LOCAL STRUGGLES AND NEWS

- Bangladesh: “Save Sundarban, Save People Through Empowered Community Participation”

The Sundarban is the largest contiguous mangrove forest presently remaining in the world, and has been declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1997. However, it is now on the verge of destruction (see WRM Bulletins 44, 66, 72) despite local peoples’ determined and bold resistance --even to death-- against the destructive action of profit-led business, mainly the shrimp farming industry (see WRM Bulletin 51), as well as exploration activities of oil and gas companies (see WRM Bulletins 15 and 72).

A Biodiversity Conservation Project is under way in the Sundarban Reserve Forest, with funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Governments of the Netherlands and of Bangladesh. Is this another case of conservation approach through bulky funds from international agencies which eventually tend to promote “development” projects? How are people taken into account? Or else, how do they benefit? How to see through the alleged intentions which always mean good?

Criticism to the Sundarban Bio-diversity Conservation Project (SBCP) has been put forward by the SBCP Watch Group, an initiative of the people and peoples’ organizations inhabiting the Impact Zone of the Sundarbans, which ask for an effective re-design of SBCP in line with local peoples’ concerns.

First and foremost, the project has been designed and carried out as a top-down scheme. Though it allegedly aims at developing “a sound wild life management system” or “undertaking activities adhering to increased awareness of the environment”, it has not acknowledged the long lasting traditional and cultural wisdom of native peoples who have sustainable lived on the ecosystem for generations.

Furthermore, the project allows, enables and promotes large-scale commercial activities which have already proven to be deleterious for poor people and the environment.

The shrimp industry, a highly depredatory and contaminating activity --carried out for the benefit of big companies-- which threatens biodiversity and increases unemployment through displacement of fisherfolk, is allowed to continue, and a viable shrimp policy is absent in the project. So, they let things go on as is, with detrimental commercial shrimp aquaculture pervading the economy. Such “development” is very far from a “sound wild life management”, indeed. And it has been not the result of lack of “awareness of the environment” on the part of the communities. It was precisely a great commitment towards sustainable livelihood and peoples’ rights to their own resources which led Korunamoyee Sardar to resist with her life the invasion of the shrimp farming industry.

Suspiciously enough, the SBCP promotes silvicultural trials, a “strong” forestry database for “international users” (!), and a proposed privately owned social afforestation programme to be located outside the Sundarbans. The SBCP Watch Group thinks that all this is likely to lead to monoculture tree plantations, and not to community-based forest management relying on biodiversity and ecologically sound principles.

The main solution promoted by the SBCP for poverty mitigation is eco-tourism, and the great emphasis put in it does not give due consideration to the possible destructive effects of eco-tourism on such a highly sensitive ecosystem as the Sundarbans. There are scores of literature and cases of previous and present projects --even in other parts of Asia Pacific-- which show that most of these schemes are monopolized by large transnational tourism companies, yielding marginal benefits for the communities and widespread environmental destruction.

Typically, the conservation project for the Sundarban places emphasis --and money-- on training professionals and paying technical consultancies, feasibility studies, monitoring, and so on, while the lack of a historical review of the negative environmental and social impacts of construction of roads, bridges, culverts, embankments, sluices and polders in the Impact Zone and beyond has caused massive environmental and ecological damage to the entire region including the Sundarbans.

In account of those and more other flaws, the watch group is in the process of launching an Advocacy Campaign for re-designing the SBCP in favor of Sundarbans Impact Zone dwellers, especially poor people, based on people’s perceptions, study findings and analysis of secondary documents. It also aims at developing a strong Prediction Group to study the implications of any kind of future interventions by International Financial Institutions in the Southwest Coastal Region of Bangladesh.

Now, the Sundarban people have spoken, and loud enough to make the Asian Development Bank take the decision of re-designing the project. The goal of SBCP Watch Groups is “Save Sundarban, Save People through empowered Community Participation”. This is a demonstration that any genuine conservation project has to be done for and with the people, especially those who have the experience of conservation through generations of living in this region.

