the northern Ecuadorian Amazon<\/a>. There, with the backing of the NGO Amazon Frontlines, the Siekopai community of San Pablo de Kat\u00ebtsiaya won title to 42,360 hectares (104,674 acres) of their ancestral land. However, the area had long been occupied by another Indigenous group, the Kichwa community of Zancudo Cocha, or Zancudo, which also had deep cultural and spiritual ties to the land but was not included in Amazon Frontlines\u2019 efforts.<\/p>\nUneven Territorial Sponsorship<\/h2>\n
Such unequal support is termed \u201cuneven territorial sponsorship\u201d by the study authors. It can come from third parties including NGOs, states, religious organizations and others when they support one community at the disadvantage of another that may have a similar ancestral claim to the land. In Ecuador, it has led to conflict, with reported incidents of violence and a lack of compromise.<\/p>\n
Western Legal Frameworks vs. Fluid Indigenous Claims<\/h3>\n
Amazon Frontlines helped the Siekopai secure title to the territory by framing their claim in a more non-Indigenous, Western, legal tradition, which defines territory as sovereign, sacred and timeless, according to the paper. In contrast, Amazonian communities tend to see territorial claims as more fluid; co-occupation is common as families relocate periodically due to conflicts or pandemics.<\/p>\n
Contrasting Perspectives<\/h2>\n
Mitch Anderson, the founder and executive director of Amazon Frontlines, told Mongabay in a statement that tension in the region was not due to the NGO\u2019s involvement but because of the \u201cEcuadorian Government\u2019s reckless approach to the creation of \u2018protected areas\u2019 that overlap Indigenous ancestral lands, and the doling out of \u2018use and access\u2019 agreements to diverse Indigenous communities without sufficient consideration to the historical and cultural connections to the land.\u201d Mongabay covered the case in a feature.<\/p>\n
Lessons for NGOs<\/h3>\n
\u201cI think one key lesson for NGOs working in the Amazon (and donors and beneficiaries) is that legal rulings to resolve territorial disputes may not have any real effect if they lack legitimacy on the ground or among the interested parties,\u201d co-author of the paper Angus Lyall, an anthropologist at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, told Mongabay via WhatsApp messages. \u201cIn addition, trials can even make those disputes more contentious and more difficult to resolve.\u201d Lyall said that \u201calthough mediation can be long, frustrating, and unproductive, an overarching principle to consider is that NGOs avoid worsening divisions between communities or nationalities, particularly as they confront shared challenges and threats.\u201d<\/p>\n
Banner image: Members of Siekopai communities gather together to talk about gaining the land, known as P\u00eb\u2019k\u00ebya. Image by Amazon Frontlines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A study in Political Geography finds that NGO support for one Indigenous group in the Ecuadorian Amazon can harm another group, leading to conflict and violence. 42,360 hectares won by Siekopai with Amazon Frontlines help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}