[Note: Translation from Spanish - for the original text see
http://www.semillas.org.co/sitio.shtml?apc=e1a1--&x=20155568 - Almuth]


Document by the organisations which participated in the Roundtable
for Sustainable Palm Oil discussion workshop about Principles and
Criteria, Cali, Colombia, 18th and 19th September 2007

The indigenous communities of the Pacific region, participants in
the "workshop to discuss the principles and criteria of the
Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil" initiated by WWF in the city of
Cali, have taken into account the objectives of the workshop and the
principles and criteria of the palm oil roundtable. As a result of
our analysis we have decided to advise the members of the Roundtable,
the other social and indigenous organisations in the country, the
national government and the general public of our position regarding
the subject of the consultation:

We, the delegates of the Afro-Ecuadorean, Afro-Colombian and
indigenous communities, signatories of this declaration, are
affirming our ancestral rights and the rights confirmed by Section
169 of the International Labour Organisation Convention which has
been ratified by Ecuador and Colombia, as well as the Colombian laws -
Law 70 of 1983 and Law 89 of 1890 - and Ecuadorean laws – the
collective rights and the National Human Rights Plan. For the
record, we agreed to attend the workshop for information purposes,
without endorsing the proposed principles and criteria of the
roundtable as `proof' of the sustainability of the planned oil palm
cultivation. We consider that we cannot rely on those principles and
criteria now or in future to certify the sustainability of palm oil
in the territories of the Afro-Colombian, Afro-Ecuadorean, indigenous
and faming communities of the Colombian and Ecuadorean Pacific.

This is our basic position behind the facts, dates and analytical
analysis:

The origins of the palm oil project in the Colombian and Ecuadorean
Pacific are found in the 1980s (in the canton of Quinindé and the
municipality de Tumaco). Since that period, the palm oil initiative
has been leading to deterioration in the culture, the environment,
the social fabric and the territorial rights of the Afro-Colombian,
Afro-Ecuadorean and indigenous communities that live in the Pacific
region. Following the military offensive and the paramilitary
deployment from in Urabá (Antioquia) with Operation Genesis, more
than 3,000 families (around 15,000 people) of Afro-Colombian,
indigenous and Mestizo origin were forced to leave their land. One
year later, in 1998, many families returned but could not live in
their original communities but were forced to live in temporary
settlements, due to the presence of legal and illegal armed groups.
Whilst the communities were forced to be absent from their land due
to the displacement, the paramilitaries and some companies which
arrived in the depopulated zone began to illegally appropriate the
territories of the communities of Curbaradó and Jiguamiandó, in order
to plant oil palms. Members of the communities were murdered, and
threats were made with the purpose of illegally `buying' the land.
In this way, sacred places were violated, including the cemeteries,
the schools, health centres, homes, etc. Later one, the families who
had been displaced considered returning to their territories, due to
the sub-human conditions which they were encountering in
the `reception centres'(Pavarandó, Turbo, Riosucio, Quibdó, Medellín,
costa Pacífica y Panamá), and due to their concern about the invasion
of their territories. Hence, as a strategy of resistance, they
declared Peace Communities (San Francisco de Asís and Natividad de
Maria). In spite of this, their territories continued to be
controlled by armed groups and by companies which continued planting
oil palms.

It must be stressed that Law 70 of 1993 recognises the Afro-Colombian
communities of the Pacific and their collective ownership of those
territories which they have inhabited since ancestral times.
According to that law, those collective land titles are inalienable,
cannot be transferred, and the collective property is recognised as
being integral to the culture and ethnic identity of our peoples.
However, considerations such as multiculturalism, different ethnic
identities and the ecological and social function of the territories
of the black and indigenous communities have not been part of the
presidential agenda, nor do the oil palm growers have any problem
with turning the world's most biodiverse forests into monocultures to
enable their integration into the plans of transnational capital.

