Chapter 16: The state of conservation policies, protected areas, and Indigenous territories, from the past to the present

Abstract

Key Messages & Recommendations 1) Protected areas (PAs) and Indigenous territories (ITs) occupy approximately 50% of the Amazon basin, showing the great potential of the Amazon to conserve and manage vital ecological connec-tivity. 2) ITs, PAs, and their inhabitants have contributed significantly to maintaining intact forests; intact forests act as buffers against greenhouse gas emissions from forest loss, maintain the hydro-climatic balance, and preserve biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, as compared to regions outside their borders. 3) Deforestation rates are rising across the region, putting ITs and PAs under renewed pressure. 4) PAs and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) are seen as ecological networks for conservation, and demand plans with well-defined goals for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services, co-management with local communities, and the involvement of private stakeholders and other sub-national and local forms of government. 5) More concrete actions are needed to protect ITs, including the full recognition of territories and collective rights, and the strengthening of local governance as one of the most important strategies to maintain forests. 6) Balanced and direct funding, as well as capacity building for Indigenous Peoples' organizations and communities, is essential to provide the necessary resources to continue to conserve and restore forests. Abstract Two management classifications are the cornerstone of Amazonian conservation: protected areas and Indigenous territories. This chapter fo-cuses on the historical processes, starting in the 1960s, that led to their creation, as well as the contemporary challenges they face and their importance for conservation. Recent history of the designation of protected areas and the recognition of Indigenous territories in the Amazon During the first half of the 20th century (later in some countries), the National Security Doctrine was the paradigm from which state policies were designed and implemented to guarantee sovereignty in a space that was still disputed between Amazonian countries, but also between transna-tional companies and between the latter and local populations. The logic of occupation was followed by the institutional framework associated with agrarian development, colonization, and deforestation, with the market-formal, but also illegal-for land and tropical timber 1. The Agrarian Reform of 1953 in Bolivia, and similar reforms a few years later in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, distributed colonized land to settlers. These circumstances gave rise to schemes of expropria-tion and trafficking of lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples and other local communities, which enabled concentration of land in the hands of settlers in parts of the Amazon 2. Although Peru's 1920 Constitution recognized the legal existence of "Indigenous communities," their legal status, autonomous composition , and communal ownership of their lands,