Peruvian Amazonian Natives and Climate Change: Minorities Facing a Global Problem

Abstract

Indigenous people knowledge is classified as comprehension of the skills, practices and ideologies of cultures that have had long histories of harmonious living with their natural surroundings. This knowledge forms important contributions to the world’s adaptive capabilities and is a contributor to the accomplishments of the 2030 Paris Agreement. Granting land rights to indigenous people societies has been proven to significantly curb deforestation and thus is a low-cost solution to reducing carbon emissions. Considering the importance of indigenous people knowledge, and the role the Amazon rainforest and its original inhabitants play in climate change, a three-month Participatory Action Research approach was embarked upon in various communities of the Peruvian Amazon. This paper aims to highlight how the Peruvian government and external agents have interacted with the natives throughout history and emphasises the outcomes of these encounters in regard to the protection of indigenous people knowledge, the rainforest and climate change. Due to the short time span of the field research, the indigenous people communities where the primary knowledge was obtained cannot be representative of the whole Peruvian Amazon; however, together with the literature review and further research, the stance of both the Peruvian government and the indigenous people populations can be seen. While evidence shows that the world has never been better geared towards legally granting the indigenous people land rights, the results in this paper seem to indicate that Peru’s progress towards securing tenure rights and upholding the sustainable development goals highlighted in the Conference of Parties and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is not being met, and consequently, the knowledge, rights and lives of the natives are being overlooked, causing a ripple effect on the rest of the world.