Article based on information from: “ADB in South-West Coastal Region of Bangladesh. Two Case Studies”, July 2003, sent by Marcus Colchester, FPP, e-mail: marcus@fppwrm.gn.apc.org

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- Indonesia: The Dayak People in the First Co-managed Protected Area

The Kayan Mentarang National Park situated in the interior of East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, lies at the border with Sarawak to the west and Sabah to the north. With its gazetted 1.4 million hectares, it is the largest protected area of rainforest in Borneo and one of the largest in Southeast Asia.

The history of the natural landscape of the park is inexorably intertwined with the history of its people. About 16,000 Dayak people live inside or in close proximity of this National Park. The communities living in and around the park are still largely regulated by customary law or "adat" in the conduct of their daily affairs and the management of natural resources in their customary territory. The customary chief (kepala adat) administers the customary law with the help of the customary council (lembaga adat). All elected officials at village level and prominent leaders of the community sit on a customary council. Traditional forest areas with protection status or strict management regime exist. "Tana ulen", for example, is land whose access is restricted, limited. It is an expanse of primary forest rich in natural resources such as rattan (Calamus spp), sang leaves (Licuala sp.), hardwood for construction (e.g., Dipterocarpus spp, Shorea spp, Quercus sp), fish and game, all of which have high use value for the local community.

The Nature Reserve established in 1980 had a strict protection status, meaning that no human activities are allowed inside the protected area. WWF together with LIPI (Indonesian Institute of Research) and local people ran a long-term social science research program ("Culture and Conservation", 1991-1997) and conducted experimental community mapping to show that the communities were dependent on forest resources and had rightful claims to the land. The results provided the necessary evidence to recommend a change of status from Nature Reserve to National Park in 1994 (where traditional activities are allowed).

The issue of social entitlements, and particularly lack of tenure security, was identified by the WWF team as a key issue and priority area for intervention in the period 1996-2000. Although Dayak people had been living in the area and made use of forest resources for centuries, the forest they inhabited and managed was "state forest" with a situation of open access, whereby the state could decide to allocate exploitation rights or decide to establish a conservation area without prior consent of the local communities. Local communities had very little power in trying to defend the forest or secure the source of their economic livelihood against the interests of logging companies, mining exploration, or outside collectors of forest products.

Under these circumstances, the WWF Kayan Mentarang project developed a strategy and program of field activities that would lead to the legal recognition of "adat" claims and "adat" rights so that indigenous communities could continue to use and manage forest resources in the conservation area. Activities included: community mapping; qualitative assessments of the use and availability of forest resources with economic value; workshop for the recognition of "tana ulen" or forest under traditional customary management; participatory planning for zonation recommendations and the redrawing of the external boundaries of the park; drafting of "adat" or customary regulations for the management of the national park; strengthening of local organizations and institutional development.

Following several meetings and discussions among the ten "adat” leaders from the customary lands around the park area, the Alliance of the Indigenous People of Kayan Mentarang National Park (FoMMA), was formed and formally established on October 7, 2000. The main objectives were to create a forum for conveying the aspirations of the indigenous communities and debating issues concerning the management of the National Park and natural resources in the customary lands of the park. FoMMA is concerned with guaranteeing protection of the forest and the sustainable use of natural resources as well as protection of the rights of indigenous people, and also concerned with increasing their economic prosperity. FoMMA now legally represents the indigenous people on the Policy Board of the park, a new institution set up to preside over the park's management. The Policy Board includes representatives of the central government (agency for Forest Protection and Nature Conservation), the provincial and district governments, and FoMMA. The operating principles of the board emphasize the importance of coordination, competence, shared responsibilities, and equal partnership among all stakeholders. The board was formally established in April 2002 with a Decree of the Ministry of Forestry, which also spells out that the park is to be managed through collaborative management (a first in Indonesia).

After decades of marginalisation and dispossession, recent developments in the Kayan Mentarang National Parks offer hope to the indigenous communities of Kalimantan. It is becoming increasingly evident that conservation objectives can rarely be obtained or sustained by imposing policies and projects that produce negative impacts on indigenous peoples and local communities. Alternative and progressive approaches that genuinely take into consideration local peoples' needs and rights and secure their full involvement in biodiversity management and decision making can provide a more solid basis for ecological protection and improvement of people's livelihoods. There is hope that the co-management arrangement being developed in Kayan Mentarang will fulfil these objectives.