The most recent presidential policies for the implementation of the
mega project of oil palm monocultures have focussed on Guapi as a
focal point in the territory. In this area, oil palms are to be
cultivated on 15,000 hectares with the agreement of the Community
Council in Guapi Abajo (productive sector vs communities), in
violation of the black communities' land rights represented by the
Community Councils.

In Ecuador oil palm production has been expanding for several
decades, with a peak in the 1990s when the infrastructure was
completed which linked the coast to the rest of the country. A well-
organised plan was introduced by the state together with large large
timber and oil palm companies, to expand the agricultural frontier in
the collective territories, which are rich in biodiversity, affecting
the ancestral land rights.

According to dates by ANCUPA-MAG- 2005, oil palm cultivation evolved
as follows in Ecuador :

Year Hectares under oil palms

1952 1300
1981–19892 6,759.62
1990-200012 6,863.77
2001 - 2006 86,863,77
Total 207.285,31

The acceleration in oil palm expansion is happening primarily in the
territories of the Pacific, in the ancestral Afro-Ecuadorean and
indigeneous zones (in the province of Esmeraldas there are 79,710
hectares with 1996 producers).

As early as 2001, negative impacts on the health of the communities
affected by oil palm cultivation were witnessed. Ill health is
continuously becoming more widespread in the communities, and the
marine resources which are part of the diet of the communities, are
diminishing and deteriorating. A court case was brought against the
Environment Ministry of Ecuador, MAF, on behalf of Cordavi and the
representatives of the people, however there has not been a formal
response from representatives of the state.

In 2002, the most serious attack happened against those collective
territories and the natural resources, with the signing of the
executive decree No 2961 by president Gustavo Noboa, in which he
expanded the agricultural frontier into the state-owned forests, the
Afro-Ecuadorean territories and part of the territory of the Awa
people, legalising the land-holdings of the oil palm companies.

In 2003 an Environmental Summit took place in San Lorenzo, Ecuador,
with the objective of reaching an agreement between ministries,
communities and private enterprises to regulate and to devise
principles for the cooperation between the different sectors. The
palm oil companies did not accept the invitation. In 2004, there
were reports of the contamination of the water supplies of the Afro-
Ecuadorean community of Chiquita and the Awa community of Guadualito
by the Andean palm oil companies.

This led to calls for action by the Environment Ministry which, so
far, has not paid proper attention. The demands were therefore taken
to the Constitutional Court, which judged in favour of those
communities. Up to this day, however, the ministry has not been in
taking the effective corrective action demanded by the Court's
resolution.

Recently, the company Cetrafor has bought 18,000 hectares of land in
the ancestral territories of the Afro-Ecuadorean community of Río
Santiago Cayapas in order to establish oil palm plantations. In
order to revoke the purchase and to restore the collective community
land title, the new council is studying this case.

On the basis of this history, the indigenous organisations of the
Pacific region of Colombia and Ecuador are rejecting the
implementation of the palm oil project on our collective territories.

Apart from the way in which this has been imposed on us, with
massacres, threats, displacement of communities, bribery of some
leaders, pressures from central government and legal decrees, there
are grave environmental, social, economic and cultural impacts. We
therefore resolve that

• The collective territories of the indigenous and Afro-
descendant Pacific communities are part of a web of ecosystems which
are essential for humanity and are part of our natural heritage,
which we have preserved through traditional practices which are in
harmony with the environment. Oil palm monocultures are a threat to
those ecosystems and are causing environmental impacts
(deforestation, loss of biodiversity, soil deterioration, fresh water
depletion amongst others);

• Cultural transformation : A change in the traditional
practices (agriculture, fisheries, mining, use of the forest, crafts)
towards a business model based on monocultures which reduces our
lives to single monotonous activities and excludes our cultural
diversity;

• Lack of clarity and identification of the players in the palm
oil industry: Fedepalma is recognised as the federation of palm oil
producers, however at the same time we are encountering a group of
enterprises which apparently are not associated with that federation,
but which, with the help of the state, with Finagro credits, and with
government recognition as promoters of new plantations through the
agrofuel market, are violently imposing themselves on the collective
territories of the black communities (Bajo Atrato and Tumaco);

