Created in 2001, the national park spans more than 5,000 square miles of land that is filled with great biodiversity — including 71 species of large mammals, 10 species of primates and 516 species of birds. It’s circled by a buffer zone that contains 300,000 people across 530 communities, many of whom are Indigenous.

So when CIMA was tasked by the government to manage the park, which has come under threat from illegal miners, loggers, and cartels cultivating coca leaves to make and export cocaine, it saw those communities as a help and not a hindrance.

“The Indigenous people living in the Cordillera Azul are our partners,” says Juan Batiston Flores Fabian, the regional coordinator for CIMA. “We are working towards the same goals as them: to protect and preserve this beautiful environment.”

The project marks a breakaway from so-called “fortress conservation” — a model pioneered in the US and taken up by Western organizations across the world that envisions nature as separate from people, penalizing those living in and around it.

“There’s a dispute over its origins, but the best evidence suggests it is an American idea,” says Colin Luoma, a lecturer in law at London’s Brunel University and author of a book on fortress conservation. “It came from the creation of national parks, with the idea that they are pristine, unoccupied landscapes that must be kept peopleless.”

Luoma cites the early examples of Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks, whose establishment in the late 19th century led to the “forced expulsion” of native people. More recently, a slew of human rights abuses have been perpetrated by conservation groups in African parks. It’s a legacy that stretches far and wide: According to analysis published in 2020, over 250,000 people from 15 countries were forced from their homes in protected areas between 1990 and 2014, with one billion people affected by the conflicts. 

“Fortress conservation became the dominant way that conservation organizations understood how to protect nature,” says Luoma.

But in the Cordillera Azul, the conservation efforts are now working for, not against, Indigenous rights. 

In 2008, after CIMA won a contract to run the national park, it began developing a quality of life plan for the local Cacataibo Indigenous tribe over the next five years, spanning economic, social, cultural, political and environmental objectives.

The wide-ranging targets included installing garbage cans in all homes, planting of fruit trees like lemon and mango for self-consumption and sale, the creation of an aquaculture-based fish farm, as well as encouraging the holding of democratic elections and maintaining the use of traditional clothing and cultural practices.

“The main goals were to improve the living conditions of the community and to stop deforestation in the area,” adds Batiston. “That is being achieved through sustainable management of land and of the natural resources. Both can be achieved together.”

Participatory mapping was carried out by CIMA and the Cacataibo to identify the exact boundaries of their land and to assess what resources could be sustainably cultivated by the roughly 60 Indigenous families in the community of Yamino.