Saamaka People in Suriname suffer from illegal logging within their land

 

Stand with the Saamakans from Federico Rambaldi on Vimeo.

In this video, the Saamaka communities in Suriname ask the international community to stand with them to defend their land against intrusive Forest destructive activities and to demand that the Suriname government grants legal recognition of Saamaka ancestral rights to the land.

The Saamaka tribe is an Afro-descendant community that has inhabited the Suriname river watershed for over 300 years. They have a deep spiritual and cultural connection with the land and have preserved it through their customary laws and traditions.

However, over the past 30 years, Saamaka communities have struggled to defend their land against intrusive logging and gold mining activities. In the 1990s, the Government of Suriname granted logging concessions to multinationals in their territory without consulting them. For almost a decade, the forest was exploited, causing the destruction of agriculture fields and pollution of drinking water sources.

In the year 2000, the Saamaka decided to stand up and defend their territory against these threats and fights for the legal recognition of their land rights. They organized themselves into the Association of Saamaka Authorities and filed a petition to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The petition asked for support to stop human and land rights violations in their territory. This led in November 2007, to the issuance of a binding judgement by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in favor of the Saamaka people, known as ‘Saamaka judgement’. It required the State of Suriname to legally recognize their land rights and stop any logging and infrastructure development inside the Saamaka territory and fully apply Free Prior Informed Consent procedures.

However, 15 years have passed since the ruling of the court, and the Government of Suriname still does not comply with the Saamaka judgment. On the contrary, their land rights are still not legally recognized, and logging concessions continue being granted without Free Prior Informed Consent.

Moreover, the issuance of community forest concessions is another violation of Saamaka rights. These areas, granted to individuals from the communities, are presented by the government as a way to legitimate Saamaka people's rights to the forest. However, in practice, these forest concessions delegitimize and violate Saamaka communal systems of property, creating internal conflicts, elite capture, and internal corruption.

Since one year ago, Saamaka communities have been struggling again to protect their land against a new destructive intrusion. A logging company has gained access to their concession on the east side of the Saamaka territory. Despite opposition from the Association of Saamaka Authorities, the logging company, with the support of few Saamaka individuals, who disregard the community’s stand, has built a pontoon to mobilize heavy machinery across the river and has begun road work without obtaining the Saamaka’s Free Prior Informed Consent.  As a result of this access, thousands of valuable logs are exploited illegally. This road poses now a significant threat to the livelihoods and sustainable use of forest resources maintained by the Saamaka. More importantly, the forest itself has customary and spiritual value for them. The road would facilitate access for illegal gold miners and more loggers, causing widespread habitat destruction.

With human and recurrent land rights’ violations, the Saamaka people are taking fresh action to advocate for the legal recognition of their ancestral land rights and demand that the Government of Suriname fully complies with the ‘Saamaka judgment’. 

As stewards of more than one million hectares of tropical rainforest, the Saamaka people ask the international community to support their efforts to protect their land.

The film “The enabling power of participatory 3D mapping among the Saramaccan People of Suriname” launched at CWA2014

Fifty years ago, some 5000 Saramaccan people of Suriname had to leave their traditional lands along the Suriname River due to the construction of a major dam. The wounds of this transmigration are still felt today. Meanwhile, the Saramaccans who live in the Upper Suriname River area face new challenges since their territorial rights are not yet officially recognized and road infrastructure to access the area is improving. Creating a 3D model of the area that tells the inside story of their traditions and land use can help them to overcome their sense of being misunderstood by decision-makers and rediscover their voice.



The 15 min video production “The enabling power of participatory 3D mapping among the Saramaccan People of Suriname” has been launched on October 9 at the 13th Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Paramaribo, Suriname. The launch occurred during the session “Maps as media in policy processes: Bringing the 3rd dimension to the negotiating table” in the presence of representatives from the Saramaccan community.

The launch was followed by reflections done by Saramaccan representatives Mr Godfried Adjako, one of the captains of the village of Kaajapati, and Ms Debora Linga who spent her infancy with her grandparents on their farm on the shores of the Brokopondo Reservoir and later on kept visiting them in Ginginston village along the banks of the Upper Suriname River.

Mr Godfried Adjako recalled that in the process of populating the 3D model the community, especially the youth, learned a lot from the elders. “The map now shows our life, the Earth we live on, the Earth we walk on, the Earth without which we cannot live.” “We can use the map to take decisions on where to locate future developments”, he added. Both men and women contributed to the map. “Women know a lot about the surrounding of the villages, while men who use to go hunting, know the most about far away areas.”

Mr Adjako stated that when developing the legend ahead of the mapping exercise, the community decided to omit sensitive and confidential information. Therefore the data contained in the model and currently being digitised by Tropenbos International Suriname (TBI) should be considered as publicly available.

The P3DM process has been a discovery journey for young Debora. “In the 60’s my grandparents had to resettle because their village had been submerged by the rising waters of the Brokopondo Reservoir. They resettled along the Upper Suriname River in a village called Ginginston where I grew up. I could not understand the reason why my grandfather kept on navigating a long way along the river to reach the shores of the lake where he was growing watermelon” she said. “I discovered the reason while chatting with an elder who explained to me that transmigrating families were welcome by Saramaccan villages uphill the lake, but were granted limited access to resources. In fact they were sort of borrowing the land from people who occupied it for generations. Thus they only had access to small farming areas. In Saramaccan this is how you feel: they were living on somebody else’s land.”

Additional references:

• Saramakan’s forests: watercourses at the core of a Participatory 3D Modelling exercise along the Upper Suriname River
• CTA-funded 3D map helping tribe document and articulate their traditional knowledge
• Multi-scale modeling of ecosystem services and land-use scenarios in the upper Suriname River basin