By: Cristina Eghenter, WWF Indonesia Kayan Mentarang Project, awing@samarinda.org ; Martin Labo, Alliance of the Indigenous People of Kayan Mentarang National Park (FoMMA), dolvina@indo.net.id and Maurizio Farhan Ferrari, Forest Peoples Programme, mfferrari@pd.jaring.my

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- The Philippines: Indigenous Peoples’s Rights-based Approach to Conservation

The Philippines has been regarded as one of the most active and progressive countries in Asia in terms of developing policies and laws recognising the rights of indigenous peoples and ensuring their participation in protected area management and decision-making. However, it is indigenous peoples’ themselves that are finding the adequate ways for ensuring conservation and respect to their rights.

The National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) Act was signed into law in 1992 with the objective of developing a comprehensive protected areas system and integrate the participation of indigenous and local communities in protected areas management and decision-making. The participatory approach is supposed to happen mostly through the Protected Area Management Board (PAMB), which is composed of government officers, NGOs, and local community representatives.

Indigenous peoples' rights started to be more explicitly recognised in 1993, with the issuance of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Administrative Order No. 2 (DAO 2), which allows for the delineation of ancestral domains and the issuance to indigenous communities of Certificates of Ancestral Domain Claims (CADC) and Certificates of Ancestral Land Claims (CALC). These claims are not titles but provide that indigenous holders have some degree of control concerning what is going to happen in their territories. These right-based provisions were further strengthened in October 1997 with the proclamation of the long-awaited Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) by President Ramos. One of the IPRA's features is the granting of a collective right to land through the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) and of individual rights through the Certificate of Ancestral Land Title (CALT).

Since the passing of these laws, both their strengths and weaknesses have been pointed out. The NIPAS Act has improved the participation of indigenous and local communities in protected areas management and decision-making in many cases. Several NGOs and Community-based Organizations, however, point out that in several cases the PAMB has not been functioning effectively due to a number of limitations, varying from lack of documents in local languages and resources for meetings and workshops, to the fact that the PAMB's chairperson is a government officer and that local people are usually shy to voice their concerns in the presence of government officials, leading to the decision-making power remaining still firmly in government hands.

Concerning IPRA (the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act), while many indigenous groups still consider it a legal instrument that can be used to protect their rights, some others have called for the repeal of the law. Apart from the theoretical and practical ambiguities of the law, one main criticism has been that the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) does not truly represent the indigenous peoples as some of the commissioners were mostly appointed by the President without proper consultation and - especially under the Estrada administration - were either corrupt or inefficient, or both. The NCIP underwent radical restructuring during 2001 and a new set of Commissioners selected through a more participatory process at the provincial, regional and national levels, was instituted in mid-2001.

With new infused enthusiasm, President Gloria Magapagal-Arroyo announced in her Presidential Address to the Nation that 100 000 hectares of “Certificates of Ancestral Domain Titles” (CADT) would be awarded yearly. But due to lack of appropriate budget and other internal weaknesses, only two CADT were awarded by the end of 2002. The Chair of the Commission has been replaced again at the beginning of 2003. While there is still hope among the Philippine indigenous peoples that the NCIP will truly work in the interest of indigenous peoples, there is also a feeling that unresolved issues still need to be ironed out and that the NCIP must be strengthened in terms of human, institutional and financial resources.

One particular case study that is particularly illustrative of the positive way in which the IPRA can be used, but also of the possible conflict between the NIPAS Act and the IPRA Act is that of Coron Island, Calamianes Islands, North Palawan.

The Tagbanwa indigenous people of Coron Island have been living on a stunningly beautiful limestone island surrounded by water once rich in marine resources, their main source of livelihood. By the mid-1980s, not having secure legal tenure over these environments, the increasing encroachment by migrant fishers, tourism entrepreneurs, politicians seeking land deals, and government agencies interested in controlling various resources of the island, meant that they were fast losing control over their terrestrial and marine resources to the point that they were facing food shortages.

