Defending the Land is defending the Environment and Life: An urgent call for Territories
By the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum
Originaly published at https://nyeleniglobalforum.org/
The following interview was conducted with Saúl Vicente Vázquez, an indigenous leader and activist from the International Indian Treaty Council. Saúl shares his perspectives on the urgent struggle for indigenous land rights, the inseparable link between defending territories and protecting the environment, and the fight for justice and life itself.
In this interview, Saúl Vicente Vázquez highlights the urgent struggle of Indigenous peoples to defend their lands as a vital act of protecting the environment and sustaining life itself. He emphasizes the inseparable connection between territorial rights and environmental justice, calling for collective action to safeguard Indigenous territories against exploitation and destruction. Saúl’s testimony underscores the need for global recognition of Indigenous sovereignty as essential to a just and dignified future for all.
Q: What is the difference between “land” and “territory”? We know that it is thanks to Indigenous Peoples that the concept of “territory” has become a heritage shared by all movements for food sovereignty.
A: In 2005, the FAO Committee on Agriculture presented a definition of the term “land,” stating that it is “a broadly used term to refer to natural and constructed resources related to a land surface. It includes attributes of the biosphere on the earth’s surface as well as those vertically above and below it, including the atmosphere, soils, geological and hydrological resources, plants, animal populations, and the results of present and past human activities.”¹
However, years later, the FAO itself and its partners, including the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), indicated that there is no internationally agreed definition of “land” within the United Nations context, allowing its meaning to be shaped from national contexts.²
In this sense, in some national contexts, the concept of “land,” in agricultural terms, is considered the parcel of land worked mainly for crop production and livestock raising. These land portions in many countries are socially distributed to peasants or individually acquired for agricultural production. In Mexico, for example, social land ownership is guaranteed through tenure forms known as “ejidal property,” which refers to land parcels granted by the federal government, or “communal property,” a form that recognizes ancestral lands held by Indigenous communities.
On the other hand, the concept of “territory” emerged from a process where Indigenous Peoples worked and fought to have it recognized as one of their fundamental concepts and rights, acknowledging their special and spiritual relationship with their ancestral lands.
For many years, they worked and struggled in the international arena, particularly within the former Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights under the then Human Rights Commission.
As noted by the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Commission, Dr. Erica-Irene A. Daes, in her 2001 report: “Since the establishment of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Indigenous peoples have emphasized the fundamental nature of their relationship with their ancestral lands. They have done so in the context of the urgent need for non-Indigenous societies to understand the spiritual, social, cultural, economic, and political importance of lands, territories, and resources to Indigenous societies to ensure their survival and vitality.”³
In that report, the Special Rapporteur recalled the conclusions of the Special Rapporteur Mr. José R. Martínez Cobo, who stated:
“It is essential to know and understand the deeply spiritual special relationship Indigenous peoples have with their lands as a basic element of their existence as such, including all their beliefs, customs, traditions, and culture. For Indigenous peoples, land is not merely an object of possession and production. The integral relationship of Indigenous peoples’ spiritual life with Mother Earth and their lands carries many profound implications. Moreover, land is not a commodity to be appropriated but a material element to be enjoyed freely.”⁴
In this way, the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169 incorporates this concept and provides a definition in the following terms:
Article 13
In applying the provisions of this part of the Convention, governments shall respect the special importance for the cultures and spiritual values of the peoples concerned of their relationship with the lands or territories, or both as appropriate, which they occupy or otherwise use, and in particular the collective aspects of that relationship.
The use of the term lands in Articles 15 and 16 shall include the concept of territories, which covers the whole of the habitat of the peoples concerned.
Finally, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), in Articles 25 and 26, recognizes the collective right of Indigenous Peoples to maintain their special relationship with their lands, territories, and natural resources. It also establishes the responsibility of States to ensure the legal protection of their territories and respect their systems of tenure.
Q: When and how was this concept introduced into the political struggle for the FAO’s guidelines on access to land and later in UNDROP and UNDRIP?
A: ILO Convention 169 was adopted in 1989; later, UNDRIP was approved in 2007. However, the struggle to include the concept of territories from the perspective of Indigenous Peoples within the FAO space occurred through the food sovereignty movement (IPC). Since 2004, food producers’ movements have pushed for the approval of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (CIRADR). At this conference, Indigenous Peoples shared their concept of territories with the IPC movement, which was then adopted by peasant movements, nomadic pastoralists, artisanal fishers, and the broader food sovereignty movement. These groups presented their contributions in a parallel event called “Land, Territory and Dignity” in 2006.⁵
At that time, we stated that for Indigenous Peoples, land is contained within the concept of territory: “Land is not simply a productive resource, a habitat, or a political frontier. Land is more than that. It is the foundation of their social organization, economic system, and cultural identity” (Vicente, 2006; Carino, 2006). Indigenous Peoples consider land as part of a broader territory or ancestral domain. The concept of territory or domain includes not only the productive function of the land but also the natural environment, water, forests, subsoil minerals, air, and other productive resources.”⁶
We continued our work and struggle, and in 2012, the Committee on World Food Security adopted the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, which includes a chapter called Indigenous Peoples and Other Communities with Customary Tenure Systems. This chapter reiterates the special and spiritual relationship Indigenous Peoples maintain with their lands and territories.
