By Pratap Chatterjee
MONTREAL, Oct 23 1996 (IPS)

The Ngobe-Bugle indigenous peoples of Panama and the Nuu-Chah-Nulth indigenous peoples of western Canada share a problem: they are both fighting major Canadian companies which want to exploit the natural resources on their lands.

The Canadian subsidiary of Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) wants to mine the Cerro Colorado region of Panama for copper, while MacMillan Bloedell is already logging the temperate rain forests of Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

Both activities threaten serious damage to the surrounding environment and to the indigenous societies whose claims to the land go back centuries, if not millennia.

Both projects are also examples of enterprises that were condemned in a slew of resolutions on indigenous peoples adopted here Wednesday by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the world’s largest scientific body working on environmental issues.

After meeting here two weeks, the IUCN, which includes 75 governments, 110 government agencies, and dozens of non- governmental organisations (NGOs) from around the world, ended their two-week World Conservation Congress by approving unprecedented resolutions to protect indigenous peoples.

Traditionally focussed on protecting animal, bird and plant species, the IUCN has never before spoken out on behalf of indigenous populations.

This year, however, a delegation of Peruvian environmentalists submitted ten resolutions on behalf of indigenous peoples, while a number of NGOs offered resolutions regarding specific projects, such as RTZ’s in Panama and MacMillan-Bloedell’s in British Columbia.

The Peruvian resolutions called on all IUCN member-governments to fully consult indigenous peoples and allow them to share in the benefits of any commercial exploitation of their cultural, biological and mineral resources. They also called on governments to respect any decisions by their indigenous communities not to exploit those resources.

“We want the companies and the government to demarcate our lands and give us the opportunity to negotiate any development of these lands directly,” says Eligio Alvarado, an indigenous leader from Panama who has come to Montreal to represent indigenous communities of Central America.

“The glue that holds the discussions of how to allocate the rights of governments, companies and indigenous peoples is the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples over their lands or territories as a fundamental right,” says Jorge Caillaux, the president of the Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental of Peru.

In addition, a variety of specific resolutions were adopted on the protection of indigenous peoples of Central America, the Andes and of the knowledge of the indigenous peoples of South Africa.

Aside from these general statements, resolutions which targeted specific projects were approved only after some delicate negotiation between government and NGOs.

For example, the Clayoquot proposal, which was jointly submitted by Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the World Wide Fund for Nature, was adopted after much negotiation between these groups and the provincial government of British Columbia which has jurisdiction over the island.

A resolution proposed by Friends of the Earth International and a variety of other groups on behalf of the Tibetan people was also adopted after negotiation with the Chinese government. As approved, the final resolution asks the Chinese to consult with IUCN experts before proceeding with a planned dam at Yamdrok Tso, a sacred site.

The assembly also adopted a resolution supporting the peoples of the Fly river delta in Papua New Guinea whose waters have been massively contaminated by copper mining conducted by Broken Hill Proprietary, Australia’s largest company.

In Kamchatka in the Russian Far East, the Itelman, Koryak and Veni indigenous peoples were offered support in their fight against the environmental dangers posed by planned gold mine projects on their lands.

And in northern Australia the aboriginal peoples of Jabiluka were supported in their bid to prevent new uranium mining ventures and to clean up water contamination caused by the Ranger uranium mine on their lands in Cape York peninsula.

In spite of these successes, however, two proposals submitted on behalf of indigenous peoples were withdrawn after agreement could not be reached between all the members.

The first was submitted on behalf of the Ogoni people of the Niger delta in Nigeria whose lands have been devastated the operations of Shell Oil, an Anglo-Dutch company.

The second resolution which was withdrawn called on governments to remove trade barriers to international trade in natural products derived from wild species.

Environmental groups like the California-based Sierra Club argued that the resolution could undermine international conventions that restrict or ban the trade in endangered species.

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