Between the environment and the economy: foreign investments, global conservation, and Indigenous nations in the Amazon

Abstract

Where is the communities’ voice when their territories are intervened by either extractive projects advanced by transnational corporations or environmental initiatives advanced by global conservation actors? These actors allege that their projects deeply engage with sustainable development, in practice, however, national policies and governmental actions over the forests tend to prioritizing the environmental or the economic angle of sustainability, obscuring the political aspirations of Indigenous nations. By analysing these interventions in the Peruvian Amazon, this paper explores how Indigenous peoples’ political agency is located between these two global forces. Nonetheless, by using the discourse and standards of internationally recognized indigenous rights, they fight for the recognition of their nationhood and territorial entitlements as well as for their self-determination to engage with economic and environmental agendas from their own worldviews.