Title
Indigenous and Communal Strategies to Conserve Biodiversity in the Amazon Basin.
Author(s)
Lehm, Zulema; Wallace, Robert
Published
2017
Abstract
The use of GIS shows that some rural communities and Indigenous Peoples left a rather different footprint on Amazonian landscapes than other land owners. Thus, traditional natural resource access and use play an important role for landscape conservation as collective access and a diverse use system reduces impacts on the environment. This diversity in natural resource use must also be understood as an expression of culture. Historically these traditional systems were impacted by the expansion of “civilization”, and extractive activities, infrastructure, cattle ranching and agriculture are now the most important economic activities in the Amazon Basin. Struggling with these threats, 30 years ago riverine communities in Perú and Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia and Ecuador started to implement new strategies to conserve their territories and lands. These strategies were based on claims for the legal recognition of their rights over land and territory, whilst simultaneously beginning control over land incursions and illegal natural resource extraction, and developing self-imposed regulations over their own natural resource use. Appropriate zoning maps and Life Plans were designed and implemented with associated monitoring systems. These efforts resulted in significant “social capital”, through strengthening horizontal and vertical “social bonding ties”, and reinforcing ethnic and cultural identities. However, these actions were not enough and to ensure effective conservation of community land and indigenous territories, other relationships were needed: a kind of “social bridging ties” between the state and the communities or indigenous organizations. While “social bonding ties” helped in communal land and indigenous territory conservation, “social bridging ties” were crucial landscape scales conservation.

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