Panama’s indigenous groups take land fight to the international stage

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Panama’s indigenous groups take land fight to the international stage

by Camilo Mejia Giraldo on 1 August 2018
Mongabay Series: Indigenous Peoples and Conservation

Indigenous communities occupying four territories in eastern Panama are taking their nearly five-year land-titling battle with the government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. Their move comes despite recent gains in the Panamanian process.

[For the complete and lengthy article with pictures and charts, etc., please click on the below link.]

 

https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/panamas-indigenous-groups-take-land-fight-to-the-international-stage/

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Indigenous Panamanians say that their forest management is sustainable after controversy

Tue, 09/11/2018 - 17:54

The indigenous people of the Embera-Wounaan region, in the Panamanian Darién jungle, defended today that the management and commercialization of their forests is "sustainable" and complies with international conservation standards, despite recent accusations of alleged illegal and indiscriminate logging.

"Yes there is a problem of deforestation, yes there is a problem of illegal logging, but it is outside the Embera-Wounaan region, it is in the rest of the Darién," assured Héctor Huertas, legal advisor to the congress, the political entity that governs autonomous in the region.

There are five sustainable forest management plans in the region, which cover nearly 100,000 hectares of forests and are endorsed by international organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), he explained.

These plans, he said, plan a sustainable use of forest resources and help the community to prosper, as they obtain income from the controlled sale of wood.

"Since insults and slander have been raised about the communities, we fear that the State will suspend those forest exploitation plans, which would be an attack on community development," he insisted.

Several local media recently published reports in which they denounced that the Panamanian Ministry of the Environment had authorized a massive logging of trees in Darién, something that the institution denied.

"In the Embera-Wounaan region, we are very clear that we can not tear down a tree that is not registered for logging, we expose ourselves to fines of 5,000 dollars for each tree," the general chief of the region, Edilfonso Aji, said at the same press conference.

The Darién, an intricate jungle that makes a natural border with Colombia, is an area very exposed to deforestation, in which species of highly-prized trees in the Asian, US and European market grow. The types of trees are: balsam, national mahogany or cocobolo, whose extraction has been banned for several years.

Since 1980, it is also the largest national park in Central America, with 579,000 hectares, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 1981 by Unesco and the Biosphere Reserve in 1982.

The indigenous people also denied that they are selling their forest exploitation permits and said that the WWF, together with the ministry, has helped them implement a system of traceability and forest control that will allow them to follow the path of the wood.

In Panama there are about 400,000 indigenous people, who represent around 11% of the total population and who are grouped into 7 main ethnic groups: Emberá, Wounaan, Guna, Ngäbe, Buglé, Naso and Bri-Bri.

Many of these people live in the five indigenous regions legally recognized and with their own autonomy: Embera-Wounaan, Guna Yala, Ngäbe-Buglé, Madugandi and Wargandi.

Although the Central American country is one of the fastest growing in the region, the situation of indigenous people is precarious: poverty affects 96.7 percent of the people and chronic malnutrition affects 72 percent of children under five years, according to the latest official survey.

 

https://www.panamatoday.com/panama/indigenous-panamanians-say-their-forest-management-sustainable-after-controversy-7818