Posted on June, 05 2016

The leadership of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve (RCA) and the Administrative Contract executive body celebrated the Reserve’s 14th anniversary and invited the population of Madre de Dios to participate in the festivities.

Celebrations began on May 05, 2015 and went on until May 09, during which period various activities took place. One of the first was an exhibition of the Updating Process for the Protected Area Master Plan which went on display in the village of Boca Colorado’s primary health care clinic, in the Madre de Dios district. 

The exhibition presented information on the proposed addendum to the administrative contracts and fostered the socialization of the theme of ecosystem services and Amazonian Indigenous REDD (RIA) among the commune members and local authorities.

In that context, the head of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, Ernesto Escalante, restated the importance of the RIA proposal as a pilot project that is now scaling up to attain other indigenous territories and communal reserves in Peru through the  Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) 

In turn, Fermin Chimatani, president of the executive body of the RCA declared that “RIA is an initiative  that stems from the logic and policy of the indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin themselves, as a pro-positive response, embracing the conservation of indigenous territories and their ecosystem services which contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions emanating from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) as discussed  in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and proposed to be implemented in indigenous territories. The initiative seeks to translate the indigenous proposal for the holistic management of the territory for plenitude of life, to the language used in the UNFCCC”.  

WWF Peru’s Climate and Forests officer Ruben Aviana also participated in the ceremony and explains that the RIA is an initiative implemented with the collaboration of the Coordinating Body of Amazon Basin Indigenous Organizations (COICA is the Portuguese acronym) and its national bases in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, financed by the German Ministry for the Environment and Nuclear Security and by WWF. The goal is that by 2017 the RIA approach will have technically complemented, internally adjusted and positively contributed to the international, national and sub-national processes in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. 

Other Activities

The festivities went on until May 9 when a ceremony was held in the auditorium of the Tambopata city hall. There was also a bow and arrow competition, as an exhibition of archaeological artefacts of the RCA, and a scientific seminar on ancestral wisdom knowledge.

COHARYIMA president Luis Tayori believes that it is extremely important to locate archaeological remains and ancestral sites within the limits of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. “With the support of WWF Peru, a cultural map of Amanas has been elaborated showing the Sapiteri and Kisa’beri’s ancestral sites and routes, the location of the various family clans and their ancestral territories and the toponymy of the river basins,  as well as identifying  hunting and fishing areas, clay licks, sacred  areas and sacred cemeteries, archaeological remains and the site of the first contact with missionaries of the Dominican order.