- The Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community lost some of the land it had been managing in the Cuyabeno Reserve under an agreement with the Ecuadorian government when the Siekopai Nation was awarded a land title in a 2023 court case.
- While these agreements have allowed Indigenous communities to manage ancestral lands in protected areas, critics argue they offer limited autonomy and can favor the government.
- Land titles provide greater self-determination and legal permanence for Indigenous communities, though some argue they could impact conservation efforts in protected areas.
- Some Indigenous leaders worry that the case could have side effects that aggravate disputes over ancestral land claims and undermine their own agreements, while others highlight that it’s an opportunity for communities to obtain firmer land rights.
This is Part 2 of a four-part series on Indigenous land rights in Ecuador. Read Part 1, Part 3 and Part 4.
In Ecuador’s Amazon, the use of agreements with the ministry of environment, known as convenios, in order to secure Indigenous rights in protected areas has come under the spotlight.
An area putting the agreements in question is the Cuyabeno Reserve, the country’s second-largest protected area, located in the east, and a model for the creation of convenios in other protected areas in the country. The Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha Indigenous community’s rights to land within the reserve had previously been recognized in a 2008 convenio with the ministry. But the community lost part of that land when the Siekopai Nation took the ministry to court and were awarded a land title for 42,360 hectares (104,674 acres) of the 172,575 hectares (426,442 acres) of land held by the Zancudo Cocha.
The result has observers mulling the use of convenios as opposed to land titles. Some argue that invalidating convenios could impact conservation in protected areas and aggravate land conflicts.
Others, including Siekopai leaders, say the ruling sets an important precedent that recognizes Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and autonomy via a land title.
“We Siekopai are demonstrating that it is possible to move towards legal security for our territories without relying solely on temporary concessions [convenios] from the State,” Justino Piaguaje, leader of the Siekopai Nation, tells Mongabay.
A case in point of this debate is a new bill for protected areas introduced by Ecuador’s President Noboa that on the one hand has some arguing for land titles in protected areas as a way for Indigenous peoples to maintain autonomy within their ancestral territories, and others saying agreements with the government offer an additional layer of protection for communities.
Convenios by the environment ministry have been seen as a way to recognize ancestral territories within protected areas while allowing the government to maintain a level of ownership. These cooperation or “use and management” agreements come in many forms and can stipulate communities’ right to live, use or manage ancestral lands in a protected area within the confines of conservation rules and sustainable income projects. They are temporary but are typically automatically renewed at the end of the term.
The 10-year convenio signed with the Zancudo Cocha was renewed in 2018, says Enrique Moya Tangoy, leader of the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community.
“Like all communities living within the protected areas of Ecuador, we have a land use and conservation agreement,” Moya tells Mongabay. “We are the legitimate inhabitants and protectors of the place, as duly recognized [by the ministry of environment].”
The ministry of the environment has signed seven agreements with Indigenous nations in the Cuyabeno Reserve, setting a model for the signing of other convenios in protected areas. Members of the Siekopai Nation also signed a convenio north of the reserve for the Centro Secoya Siecopai Remolino, according to a report by conservation NGOs. While Mongabay was not able to identify the total number of convenios in the country, a 2008 report on the agreements lists six Indigenous nations in the Amazon that have lands overlapping with nine protected areas.
Some Indigenous leaders and researchers also have seen convenios — at times, called “treaties” in English — as tools to settle claims in the Amazon where multiple Indigenous ancestral lands overlap. Now that the decision in the Siekopai’s favor has demonstrated that they can be superseded, however, many aren’t so sure their own land claims will remain settled.
Others are quick to point out the convenios’ shortcomings. Sources told Mongabay that the agreements are often lopsided in favor of the government, don’t include proper consultation with all communities and restrict the ability of Indigenous people to manage their lands as they see fit. They also argue that land titles, which give communities control of territories under Ecuador’s Constitution and international law, provide substantially more autonomy, self-determination and permanence.
“A title not only guarantees legal possession of the territory,” Piaguaje says, “but also allows Indigenous peoples to develop their own vision of territorial management, based on their cosmology, their ancestral practices and their way of life.”
