From the Amazon Alliance.

• Author: Kostishack, Peter
• Position: FROM READERS - Letter to the Editor

[on "the unsupported belief that indigenous peoples cannot be trusted to take care of their own resources"]

I would like to commend World Watch for its courage in publishing Mac Chapin's article, "A Challenge to Conservationists" and for taking on the contentious issue of conflict between large conservation organizations and indigenous peoples. Working for an organization that is charged with sustaining a coalition between indigenous peoples and environmentalists, I feel that this is an issue that deserves as much attention now as it did in 1990, when indigenous organizations and environmentalists agreed to work together to protect the Amazon through the legal recognition and defense of the territorial rights of indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples still believe strongly in this goal. They are less convinced, however, of the commitment of the largest conservation organizations to help them achieve it, particularly as they face growing threats to their territories from oil and gas extraction, mining, roads, and agricultural expansion. They now see conservationists advocating the formation of national parks on their traditional lands, providing technical assistance to logging companies that harvest timber where there are uncontacted tribes, and partnering with oil companies--in effect giving a green seal to drilling in the most culturally and environmentally sensitive places in the world.

Nonetheless, there have...