Administrator Samantha Power at a Press Gaggle with Indigenous Leaders

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Good afternoon, everyone. It's a great privilege to be here in the Amazon. It's my first visit here, and I feel enlightened and motivated, inspired by the courage and the leadership of the people of Peru to protect their precious natural resources. And very particularly inspired by Indigenous leaders who take so seriously their responsibility to be great stewards of the earth and of natural resources that all of humanity rely upon. Miguel [Guimaraes] - very, very grateful to you.

My heartfelt thanks go out to the people of Puerto Arturo and Boca Pariamanu, who welcomed us for lunch earlier today. They provided not only a delicious meal, with the bounty from the land of this area, but also gave us at USAID and our Ambassador, who leads the incredible team here in Peru, thoughts and ideas about how we can deepen our partnership together.

On my flight today into Puerto Maldonado, out of the windows of the plane, I had the experience that so many have had - the very disturbing experience of seeing the scars left by illegal mining. Acres and acres, sometimes as far as the eye could see, it felt, where - had I come decades ago - I would have seen lush forest. I now saw what had been a living landscape turned into toxic mud.

Really, the damage is devastating, and it is devastating not just for people here, but those effects are felt all around the world. The best estimate is that the Amazon rainforest stores the equivalent of 10 years of global fossil fuel emissions. It soaks up greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide. And so, scientists say that if we continue to cut down trees here, we will have almost no chance of limiting the worst effects of the climate crisis.

Luckily, there are heroes in this story, the Indigenous Peoples who stand up every day to the illegal miners and the loggers who are seeking to exploit their ancestral lands. These leaders monitor miles and miles of forest, scouring it for illicit activity. They frequently confront, or even accidentally come across, intruders who don't even recognize that they are on Indigenous land. And in these confrontations, they often face violence and even targeted attacks. And these targeted attacks, even these killings of Indigenous leaders who stand up to protect their land, this land, those attacks so often go unpunished, and even at times, it seems unnoticed by the legal system. In fact, since 2014, at least 36 Indigenous leaders have been killed in the Peruvian Amazon for trying to protect their land.

The leaders here today, having lived these horrors, know best how we can help them more safely, defend their homes and their land. And now, as you heard, these ideas that come directly from them are becoming what we are calling the new Indigenous Defenders Justice Initiative, the new Indigenous Defenders Justice Initiative. And I'm excited to announce that USAID will invest $2.5 million in this critically important new project. Together with the organizations represented here today, we will build new early warning systems in 10 communities, providing technology that can immediately detect even incursions that are very far away.

We will help map 20 Indigenous territories and formally record the legal rights that Indigenous communities have to their land, so that both intruders and illegal miners and loggers and law enforcement know the territorial boundaries. As part of this initiative, as well, we will help train Indigenous leaders on the protections that they are entitled to under Peruvian law. And we will train justice system representatives on the tools that Indigenous communities use to protect themselves, such as those early warning systems, so that these tools and these methods can be used as evidence to hold intruders and exploiters of this land accountable.

This is not only a matter of justice - it is a matter of justice, and so its name is fitting - but it is not only a matter of justice, it is essential for our shared planet's future. As all of you know, studies have shown that Indigenous communities are the most effective stewards of natural resources. And indeed, in the Amazon, those studies have shown that deforestation rates are a staggering 50 percent lower in Indigenous territories than they are in other parts of the rainforest. And so, one of the most important steps we can take to protect the Amazon and protect the Earth is to make sure that Indigenous leaders have the tools that they need to more safely defend their land.

This new initiative is just one piece of the United States' commitment to the people of the Amazon. On Sunday, as I hope you saw, President Biden became the first ever sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon, and he reaffirmed our support for efforts to protect the forest, to restore damaged lands - those areas that have been deforested - and to create new sustainable jobs.

The Amazon is a living Wonder of the World, passed down from generation to generation over hundreds of thousands of years, built over 50 million years. The United States and Peru are united in our determination that our generations not be the ones to lose that precious bounty. And so, we will continue to support the land's bravest and most important defenders, those leaders who are here with us today and those who are out there right now, defending their rights and protecting this treasured land.

With that, I'm happy to take your questions. Thank You.

QUESTION (via translation): Good afternoon, my name is Gilbert Galindo. I'm a national correspondent from Exitosa Peru and Tropical TV in Puerto Maldonado. First, I'd like to congratulate this important work and support provided to the Indigenous communities to counter all this damage that is happening here, especially in Madre de Dios. But, as a suggestion, it would also be good to take into consideration this double discourse, this damage that some of the Indigenous peoples themselves are also causing to their own lands. Out of the 36 communities, almost 50 percent are either dedicated to illegal mining or at least are renting their territories.