They reacted by setting up the Tagbanwa Foundation of Coron Island in 1985 and applying for a Community Forest Stewardship Agreement (CFSA). They were awarded a CFSA covering the whole island and neighbouring, small, Delian Island, (for a total of 7748 hectares) in 1990.

Soon after, however, they realised that their main source of livelihood, the marine waters surrounding the island, were being degraded at an alarming rate by dynamite, cyanide and other illegal and destructive fishing. Through the use of DENR's DAO2 and the help of a national NGO, the Philippine Association For Inter-cultural Development (PAFID), in 1998 they managed to obtain the first CADC in the country that included both land and marine waters, for a total of 22,284 hectares. They produced high quality mapping of their territories, an Ancestral Domain Sustainable Management Plan, and followed up the development of the IPRA law successfully, using it to obtain a CADT in early 2001. However, given that all CADT were put under review with the restructuring of the NCIP in mid-2001, this title is also under review.

The CADC and CADT were put to prompt use when Coron Island was selected as one of the 8 sites under the National Integrated Protected Areas Programme (NIPAP). The ultimate intention of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources was (and still is) to gazette the whole island as a Protected Area, but this has so far not materialised because the Tagbanwa fear that they would once more lose control over the island. Having gained a CADT over the island they prefer to stick to their right-based approach to resource management rather than accepting an uncertain participatory approach through the Protected Area Management Board. One of the main reasons mentioned by the Tagbanwa for their refusal of the NIPAP project was the fact that Coron Island was selected as one of the 8 sites for the project without any consultation with them and without seeking their free and prior informed consent. Several other indigenous communities in other parts of the country are looking at CADT over land and water as a tool to secure their rights to land and marine resources.

This case aptly illustrates the potential conflicts between the NIPAS and the IPRA. The Coron Island case could actually also be seen as the use by an indigenous community of a rights-based law (IPRA) to support a community-conserved area (CCA) versus the use by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources of a participatory protected areas law (NIPAS) to push for a state-declared Protected Area. This brings to the fore important questions in conservation policy: how can the conservation efforts of local communities (such as CCAs) be recognised and protected? Do they need legal recognition? How can they complement, or in certain cases be preferred, to the more conventional state-declared Protected Areas?

The case of the Tagbanwa of Coron Island illustrates that when an indigenous community is strongly determined to protect its natural resources and rights, given the right support (such as available laws and supporting NGOs), it can effectively take action to obtain recognition of its rights and to protect the ecosystems on which it depends. It also shows that for indigenous peoples it is worth investing time in using a rights-based approach to biodiversity management to obtain a private community title through IPRA, rather than accepting a participatory approach as offered by NIPAS, as this is still beset by problems related to the issue of who really holds power within a participatory arrangement. This case also illustrates the dichotomy between official (state-declared) protected areas versus community-conserved areas.

The Tagbanwa used an innovative law that recognises indigenous peoples' property rights and customary law (despite its limitations) in an initiative that could be broadly defined as a community-conserved area (CCA) and rejected a government plan to gazette the island as a Protected Area (PA). It is actually a case of conflict between CCA and PA, which could be avoided or settled if governments started to recognise and accept the value of CCAs and see them as a valid complementary approach to conventional PAs.

By: Maurizio Farhan Ferrari, Forest Peoples Progamme, e-mail: mfferrari@pd.jaring.my , and Dave de Vera, PAFID, e-mail: pafid@info.com.ph

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- Vietnam: Na Hang dam – the reality of sustainable development?

Jordan Ryan, the head of the United Nations Development Programme in Vietnam, is keen on sustainable development. In May 2002, at the launch of a partnership between aid agencies, NGOs and government ministries to protect Vietnam’s environment, Ryan announced, “If we succeed, one day it will be said of this new partnership: ‘It made sustainable development a reality in Vietnam.’”

A few weeks later, this time at the signing of a $2 million project called Vietnam Agenda 21, Ryan said, “The challenge is to make sustainable development a reality in Vietnam.”

