COICA and IUCN united for Governance, Management and Indigenous Territorial Rights

In recent years, not only have the pressures and threats to the territories, forests and biodiversity of the Amazon increased, but also the loss of defenders, who risk their lives to protect their territories and culture, increasing the risk scenarios, whose damages are irreversible.

Unfortunately, the responses of governments and other actors have not been strong enough to address the problem, so indigenous organizations have expressed their voice and proposals in different multi-stakeholder spaces, having managed to influence the international community for the approval of global standards and commitments. This is the case of motion 129 known as Amazonia for Life: Protect 80% by 2025, proposed by COICA, which was approved in September 2021 at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille.

However, these advances are not enough: it is necessary to operationalize the implementation with concrete actions. As the V AMAZONIAN SUMMIT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: SOLUTIONS FOR A LIVING AMAZON AND THE XI COICA CONGRESS approach, it is extremely timely to discuss and contribute to enrich the planning that will govern the following years, addressing strategic issues that deserve reflection, analysis and technical contributions.

In this sense, as part of the preparation for these important milestones, COICA and its IUCN partners, through the Amazonia 2. 0 project, will hold a REGIONAL WORKSHOP ON GOVERNANCE, MANAGEMENT AND INDIGENOUS TERRITORIAL RIGHTS with the objective of generating spaces for dialogue and exchange between COICA's grassroots teams and strategic allies, to share experiences, analyze and collectively propose improvements to strengthen management mechanisms, territorial governance and rights, and thus sustain the Amazonian indigenous agenda from the local to the regional level, directing efforts strategically to achieve greater impact; a forceful impact that slows down the advance of the point of no return and conserves the biological heart of the planet: the Amazon Basin.

The workshop will be held next Monday, July 11 and Tuesday, July 12, 2022, in Quito, Ecuador. Leaders and technicians from COICA and its bases will be participating in the event, either in person or virtually: AIDESEP (Peru), CIDOB (Bolivia), COIAB (Brazil), CONFENIAE (Ecuador), OIS (Suriname) and ORPIA (Venezuela). Local representatives of the Amazonia 2.0 implementation areas in Ecuador, Colombia and Peru will also be part of the workshop, as well as part of the technical team of the IUCN project, Fundación EcoCiencia (Ecuador), Fundación Natura (Colombia) and Amerindian Peoples Association (Guyana).

These delegations will meet to share experiences, present initiatives, generate inputs for discussion that contribute to a Plan of Action that includes joint implementation strategies between indigenous peoples, governments and civil society, reconfiguring the current schemes of territorial action and international cooperation, which will provide sustainability to the progress made with the various initiatives on the issues of management, rights, monitoring and territorial security in the framework of good governance, human rights, among others.

We hope through this event to continue strengthening the strategic alliance between COICA and IUCN, to continue working together in the protection of the Amazon.

Amazonia 2.0 is an initiative coordinated by IUCN, executed by a consortium in 6 countries of the Amazon Basin and financed by the European Union.