Vicuña Conservation and the Reinvigoration of Indigenous Communities in the Andes

LICHTENSTEIN, G Y CARLOS COWAN ROS

Making commons dynamic:understanding change through commonisation and decommonisation

Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

Lugar: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire; Año: 2021; p. 102 - 122

The relationship between local communities and wildlife has changed over time. However, in the case of the vicuñas, they were highly regarded by local herders since the early development of pastoralism and they are still considered ?the herds of the Gods? in certain parts of the Andes. Vicuñas (Vicugna vicugna) are wild South American camelids that roam in the Puna and Altiplano, high Andean ecoregions in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru reaching altitudes between 3,500 to 5,000 metres. The vicuña´s highly prized fleece has been both its greatest asset and its biggest downfall. Before the European Conquest, vicuña fibre was sacred and only sheared for making special garments used exclusively by the Inca using a technique known as chaku that required the organisation and participation of hundreds of people. The rules and regulations under the chaku prevented the overexploitation by controlling access and use to the species. With the advent of European domination, this highly prized species became, within little more than a century, an open-access resource that was persecuted and hunted to the brink of extinction. By 1960, it was estimated that the vicuña population had dropped from its pre-colonial population of 2 million to an estimated 10,000 individuals. International, regional and national conservation efforts were successful in halting the population decline. Strict conservation regulation, through the Vicuña Convention and the entry into force of the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species of Plants and Animals (CITES) in 1975, helped to rebuild populations. The global programme of conservation was so successful that it resulted in a progressive shift in international policy from strict preservation to sustainable use, allowing trade in fibre obtained from live-shorn target populations. In 1979, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru and Ecuador signed the Convention for the Conservation and Management of the Vicuña. In the Convention, and in the signatory states? subsequent submissions to CITES meetings, Andean people that had been bearing the burden of vicuña conservation were named as the main beneficiaries of the future vicuña use. Vicuña management fostered commonisation processes by Andean communities as the resource got converted into a jointly used resource under commons institutions that dealt with excludability and substractability. In many communities, managing vicuñas contributed towards community identity and social cohesion as well as a vehicle for securing land tenure and recovering old customs. Then came the threats of privatization, domestication, and mining projects in community lands. This chapter l explores the dynamic processes of commonisation and decommonisation with regards vicuña management. The challenges facing this system are analysed providing lessons for practice and policy.