So, it is important to find some way to guide them or support them financially, to stop them from destroying the land where they live.

On the other hand, we need to take into consideration nuclear practices, wars happening in other countries, obviously, and also it should be a good guiding point from those who, like us, are interested in saving the planet.

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you so much.

I think you raise an extremely important point, and it shows you the complexity of addressing deforestation and destruction of this rainforest. And this is actually something that, in the gathering we had with Indigenous leaders, that I raised, which is the question of livelihoods for the children who are growing up, whose parents want them to remain on the land, to continue the traditions, but who are finding increasingly that young people are either leaving and going to urban areas because they don't find economic opportunities where they are, or perhaps are drawn into these criminal networks who participate in deforestation of this precious land.

And this is where I feel very privileged to be the Administrator of USAID, because of our work over the decades, since we first began work in Peru and then in the 1960s. But, you know, since 2001, investing $1.8 billion in economic livelihoods, in healthcare, in food security, those kinds of investments, you know, helping or supporting the communities gain more market access for their hazelnuts. That program becomes as important to protecting the Amazon as the initiative that I mentioned today - helping generate markets for the kind of productivity that communities here want to deepen and accelerate.

So, you're absolutely right that you can't look at any one aspect of the destruction of this rainforest in isolation. But at the same time, none of us can get so overwhelmed by the complexity and the need, for example, to do something as big as create economic opportunity for a whole new generation, we can't allow that to paralyze us. And so, we have to do many things at once, and that includes providing more support to those communities who are defending the land, making sure that the new technologies that are available are available right here, and not just in other countries or communities, and not just in urban areas, so that they can actually take advantage of NASA's satellite technology and information and know precisely where the loggers and the miners are setting up camp.

But so too, we can't just work with Indigenous communities, because you need law enforcement. You need just not, not laws on the books only, but the enforcement of those laws.

And when Indigenous leaders, at times, have stood up and demanded that those laws be enforced, they have been actually killed for raising their voices in those ways. So you know, there has to be a bottom up effort, a provision of tools to those who are defending this land, protecting this land, but it is absolutely essential that the powers of the State be leveraged in support of this incredibly important goal for the people of Peru and and so the whole planet.

QUESTION (via translation): Cesar Gonzales, from Radio Madre de Dios. I wanted to ask you about what happened lately regarding the non-contacted Indigenous People in the area of the Rio Piedras - precisely an area, for sure of the world, where there are more problems around this topic and all that has to do with extractive industries, what is your position? What is the U.S. position going to be regarding extractive industries, like logging, like illegal mining, that directly affect protected areas for the Indigenous Peoples. What are you going to do for these Indigenous People, specifically with the new change in the Administration, with the new President, with the new executive leader of your country?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you. Well first, let me say that we, at USAID, take great pride in our partnership with Peruvians, in supporting them as they join the Extractive Transparency Initiative, the EITI. And I think that's been an important initiative in getting Peruvian civil society the support they need, again, in enhancing transparency around it, extraction. It's very hard to fight what you can't see, and transparency around even formal and legal mining and extraction - sunlight is very important for that domain, as well as, of course, for the illegal that we've been talking about.

With regard to the incoming Administration, you can imagine, I get asked this question now - a lot, including from my own kids, who are very eager to know exactly the answer to your question. I don't think we can predict. We don't yet know, for example, who will be the head of USAID, the President's nominations for different Cabinet and other Departments and Agencies are being rolled out. And - I shouldn't say the President - the President-elect's nominations are being rolled out day by day.

But you know, I think that what is very, very true is that the ability of the Amazon to absorb carbon dioxide has a profound effect on the welfare of the American people. And what we have seen, and even saw the last time President Trump was President, was that there are certain enduring interests that the United States has. And one of our interests is that the American people, themselves, thrive, and in order for that to happen, in order for any President to facilitate that happening, investments, like the ones that are urgently needed in the Amazon are absolutely critical.

And I think USAID's broad portfolio, including the work on economic livelihoods, has attracted decades of very thick bipartisan support. And indeed, while, you know, some might have expected USAID's budget to be significantly cut, for example, in the last Trump administration, that's not what happened. You had Republicans and Democrats alike coming together to support USAID and the work we do around the world, including the work we do here in Peru.

So, I think all of that is very important. The last thing I would say is that biodiversity and conservation also specifically attract really diverse bipartisan coalitions in the United States, and they always have. And I have been very struck by that since coming to USAID - is how much interest there is in preserving nature, in preserving species, in preserving wildlife. So, you know, I think it will be interesting to see how the next Administration takes forward discussions about the Amazon. Will it be exactly as President Biden addressed the issue? That would be unlikely. Different leaders do things differently. But certainly there is a huge constituency that probably, some of whom, probably helped the President-elect win the recent election, who care a lot about biodiversity here. So we'll have to wait to see the individuals, the policy platforms. But there is a recent history and a long standing history to draw from that I think should give us all hope that this, that our investments in this work are going to continue.