Since then, we have continued the struggle to include this concept in various legal instruments, especially in the UNDROP in 2018, whose preambular paragraph reaffirms UNDRIP and whose Article 17 recognizes customary land tenure rights.
Q: In light of new challenges posed by digital agriculture, corporate attempts to extract climate and environmental data from territories, and the abusive extension of patents on native seeds, it seems the concept of “territory” is even more important to reaffirm. How should global struggles to affirm it be articulated today? And what role can the Nyéléni Forum play in this context?
A: First, it is necessary to consider the evolution of international law concerning Indigenous Peoples’ rights, particularly their right to self-determination and their right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).
Second, the recommendations of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) and the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), as well as the recommendations of the Special Rapporteurs on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, must be taken into account. Among them, the recommendations from the 17th session of the Permanent Forum on the topic “Collective rights of Indigenous peoples to lands, territories, and resources,” paragraphs 4 to 21.⁷ Also, EMRIP’s 2020 study entitled “The right to land under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: a human rights-based approach,” particularly the annex on Opinion No. 13.⁸
Third, the Third Global Nyéléni Forum should aim to broaden the range of possible struggles to create synergy with other movements and social platforms fighting for the wellbeing of Peoples and systemic transformation. It should promote initiatives and actions to influence various international decision-making spaces. Among other things, it should encourage the widest participation of social movements at the next International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development +20 and fight so that its conclusions fully consider the concept of territories to achieve a new comprehensive vision of Agrarian Reform, taking into account different regional contexts and the recognition and protection of Indigenous Peoples’ territories and natural resources.
Q: What risks of appropriation does the Indigenous worldview face today, and why can its true meaning not be appropriated by those who prioritize profit over rights?
A: In the current situation, many risks exist since, through the corporate capture of the United Nations system, human rights are increasingly undermined, including the rights and worldview of Indigenous Peoples. For example, in various UN spaces, whenever Indigenous Peoples’ issues are discussed, some governments have proposed including the term “local communities” alongside Indigenous Peoples as an attempt to undermine Indigenous Peoples’ rights. There is no definition of “local communities” in the international context, so whatever its definition, it will refer to a different entity than Indigenous Peoples.
Maintaining this combined wording weakens the rights gained by Indigenous Peoples, especially over their territories and natural resources. Furthermore, in light of developments in biotechnology and Digital Sequence Information (DSI) on genetic resources, as well as projects extracting Indigenous Peoples’ natural resources by governments and transnational corporations—especially critical minerals—these actions violate their rights to self-determination and FPIC, degrade biodiversity, and cause greater harm to Mother Earth, such as global warming.
In this regard, I recall the recommendations of Special Rapporteur Erica-Irene A. Daes, who stated:
“d) All state and international legal actions and measures concerning Indigenous lands, territories, and resources shall ensure that all Indigenous peoples have sufficient lands, territories, and resources to secure their well-being and equitable development as peoples.
e) In all state and international legal actions and measures concerning Indigenous lands, territories, and resources, the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination shall be recognized and respected, including the obligation to engage with relevant Indigenous governance institutions and the obligation to respect the right of Indigenous peoples to control and protect their own lands, territories, and resources.
f) In all state and international measures that may affect Indigenous lands, territories, and resources, even indirectly, the full and direct participation of all Indigenous peoples affected shall be ensured in decision-making processes.
g) States must respect and protect the special relationship of Indigenous peoples with their lands, territories, and resources, particularly sacred sites, areas of cultural significance, and resource uses inherent to Indigenous cultures and religious practices.”⁹
Footnotes
¹ FAO Committee on Agriculture, 2005.
² FAO, CFS documents, various years.
³ Erica-Irene Daes, Special Rapporteur, 2001.
⁴ José R. Martínez Cobo, 1986.
⁵ IPC Land, Territory and Dignity Forum, 2006.
⁶ Vicente, 2006; Carino, 2006.
⁷ UNPFII, 2018, E/2018/43-E/C.19/2018/11.
⁸ EMRIP, 2020, A/HRC/45/36/Add.1.
⁹ Erica-Irene Daes, 2001, Recommendations.