• The high economic risks of the palm oil project: The price of
vegetable oil for agrofuels depends on fluctuations in the global
price of petroleum and this does not guarantee the economic viability
promoted by companies and the government;

• There are no serious studies about the feasibility of
guaranteeing that those projects can be successful from the point of
view of the environment, culture, society and economy;

• In view of the complaints of the communities of Bajo Atrato,
Chocó, the oil palm growers showed a new face. They called for our
agreement and proposed that the collective territories should be
taken over by palm oil cultivators and devolved to the communities,
on the condition that they devote themselves to continuing the
project through a contract between the companies and the
communities. This is being proposed without any recognition of the
acts of violence which allowed them to appropriate our territories
and to illegally cultivate oil palms;

• The palm oil companies of Bajo Atrato, following the
denouncements of their actions in the Inter American Court for Human
Rights and in various national and international fora, and following
the pronouncements of the Attorney General and the Ombudsman, have
opted for a new method of appropriating the collective territories:
Contracts of usufruct [NOTE: legal right to use and derive profit
from property belonging to another person], which give them rights to
use the territory for a period of twenty years, which will eventually
leave the land infertile and useful only for agro-industrial
activities with high technological and capital inputs;

• Another strategy being used by the Colombian government is
that of a strategic alliance between black communities and
companies. Following the rejection by the black communities of
Tumaco, President Álvaro Uribe ordered that the Community Councils
were to sit down and negotiate with the companies and were not to
leave the table until an agreement had been reached. We reject the
pressures of that order that under which the communities accepted the
palm oil project and the conditions of the companies;

• In the case of Ecuador, we denounce the interests and the
personal investment in palm oil projects by high-level government
functionaries whose task it is to draw up policies to support the
palm oil enterprise;

• The soils of the Pacific have been and will be fundamentally
adapted to forests. Therefore oil palm plantations, as an artificial
ecosystem, are a form of cultivation, not a natural ecosystem as has
been put forward by various technocrats who serve neoliberal economic
interests.

Therefore, the organisations have reached a consensus to demand the
recognition of our decision to implement productive projects
according to our tradition and culture, which have been formulated in
various plans, known as:

• Plans for the ethno-development of the Afro-descendant
communities;
• Living plans [planes de vida] for the indigenous peoples.

In the river basins of Jiguamiandó y Curbaradó, we demand that the
companies, paramilitaries and the government recognise the violence
inflicted on the communities, that they compensate them for material,
physical and psychological damages and that they devolve the
territories and implement plans to restore the natural ecosystems
(forests, marshes, river beds, fauna and flora).

We demand respect for our autonomy and our ancestral rights to the
land, for the traditional production methods and the culture and our
diversity. The right to be born, to live and to die on our land
without having economic development models imposed on us which are
alien to the culture and the environmental conditions of the Pacific
region.

For the record, this has been signed in the city of Cali on 19th
September 2007, by

Asociación de Consejo Comunitarios del Bajo Atrato -ASCOBA-
Cabildo Mayor Indígena de Carmen del Darién -CAMICAD-
Cabildo Mayor Indígena de la zona del Bajo Atrato -CAMIZBA-
Organización Indígena de Antioquia -OIA-
Confederación Comarca Afroecuatoriana del Norte de Esmeralda -CANE-
Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Valle del Cauca Región
Pacífica -ACIVA-R.P-
Federación artesanal afroecuatoriana recolectora de productos
bioacuaticos
del manglar -FEDALPOM-S.L-
Unidad Indígena del pueblo Awa -AWA UNIPA-
Consejo Comunitario Mayor de la Asociación Campesina Integral del
Atrato -COCOMACIA-
Proceso de Comunidades Negras -PCN-
Aso Amnos Negras.
Asociación de Autoridades Indígenas Wounan del Pacífico -CAMAWA-
Colectivo Territorial Afrochocó.