QUESTION (via translation): My name is Freddie Cardenas. I'm head of the newspaper Don Jaque. I congratulate the work that the U.S. government is doing to safeguard the Amazon, especially the one from Madre de Dios. There is a crisis that has been repeating itself in the last couple of years that has to do with Indigenous in isolation, and that we consider that it is now the time in which they might have to be removed from those spaces and included in our country's life, and I would like to know what effort is USAID willing to do to help this process, so that this can happen in the short term, and so that we can stop this crisis that has taken many lives in Madre de Dios?

QUESTION (via translation): Good afternoon, Javier Hidalgo from Flash Madre de Dios, a local media. Indigenous defenders and access to justice - it is a complicated and difficult objective having a government that, despite the many millions in interdictions and operatives, hasn't been able to stop the growth of La Pampa, and the only way La Pampa stopped a little was during the pandemic. And not at all, because people kept mining secretly. What to do? What to do with this agreement, with this alliance you have with the goal of giving defenders access to justice, how can you ally with a government where illegality is leading this damage to the planet? And if we talk about our Amazon in Madre de Dios, it is illegal mining. What are the results that you're expecting with all the work that you're carrying out?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Okay, on Freddie's question, which, as I understood it, was about Indigenous individuals, people, individuals from Indigenous communities living in isolation and needing to be perhaps better integrated. Let me just say that USAID has missions in more than 80 countries around the world, and one of the things that makes our Mission in Peru stand out is that we actually have at the Mission advising our Mission Director a Senior Advisor for the Rights of Indigenous People.

We - that position exists only as well in Guatemala and Ecuador, so it's a very unique or distinct role. And I think this is the kind of question probably better posed to our colleague, who is right here. And so, maybe you can take the question offline.

But you know, again, as I said in the answer to the previous question, none of us believe that you can bring a simplistic or short-term approach to the kinds of issues that need to be addressed to advance what is our universal goal everywhere we work, which is the cause of individual dignity - for somebody to be able to live a dignified life that they choose for themselves. So, issues of social isolation, atomization, have real bearing on that. But how that fits into our programming that we do here, that's something you might have suggestions to make, but also that our Senior Advisor can take on.

With regard to the question of alliance with government, this is a question I get asked in many parts of the world, as you can imagine. And I guess the first thing I would say here is that the vast majority of USAID's programming is with the kinds of people that you see here today. But not only with them. It's also in training journalists - for example, we've trained 450 journalists precisely on how to report on environmental crimes and the question of accountability, or lack of accountability after the crimes.

So much of our work is with civil society, with independent institutions, with the institutions that hold governments accountable or seek to, through check - basically, with the checks and balances. And that's really, really important work, and it's part of democracy, and it's part of, certainly, the effort here in the Amazon, of course, to support efforts to protect nature.

I think, though, and I'll say this just as a general rule, anywhere USAID works, we can't give up on government. None of us can in any country where we work, because fundamentally, you know - and I heard this from the Indigenous leaders - it is often the absence of the State that allows criminal networks to thrive and to prosper. And you know, when it comes to law enforcement, fundamentally, that is a task that State institutions need to perform everywhere in the world.

So, we seek out partners in government. Certainly, we have partners on this cause within the Peruvian government who are working fervently, urgently, who feel the ticking clock of environmental degradation, and like our civil society partners, are seized with this issue, and who are pushing within government for change, for law enforcement, for environmental defenders, that those who have killed environmental defenders to be punished, for rules on the books to be enforced.

We know, of course, that there are many in this society - we share the concerns of those in civil society, even in different parts of government and among Indigenous leaders - who are concerned about recent laws, like the forestry law, and the risk that there will be more impunity. You know, those are concerns that we engage on.

But it is extremely important to remember that in the long term, State institutions are going to be absolutely essential if the rule of law is to be enforced. And we know as well that at USAID and our Embassy as a whole, we are working so hard to try to draw foreign direct investment, more of it to Peru to enhance trading relationships, to grow the economy, particularly with knowing that the next generation needs economic opportunity. But the rule of law and the fight against corruption is absolutely essential for that effort as well, here in Peru and again, everywhere in the world that USAID works.

So, I think, you know, our direct funding and resources go primarily, again, to nongovernmental institutions and to those checks and balances. But we think it's extremely important through the Embassy, through senior delegations, law enforcement, counter-narcotics, our environmental protection experts from the United States - the list goes on and on and on - to engage directly with government, because for a solution this complex and this existential, it is going to take all hands on deck, and government has to be part of the solution.

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