Still, the ruling itself could be problematic for environmental protection, according to the authors of a policy proposal, who include Luis Borbor Laínez, director of the Cuyabeno Reserve. The policy proposal called the conflict that has resulted from the decision “a disaster” for the country’s protected area system. The proposal raises concerns about possible conservation impacts of an independent property title outside ministry regulations and that the case could provoke similar problems and land title requests where Indigenous communities live in protected areas.
One Indigenous leader who requested anonymity due to safety concerns said they believe convenios allow communities to manage more ancestral land than titled areas and that they support conservation by preventing leaders from accepting harmful activities like oil drilling and plantations.
“The way many Indigenous peoples managed their ancestral lands in protected areas was through [convenios],” says Felipe Borman, an Indigenous A’i Cofán leader of the Zabalo community, which has a convenio with the government. “But after this case, it threw the doors wide open and threw that structure out and made it not valuable anymore.
“That created the idea that people can go into ancestral territories and say we want a land title for this because they once lived there. And basically anybody can claim land and ask for a title for areas that are within a convenio system,” Borman tells Mongabay. “This kind of news travels.”
He says a community is now trying to claim part of A’i Cofán ancestral lands held within a convenio in the Cayambe Coca National Park, which sits east of the capital city of Quito.
Verónica Potes, a lawyer who wrote an independent review, or amicus brief, for the Siekopai case, says this ruling may not set a precedent that applies elsewhere to every other claim. She tells Mongabay that conflicts of any kind must be analyzed individually because not all conflicts are the same.
“If other communities are in a similar situation — where the state has signed use agreements over ancestral community territories with third parties — then these communities will claim the land if they wish. And if they do, the ministry of the environment, or the state agency to which they are claiming, must analyze the case.”
For Nivaldo Yiyoguaje, an Indigenous leader worried about conflict, land titles for Indigenous communities are important and to be encouraged. Indigenous groups like CONAIE, the organization representing Ecuador’s Indigenous nationalities, emphasize the same.
But Yiyoguaje, also Ai’Cofán president of NOA’IKE, says the convenios in place shouldn’t be superseded in the process for other peoples to get a land title. Arguments over lands, he tells Mongabay, should not be settled in court, but amicably between each other.
The environment ministry did not respond to Mongabay’s questions regarding dispute resolution and other related issues.
Although the ministry entered a dialogue and land arrangements with the Siekopai and Zancudo Cocha before the convenio, Siekopai leaders argue the process was flawed, bypassing their internal decision-making and that their assembly ultimately rejected it. Meanwhile, the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community uphold it as a final, signed agreement. The proposal by Borbor and his co-authors notes that a key driver of the conflict is “the exclusion of communities from decision-making and land allocation,” which has “fueled mistrust and resentment.”
The U.S.-based Indigenous rights NGO Amazon Frontlines legally supported the Siekopai Nation in its campaign for recognition of their land rights by providing lawyers and publicly backing the Siekopai’s ancestral claims.
Mitch Anderson, Amazon Frontlines’ co-founder and executive director, says this case highlights the precarity of convenios compared with land titles as a method for securing Indigenous rights. An area of roughly 1.2 million hectares (2.9 million acres) of Indigenous ancestral territories in the rainforest — around 2.5 times the size of Grand Canyon National Park in the U.S. — is “locked” in Ecuador’s protected areas, he adds. The organization is part of broader efforts to help Indigenous communities obtain titles to their ancestral lands in protected areas. Anderson says this recognition of the Siekopai’s land rights helps move that endeavor forward.
So far, more than 7 million hectares (17.3 million acres) of Indigenous lands are acknowledged and formally documented by the Ecuadorian government, according to data from LandMark.
“It is a powerful and necessary step towards replacing the outdated colonial script of top-down government-run conservation areas, which treats Indigenous peoples as tenants in their own ancestral territories, with a much more effective, more just, and rights-based approach to Indigenous land-tenure and stewardship,” he says in a written statement.
Banner image: Community members review a map of Pëkëya (name of the ancestral heartland of the Siekopai people in their native language, Paicoca). Territorial maps created by the Siekopai Nation through a community-led mapping process were among the evidence presented to the judges. These maps include documentation of historic and sacred sites, and important rivers and lagoons. Image courtesy of Karen Toro / Amazon Frontlines.
Additional reporting by Aimee Gabay.
Read Part 3:
Landmark Indigenous land title in Ecuadorian Amazon reserve mired in controversy
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page
Credits
