Resumen de Free prior and informed consent (FPIC) United Nations-Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD) in Paraguay

Alberto Massimo Aprile

• español

  Esta investigación aborda el tema de la implementación del Programa de las Naciones Unidas contra la deforestación denominado United Nations-Reduced Emision from Deforestation and forest Degradation (UN- REDD). Más específicamente analiza el consentimiento libre, previo y documentado: Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). La investigación se ha realizado en las comunidades indígenas mbya guaraní de Ka’aguy, P’au y Arroyo Moroti de la Región Oriental y también en el Chaco. El autor enfoca la brecha existente entre el FPIC y aquellos contextos en los cuales se debería aplicarlo. Se insinúa que la Ley se reduce a una simple etiqueta jurídica y que las personas involucradas permanecen en una actitud despolitizada. El consentimiento debería darse realmente en un ambiente libre de influencias económicas y políticas, cosa que no se realiza en el Tekoha Guasu y en general en el Paraguay. El Autor señala problemas y dificultades relativas a la circulación de las informaciones, a la visibilidad y a la representación además de situaciones marcadas por la violencia, el caos y las asimetrías de poderes y relaciones. La falta de soberanía política, económica y alimenticia son un obstáculo para la implementación del FPIC.

• English

  The thesis is about the process of implementation of the international program against deforestation called UN-REDD in Paraguay and specifically about the Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). This research builds on a six months multi-sited fieldwork in Asunción with shorter and longer stays in indigenous communities, specially in the oriental region in the Tekoha Guazu, among the Mbya-Guaranìs of the comunities of Ka’aguy’ Pa’u’ and Arroyo Moroti and in the Chaco as well.

  I wish to focus about the gap between the image of FPIC and those contexts in which it is supposed to be applied in practice, the gap between these two perceptions as well as the ways through which it is (re)produced. I suggest that the image of FPIC can be connected with the fetishism of law that can reduce complex social facts into legal label, thus giving the image of a legal fiction of consultations among generic stakeholders going on in a depoliticized atmosphere where all actors are supposedly equal as for the power-relationships.

  But in order for the FPIC process to be actually “free”, the interested parties have to be properly informed and represented and it has to be made sure that consultations occur in a context free from economic and political coercion. Through empirical findings from the Tekoha Guazu and from the general situation in Paraguay, I argue that there are issues concerning the circulation of information, visibility and representation as well as there are contexts marked by violence, chaos and lack of sovereignty which indicate uneven power-relationships. The lack of political, economic and food sovereignty is itself a precondition for those contexts free from coercion that form the base for the FPIC process.