out by
government agencies alone, have speeded up the pace of land regularization. Furthermore, they encourage
indigenous communities to protect their lands, especially against outside encroachments; and, they establish
boundary markers which are more consistent with indigenous conceptions of territory and space than those of
Western topographers (33).
A third example comes from Central America where cultural geographers are working with indigenous people
in Honduras and Panama to develop innovative mapping strategies that allow them to delineate boundaries in
the face of encroachment on their lands by colonists. Indigenous people chosen by their communities were
trained in land-survey techniques. Each surveyor gathered complete data from the villages about where people
hunted, fished, farmed and gathered wild plants. Villagers created their own symbols for the various land-use
activities. These were then compared to aerial photographs and government maps and used to make a
composite map which was taken to the villages for confirmation of accuracy. When the Indians' maps and the
government maps were compared, the Indian maps were found to be very accurate in their proportions and they
demonstrated that Indian lands almost exactly coincided with those regions where the ecosystem was still intact
and not degraded by extensive deforestation (34. pers. comm. with M. Chapin. director. Native Lands Project o
f
the Tides Foundation).
Lastly, the new indigenous territory model has the potential for enhancing the long-term development of natural
resources and local communities. While the indigenous organizations have focused most of their efforts to date
on the identification and demarcation of their territories, they also recognize that without a systematic program
of resource management which speaks to the economic needs of their people such territories will be of little
long-term value. A number of these organizations have begun small pilot projects which combine traditional
subsistence practices with external technical assistance and training in local economic development and natural-
resources management.
In Peru, there are some very promising experiments of this type. One example is AIDESEP's Internal
Community Family Gardens (HIFCO) project which combines traditional Indian with Western organic-
gardening techniques. The idea behind this project is to maintain the natural diversity of the forest ecosystem
while increasing household food production (35).
On a more commercial level, the Yanesha Forestry Cooperative in the Palcazu Valley of Peru has introduced a
strip shelterbelt method of sustained yield natural forestry management. This system was based upon research
on the ecological dynamics of tropical forests in Asia and America and then adapted to the traditional styles of
decision-making and organization of the Amuesha communities who belong to the cooperative. While the
cooperative is not without problems, it has been recognized as a model for how to transfer scientific research
and technology to an indigenous setting (36).
In other countries
,
indi
g
enous or
g
anizations are seekin
g
wa
y
s of rehabilitatin
g
de
p
leted fish and wildlife
resources. In Colombia, for example, the Puerto Rastrojo Foundation, comprised of biologists and
anthropologists, has been working with local indigenous communities to protect freshwater turtle and caiman
populations endangered by overhunting and fishing. The success of some of these initial efforts in fish and
Wildlife conservation is one reason for the Colombian government's policy of recognizing large indigenous
land areas in the Amazon (37).
These examples represent attempts by indigenous organizations to secure territories within the existing
framework of national land laws and procedures. They demonstrate that indigenous people are unwilling to be
classified as either habitat destroyers or romanticized conservators of a supposedly pristine environment. They
do not want to be removed from their lands nor do they want to be "left alone" to manage a depleted resource
base with inadequate technical assistance. Instead, they are seeking to utilize Western technical expertise in a
way that is consistent with their own knowledge systems and cultural frameworks to manage, sustain and
promote their natural-resource base. These examples show that such an integration is indeed possible.
Conclusion
In this paper, we have argued that the conventional models of land-tenure contained in national Indian,
agrarian, and protected area laws in Latin America have provided relatively limited protection to indigenous
peoples and the tropical forest ecosystem in which they reside. These models emerged during an era when most
governments were more concerned with the rapid occupation and exploitation of frontier zones and the
assimilation of indigenous peoples. The recent attention given to the environmental degradation of these areas
and the need to create alternative models of land use and development have directed attention to the potential
contribution of indigenous peoples to the conservation and management of the vast tropical forests of Latin
America.
Indigenous communities and organizations have recently proposed a new model of territorial protection based
upon indigenous knowledge systems and land-use practices. While this model has the potential of conserving
large areas of the rain forest, to be successful it will need juridical recognition by national governments as well
as international technical, scientific and financial support.
We contend that there needs to be a new relationship among indigenous peoples, scientists, national
governments and international organizations for the conservation and sustainable use of the world's tropical
forests. This relationship should be a contractual one, whereby indigenous peoples are provided with juridical
recognition and control over large areas of forest in exchange for a commitment to conserve the ecosystem and
protect biodiversity. To establish this relationship, there needs to be legislative and administrative reform of
land regularization procedures. the initiation of a partnership between Western-trained scientists and indigenous
people that allows for the integration of the two knowledge systems to develop innovative resource-
management strategies and land-conservation plans, and the participation of indigenous organizations and
communities in the design and benefits of new financial arrangements created for protecting tropical forests and
their biodiversity.
While indigenous organizations are aware of difficulties involved in gaining recognition and protection of their
territories, they believe that this is the only means defining a feasible conservation and development strategy for
the worlds remaining rain forests. The challenge now is for national governments and international institutions
to engage the organizations in a series of country and regional dialogues toward the implementation of such a
strate
gy
. Tro
p
ical-forest scientists should be asked to
p
artici
p
ate in these dialo
g
ues and
g
et their research
agendas with this strategy in mind.
References and Notes
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The authors would like to thank Lynne Greabell for her bibliographic and research assistance.
Also, we would like to thank, Maritta Koch-Weser Daniel Gross and Mac Chapin for their
helpful comments. Finally, we would like to express appreciation for the constructive
comments of the reviewers for Ambio.
First submitted 15 November 1993, accepted for publication after revision 20 April 1994.
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1994 Ambio Vol. 23 No. 8. Dec. 1994
Shelton H. Davis, PhD, is principal sociologist in the Environment Department of The World
Bank, Washington, DC. His address: Environment Department, The World Bank, 1818 H
Street NW, Washington DC 20433, USA. Alaka Wali, PhD, is associate professor of
anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. Her address: Department
of Anthropology, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland, College
Park, MD, USA. Both have done extensive research in Latin America with lowland forest
dwellers. This article stems from a review they conducted of land regularization associated
with Special Amerindian Projects funded by The World Bank. The findings and interpretations
in this essay are solely those of the authors and, in the case of Mr. Davis, do not represent
those of The World Bank, its affiliated institutions, its Board of Directors or its Member
Countries.