One of UNDP’s projects in Vietnam is called Protected Areas Resource Conservation (PARC). Funded jointly with the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the project covers three protected areas, including the Na Hang Nature Reserve in the north of Vietnam. The Vietnamese Government created the nature reserve in 1994, to protect the habitat of the largest population of the critically endangered Tonkin snub-nosed monkey. Na Hang is one of only four sites in which the monkey is found (see WRM Bulletin 55).

In early June 2002, the Song Da Construction Corporation held a party in Na Hang to celebrate the start of construction of the Na Hang hydropower dam. The 342 MW dam will flood one of the most beautiful riverine areas in the Na Hang Nature Reserve, including pristine forest adjacent to the area where the snub-nosed monkey lives. The monkey is extremely sensitive to disturbance.

By the end of last year, the Song Da Construction Corporation had removed more than two million cubic metres of earth and rock from the construction site. A concrete bridge now spans the Gam River and the first of more than 3,300 households have been evicted to make way for the reservoir behind the dam.

PARC awarded the contract to run the Na Hang Nature Reserve to consulting firm Scott Wilson Asia-Pacific. In a preliminary environmental assessment of the dam, carried out under the PARC project, Scott Wilson wrote: “A dam at Na Hang will potentially have significant impacts on the natural resources of the area and also on the local people including both those who will be resettled and those who will remain in the area.”

Yet the PARC web-site makes no mention of the Na Hang dam. PARC’s web-site lists the threats facing the nature reserve as: “agriculture and land conversion . . . timber exploitation, wildlife hunting, and the unsustainable harvest of minor forest products.”

Conversely, some dam proponents make no mention of the Na Hang Nature Reserve while looking at the Na Hang dam. In April 1999, a consortium of consulting firms began a National Hydropower Plan Study in Vietnam with funding from the Swedish and Norwegian governments. The Na Hang dam is included in the list of dams that the consultants recommend to be built. The consultants, SWECO International (Sweden), Statkraft Engineering and Norplan (Norway), make no mention of the Na Hang Nature Reserve in their recommendations.

In a 1999 draft inception report the consultants wrote “There are no rare species specifically recorded in the project site and protected areas are apparently not very close by.” They added, “This will need to be verified. It is not possible to predict at this stage.” The consultants wrote this five years after the Vietnamese Government established the Na Hang Nature Reserve.

Although construction of the dam has started, financing of the project is still in doubt. Vietnam’s state-run Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) is to provide $43 million towards the project costs. The government has already paid $85 million to EVN for land clearance and resettlement.

EVN is looking to secure $260 million through commercial loans from Vietnamese banks. A further $80 million will be needed to pay for technical equipment.

Vietnam’s banks, however, seem reluctant to fund the project. A senior executive with Vietnam Industrial and Commercial Bank told the Vietnam Investment Review, “The difficult thing is that [Vietnam’s banks] have participated in many big power projects in 2002.” A senior executive at Vietcombank commented that it was unlikely that Vietcombank would fund the project alone. “We might work with other [banks] to provide syndicated loans,” he said.

In February 2003, Dinh Quang Tri, deputy general director of EVN, said that EVN was considering asking foreign equipment suppliers to help finance the project. “We would open a bid in which the foreign-invested equipment supplier is likely to cover finances too, or EVN could use the deferred payment method,” Tri said.

The Song Da Construction Corporation is reported to be working with several international firms including Alstom (Switzerland), Shanghai Electric Corporation, DongFang Group and Harbin Group (China), Energomachexport and Technopgomexport (Russia), Siemens (Germany) and VA Tech (Austria).

In November last year, the Vietnam Economic Times reported that the French Government had agreed to a grant for the Na Hang hydropower project. The news came shortly after a visit to France by Vietnam’s President Tran Duc Luong.

At the Vietnam Agenda 21 project launch UNDP’s Jordan Ryan commented, “To have sustainable development, Viet Nam will need to answer tough questions and make hard choices.” Yet the highly paid international ‘experts’ working for UNDP, GEF, Scott Wilson, SWECO International, Statkraft Engineering and Norplan have failed even to ask tough questions about the Na Hang dam and its impact on the forests, people and wildlife of the Na Hang Nature Reserve.

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de