We, the undersigned, reject the breach in forest sector institutionality committed by the Ministry of Agriculture in its dismissal of the Executive Director of the Peruvian forest authority SERFOR (with the Supreme Resolution N.°02-2020-MINAGRI) citing the loss of confidence as the cause, bypassing the functions of SERFOR´s Board of Directors, which was neither convened nor informed prior to the dismissal.
In early March 2020 we condemned the attempt to breach the institutionality as the Deputy minister of Agricultural Policy within the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MINAGRI), Paula Carrión Tello, convened the Executive Director of SERFOR, Luis Alberto Gonzales-Zúñiga, to a private meeting where she requested that he step down following a decision made by the sector’s High Directorate. Gonzales-Zúñiga then asked her to send a written request detailing the reasons behind this decision. She refused to provide such written request.
Given that the Deputy minister presides the Board of Directors at SERFOR and through this request she was overlooking the maximum authority of the institution and ignoring the established procedures, civil society and indigenous peoples organisations asked our representatives in the Council to convene a special meeting of the Board of Directors of SERFOR so that they shed some light on the case. We thought this was essential to ensure transparency at such a sensitive moment. The formal letter was sent (11 March 2020) but the meeting was never convened.
It is worth mentioning that Gonzales-Zúñiga is the first Executive Director of SERFOR that has been appointed through a public tender process endorsed by the Civil Service National Authority (SERVIR) and appointed for a five-year period, precisely to guarantee the independence and continuity necessary to manage forest resources and wildlife in Peru. It is for this reason that it is striking that the removal of this position is ordered, indicating loss of confidence, without having mediated the exposition of the grounds for removal in the space of the Board of Directors.
The Deputy minister’s call for his dismissal came just as the management of SERFOR was seeing improvements in the development of timber traceability mechanisms, so the legal origin of timber could finally be verified from the forest through to the processing stages and its trade and export. Progress to build such traceability was met with a negative reaction from those private and public stakeholders who have historically benefitted, both politically and economically, from the trade in illegal timber and the corruption involved in its laundering. Some public officials have received death threats and even been subject to physical attacks as a means to intimidate them and try to stop progress in these matters.
The context of what we consider an arbitrary termination is even worse now that the country has been hardly hit by the pandemic and the virus is starting to reach indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon that had self-isolated and blocked access to their territories. While forest concession holders and the forest industry are calling for a flexibilization of the legal origin verification standards, the state itself triggers an institutional crisis in a sector that is dramatically dominated by illegality. The Financial Intelligence Unit has concluded that at least 60% of timber produced in Peru is of illegal origin. This timber is “laundered” through falsified documents produced by corrupt authorities and concession holders, the same concession holders that are now claiming that they will respect the biosecurity protocols.
Therefore, the undersigned strongly reject this action that goes against institutionality and forest governance in Peru and threatens the commitments the Peruvian state has made with the US through the Free Trade Agreement, as well as international commitments linked to the reduction in deforestation, such as the Norway-Germany-Peru Agreement. We support all efforts for a more transparent and corruption-free forest management, one that enables the strengthening of the forest sector’s national and global competitiveness and ensures a sustainable development for the Amazon and its dwellers.
Lima, 5 June 2020
- Asociación ProPurús
- Asociación para el Rescate y Bienestar de los Animales – ArbaPeru
- Asociación para la Investigación y el Desarrollo Integral-AIDER
- Amazon Watch
- Amazónicos por la Amazonía – AMPA y la Red Amazónica de Conservación Voluntaria y Comunal “Amazonía Que Late”
- Asociación Arariwa
- Asociación Nacional de Centros – ANC
- BOS+
- Centro para el Desarrollo del Indígena Amazónico – CEDIA
- Centro de Conservación, Investigación y Manejo de Áreas Naturales, CIMA-Cordillera Azul
- Centro de Investigación, Documentación y Asesoría Poblacional – CIDAP.
- Centro de Políticas Públicas y Derechos Humanos – Perú Equidad
- Chirapaq, Centro de Culturas Indígenas del Perú
- Center for International Environmental Law – CIEL
- Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú – CGTP
- Colegio de ingenieros del Perú – Consejo departamental San Martín, Moyobamba
- Comité de Defensa del Agua – Iquitos
- CooperAcción
- Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales-DAR
- Derecho, Interculturalidad y Ambiente – DIA
- ECO REDD
- Environmental Investigation Agency – EIA (Agencia de Investigación Ambiental)
- Escuela de Artes y Culturales Amazónicas
- Federación de Comunidades Nativas de Ucayali-FECONAU
- Federación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas, Artesanas, Indígenas, Nativas y Asalariadas del Perú- FENMUCARINAP
- Frankfurt Zoological Society Perú
- Fomento de la Vida- FOVIDA
- Foro Ecológico del Perú
- Fundación Pachamama Perú
- Grupo Propuesta Ciudadana
- Iniciativa Interreligiosa para los Bosques Tropicales, IRI-Perú
- Instituto de Defensa Legal del Ambiente y el Desarrollo Sostenible-IDLADS
- Instituto del Bien Común-IBC
- Instituto Chaukuni
- Instituto de Defensa Legal – IDL
- Jóvenes Peruanos Frente al Cambio Climático
- Latido Verde
- Nature Services Perú.
- Proética
- SEPERU
- Servicios en Comunicación Intercultural-Servindi
- ONG IRUPA
- Oxfam en Perú
- Organización Unión Nacional de Comunidades Aymaras – UNCA
- Practical Action
- Rainforest Foundation US
- Paz y Esperanza
- Sociedad Peruana de Ecodesarrollo – SPDE
- TierrActiva Perú
- Unidos por los animales (UPA)
Signatures that represent personal opinions and do not represent any institutions views:
- César A. Ipenza Peralta. DNI 40287902
- Claudia María Gálvez Durand Besnard. DNI 07863863
- Deborah Delgado Pugley. DNI 42027804
- Eduardo Rojas Baez. DNI 44974222
- Flor de María Vega Zapata. DNI 07200287
- Giuliana Cecilia Larrea Aguinaga. DNI 40826401
- Jose De Echave Cáceres. DNI 07886231
- Juan Luis Dammert Bello. DNI 40679736
- Luis A. Hallazi Méndez. DNI 40753060
- Luis Germán Dávalos Torres. DNI 09392964.
- Mariano Castro Sánchez-Moreno. DNI 07212391
- Mercedes Lu De Lama. DNI 10545127
- Patricia Fernández-Davila. DNI 08220816
- Renzo Giudice Granados. DNI 40350072
- Roger Merino. DNI 41687197
- Sandro Chavez Vasquez. DNI 06694988
- Silvia Sánchez Huaman. DNI 08762291
- Yanua Atamain Uwarai. DNI 43048985