UNDERMINING RIGHTS

Indigenous Lands and Mining in the Amazon

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge several individuals for their guidance, critical reviews, and research support.

Celine Salcedo-La Viña, Jessica Webb, Elizabeth Moses, Rachel Biderman, and Carolina Genin served as formal WRI internal reviewers of the report.

Several members of the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG), including Saúl Cuéllar of Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN) in Bolivia, Carmen Josse of Fundación EcoCiencia in Ecuador, and M. Teresa Tellechea of Instituto de Bien Común (IBC) provided valuable information and other support to the research. Saúl Cuéllar of FAN, Júlia Jacomini of Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) in Brazil, and María Oliveira-Miranda of Wataniba in Venezuela also took the time to review an early draft of the manuscript.

Special thanks to André Lima, Socio-environmental Lawyer, Brazil, for his help on Brazil, especially Bill 191/2020.

Formal external reviewers included Kevin Currey of the Ford Foundation, Andrea Johnson of the Climate Land Use Alliance (CLUA), Caleb Stevens of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Malcolm Childress of Global Land Alliance, Alain Frechette and Chloe Ginsburg of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), and Victoria Márquez-Mees, Director of the Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism (MICI) at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB).

We would also like to thank several external experts who contributed information and advice through interviews and thoughtful discussions that helped shape this report.

  • Angela M. Acevedo Huertas, Vice-Minister of Interculturality at Ministry of Culture, Peru
  • Carlos A. Cante, former Vice-Minister of Mines at the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Colombia
  • Cameron Ellis, Senior Geographer, Rainforest Foundation, United States
  • Christine Halvorson, Program Director, Rainforest Foundation, United States
  • Mario C. Huapaya Nava, Natural Resources Governance Consultant, Peru
  • Joshua Lichtenstein, Program Manager, Rainforest Foundation, United States
  • Gabriel Maldonado, Director of the Department of Sustainable Development in Mining at the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Brazil
  • Eleodoro Mayorga Alba, former Minister of Energy and Mines at Ministry of Energy and Mines, Peru
  • Lan Mei, Lawyer, Forest Peoples Programme, United Kingdom
  • Nohora Ordoñez Vargas, Adviser of the Vice-Ministry of Minas at the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Colombia
  • Ximena Quizanga Zambrano, former National Secretary of Small-Scale and Artisanal Mining, Ecuador
  • Jorge D. Sierra Sanabria, Specialized Professional of the Legal Advisory Office at the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Colombia
  • Brenda I. Silva Passuni, Mining Lawyer, Peru
  • Daniel Sumalavia Casuso, Environmental and Cultural Diversity Lawyer, Peru
  • Ximena S. Warnaars, Program Officer of Natural Resources and Climate Change at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, New York, United States
  • Carlos Zambrano-Torrelio, Associate Vice President for Conservation and Health, EcoHealth Alliance, New York, United States
  • Gustavo A. Zambrano Chávez, General Director of the General Directorate for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at Ministry of Culture, Peru

The authors are grateful to WRI colleagues Gregory Taff and Janet Ranganathan for their research advice and guidance. We wish to acknowledge WRI colleagues for their support in the production of the report—administrative assistance, editing, graphic design, and layout—Susannah Keys, Emilia Suarez, Emily Matthews, Maria Hart, William Wen, Shannon Collins, Romain Warnault, Bill Dugan, Laura Lee Dooley, Parker Miller, Deborah Zabarenko , Jerin Tan, Rocio Lower, Jonathan Schneider, Nadia Peimbert, Ashish Kumar Sen, and LSF Editorial.

We received communications and outreach support from WRI colleagues Marlena Chertock, Sophie Boehm, Sarah Parsons, Lauren (Cole) Zelin, and Mansie Hough, as well as Coimbra Sirica and Wanda Bautista of Burness Communications and Stephanie Hanson Damassa an independent communications specialist.

WRI is indebted to the Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA) for its generous financial support.

This research report represents the views of the authors alone. It does not necessarily represent the views of WRI, IBC, or RAISG. Nothing in this report constitutes legal advice, and the information contained in this report should not be relied upon to make decisions affecting legal rights.

We are pleased to acknowledge our institutional strategic partners, who provide core funding to WRI: Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

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