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Miners, Loggers, Amerindians: who has more rights to lands and natural resources?

Jan 16, 2012 Letters

Dear Editor,
As President Ramotar and Minister Persaud meet with stakeholders of natural resources (KN Sunday, January 15, 2012), one cannot but miss that no mention has been made of another group of key stakeholders and rights holders – the Amerindians, the indigenous peoples of this great land. What role would they be allowed to play in the commercial reality of accessing more wealth by individuals and the GDP of our country from the exploitation of natural resources?
Kaieteur News reports in today’s, (Sunday’s) edition that in the previous administration, questions were raised as to whether miners or loggers had more rights to lands in which minerals and timber are located.
Here we see the dangerous paradox as no consideration has been taken as to the territorial rights of indigenous peoples where minerals and timber are located.
While international law, to which the government of Guyana is a signatory, recognises territorial rights of indigenous peoples, our legislation doesn’t.
On the issue of territorial rights, some persons in leadership position, including certain indigenous leaders, will say that it is time to stop talking about territorial rights or else our people will not benefit.
The government will also quickly retort that mining and logging concessions are not granted on titled lands. While there may not be concessions given on some titled lands, indigenous peoples are concerned that extensions of land that they have applied for are being raped of their natural resources. What are they going to receive once the relevant agencies have issued these areas to them?
On the other hand, communities that have received titles to their lands (or piece of their land) have received them with mining concessions on them.
These concession holders have been very adamant that they have every right to these lands since they acquired them before a community may have received their title. (Read Saturday’s edition of both Kaieteur News and Stabroek News of the case involving the Isseneru Village Council and a miner) and this is only one such situation much to the government’s contradictions that there are no land problems in any community. (While on the campaign platform in November 2011, Bharat Jagdeo accused one particular indigenous representative group of spreading ‘malicious lies and rumours’ about situations like these.)
The increase in the ‘gold rush’ has resulted in the traditional lands of the indigenous peoples being taken away from them and a rise in reports of social, environmental and health problems.
One need only to go and spend some time in these areas to see first- hand the experiences that indigenous and forest dependent peoples are faced with.
Indigenous peoples have the inherent rights to lands and resources and the state has an obligation to ensure that all others are involved and no one group is discriminated against on the road to achievements in whatever way a group deems achievement to be.
Hence, while a few indigenous people may be invited to such a meeting based on the criteria of living on or near a protected area, a larger number of independent and knowledgeable representative indigenous peoples from diverse geographic locations must be involved from the initial stage of such a process to ensure that they can weigh the positive and negative impacts of any governmental sanctioned activity and demand that their basic human rights be respected and enforced.
L. George

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