Guyana’s indigenous communities feel that enough is not being done to take on board their recommendations in relation to the crafting of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) for forest management between Guyana and the European Union.
This is according to two reports published yesterday by the Amerindian Peoples Association (APA). The reports present the results of 12 community workshops held by the APA in Regions 1 and 2 between June 2014 and January 2015 as well as a legality seminar for a wider cross section of stakeholders. Included in this cross section were government representatives, civil society, indigenous communities and legal experts.
The workshops which were designed to “enable the participation of indigenous communities in the Forestry Law Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) in Guyana” were conducted with assistance from the Forest Peoples Program and funding from the EU under its “Promot-ing the effective participation of indigenous peoples in the FLEGT VPA process in Guyana” project.
Guyana is currently engaged in negotiations with the EU under its FLEGT programme with the aim of signing a VPA to promote sustainable forest management by ensuring forest legality and securing access to European markets for legally-harvested and sustainable Guyanese forest products.
The FLEGT VPA talks which began with the first negotiation session held in Georgetown on 5 December 2012 has so far seen three sessions, while a fourth is planned for early next month in Brussels. The negotiations are expected to end with an agreement by March 2016.
However according to the APA’s FLEGT Policy Advisor Michael McGarrell, communities feel that there should be more time given for stakeholder participation and more consultation with other communities so that the indigenous population can “fully understand what the whole FLEGT VPA process is all about.”
McGarrell stated that the communities have several concerns.
“Communities are concerned about their representation in the FLEGT VPA process. Com-munities have concerns about awareness activities. Commu-nities have concerns about land titles,” he said.
In a press release, the APA stated that in the reports indigenous leaders point out that the current system for the allocation of concessions is seriously flawed leading to the granting of concessions without community knowledge or agreement thereby jeopardizing community resource use and land ownership in some instances.
One of the reports titled “Community views on the Guyana-EU FLEGT VPA process” further notes that “communities’ customary lands and forest are currently under heavy pressure from extractive industries by a national framework that does not fully respect their rights to their customary land and resources therein.”
This report states that communities have therefore called for “a resolution of land, forest and resource disputes involving indigenous customary lands as reflected in nationally and internationally protected rights.” It said this resolution which must occur before the VPA is signed so as to ensure sufficient and effective participation of indigenous communities in the negotiation process.
The APA noted that the current governance structure and other systems could be improved and strengthened under the VPA to ensure longstanding land conflicts do not escalate and that communities do not suffer from a system intended to improve the conditions of forest stakeholders, if they are able to give free, prior and informed consent and enjoy legislative protections.
These legislative protections can be created if there is “improved coherence and consistency between the three layers of law – customary, national and international – in order to create lasting legal certainty around the VPA process and meaningful protections for indigenous communities,” it stated.
At the public presentation of the report, McGarrell explained that one impediment to the effective involvement of communities is the lack of an effective communication strategy.
In this vein it has been recommended that VPA documents be made available in indigenous languages as well as in simple English to assist the communities in making informed decisions.
The APA said it had made material available in several indigenous languages such as Patamona, Makushi, Wapishiana and Akawaio.
McGarrell explained that cognizant of the fact that several indigenous languages are not written and those which are may be difficult to read the organization has produced audiovisual material to assist in the public awareness programme.
“This is how we have failed so far we have not been able to communicate clearly with people to make them understand that this is what the VPA process is,” McGarrell said adding that they have received a lot of positive feedback on their communication material with persons saying, “yes we like this because now we are able to hear the message in our own language.
It is important that moving forward the communication strategy is clear and helps in ensuring that the message is clear. We believe that there has not been enough consultation to ensure that the product is of a certain standard. We want to ensure that in the final product indigenous peoples rights are respected.”
Lennox Shuman, Toshao of St Cuthbert’s Mission and executive member of the National Toshao’s Council also believes that “indigenous communities are not ready for the EU-FLEGT should it be signed in March.”
According to Shuman with the right communication strategy and the resolution of land disputes indigenous people of Guyana may be more ready by late 2016.
The leaders see no impediment to this request “as long as both parties are willing” since there has already been an extension to the completion date of the “road map” from September 2015 to March 2016.
