The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) are collaborating on a $1.5 million project to help indigenous peoples address environmental damage in the Amazon Basin.
The organizations announced the two-year project at the end of June following the Third Biennial International Waters Conference in Salvador Bahia, Brazil. They intend to identify specific polluted regions, to renovate damaged areas, and to address preservation challenges faced by indigenous groups in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.
UNEP and GEF seek to harmonize existing conservation efforts and to promote sustainable laws that help indigenous communities adapt to the current climactic changes that accompany deforestation and urbanization. The long-term goal of the initiative is to achieve prolonged development for future populations, according to the UN News Center.
Rhode Island College Professor Gale Goodwin Gomez, an anthropologist who works with the indigenous Yanomami in Brazil, said the project's success is dependent on the extent to which indigenous peoples are able to consult directly with the United Nations about specific projects.
Several Amazon residents are wary of the international imposition from environmental activists, believing that the project is a leap toward declaring the basin an "international protectorate" for foreign officials to claim possession over the area's resources and administer control over the region, as noted by the Los Angeles Times.
In northern Brazil, for example, the local politicians' belief that the world wants to control the Amazon is used to thwart international pressure from implementing reform, Gomez said. On the other hand, local officials represent non-indigenous peoples, and thus have no concern for the environmental degradation of the region, she said.
"In Yanomami territory, land has been separated into plots ready to be claimed by mining companies and the Mato Grosso Governor has declared that soy plantations will not harm the Amazon," Gomez said. "Local politicians have stripped the Amazon and do not cooperate with international organizations to remedy the situation."
Gomez said she doubts the project will improve the physical environment of the Amazon, considering the many initiatives that already provide much higher funding but have yielded little success.
"When talking about eight countries, $1.5 million is not that much money," Gomez said. "The Brazilian government spent $1 million alone for one mining removal and billions of dollars were spent on one watershed project. This project is not big enough to save the Amazon."
Despite the project's financial concerns, it may be a positive step toward preserving the land of some Amazon indigenous groups such as the Munduruku in the region of the Tapajós River in Brazil.
Over the years, loggers have cut trees the Munduruku once used to build canoes, farmers have cleared forests where the Munduruku once bred cattle, and the small river crucial to the tribe's water supply has severely diminished. The international commitment to preserve such natural necessities may re-instill hopes for the group's survival, the L.A. Times reports.
"The trees give us fruit, they help make the rain that gives us water and they shelter the animals," tribal leader Edimilson dos Santos told the newspaper. "When farmers and ranchers come, they destroy the forest for profit. But the only thing we have is nature, and we have to protect it to use it."
According to the UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfew, the project is an important step in accomplishing the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as environmental improvements help eradicate disease and reduce poverty.
"The environment is not a luxury good, affordable only when other issues have been resolved, but is 'natural capital' on a par with human and financial capital," Toepfew said, according to the U.N. News Center. "Indeed, this project underlines that sustainable development and the achievement of the MDGs will only be possible through respect and good stewardship of the Earth's natural resources."
The project will be mandated by the Organization of American States in collaboration with the Organization of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty. The project is one of five smaller schemes to deal with severe climate and land change expected to occur in order to prepare for a $10 million mega-basin project to begin in 2007 that will seek to achieve sustainable development for future populations in the entire Amazon region, according to UNEP.
The UNEP/GEF project was initiated following an assessment report, Strategic Plan for the Amazon Basin Conservation Initiative: Conserving Biological Diversity in the Amazon Basin, released by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on June 1 that provides four months of investigative interviews and observations as evidence for a dire need of a regional conservation plan.
