Given the dire state of our environment these days, writing about it can be a frustrating endeavor to say the least. But knowing that the industrial-strength deforestation-taking place in South America is hastening our planet’s demise -- makes writing about it essential -- if we’re ever to stop it or at least slow it down. That said, the fact that Bush administration complicity turns up in just about every article I read about hydrocarbon exploration around the world, makes me sick to my stomach.
We all know that the entire BushCo agenda is all about control of the world’s hydrocarbon development. It doesn’t matter where it’s at – from Alaska to Brazil in the Western Hemisphere to Nigeria and Uzbekistan in the East – nowhere is safe from BushCo’s expropriation of Earth’s non-renewable resources. These environmental rapists will stop at nothing; the Iraq invasion taught us that.
Back in April, I wrote about Brazil’s misadventures in hydrocarbon development in a diary titled: Trans-Iriri Highway: the Road to Perdition. In it, I described how even though the Brazilian government claims a significant reduction in deforestation in recent years, a whole clandestine network of illegal roads and logging camps are operating with impunity in the rainforest, completely escaping government scrutiny. Since I wrote the diary, and after reading other literature on the Brazilian state of affairs concerning deforestation, I’ve come to believe that the Bush administration’s corporate-cronies are responsible for the extracurricular logging and subsequent unregulated hydrocarbon development.
This diary is about Brazil’s neighbor to the west, Peru.
Bush’s recent trip south of the border sought to expand his icy grip on worldwide hydrocarbon development. Armed with a fistful of free-trade proposals, Bush went ‘a huntin’ crude at yard sales all over cash-strapped South America. Everywhere he went, he left his cattish calling card, or I should say the corporate calling cards of Hunt Oil and Occidental Petroleum. There’s no doubt he left the leader of every country he visited with misspent dreams of grandeur for their respective countries.
Some countries are fighting back. Venezuela, Uruguay and Bolivia are three such countries. And some countries are on the edge; seeking to balance Big oil incentives with environmental and social concerns.
Peru is one such country. They actually want oil companies to leave the rivers and forests as they found them – intact. Imagine that. What a concept; a concept no doubt shunned by Bushies and big oil alike.
This from The Christian Science Monitor:
The Peruvian government is increasingly pushing an oil and gas boom through some of the world's most biodiverse rain forests. In 2006, 70 percent of the country's pristine Amazonian rainforest was zoned for oil and gas, up from just 13 percent in 2004, according to a study by groups including Environmental Defense and Oxfam. This year the country is tendering an additional 22.2 million acres – an area larger than the state of Maine – the report states.
And as ethnic Amazonian natives are increasingly lured by hydrocarbon development but threatened by contamination, disease, and culture shock, international supporters are working to press governments, companies, and banks to develop the rain-forest regions in low-impact, sustainable ways.
"There is now 75 to 80 percent of Peru's rain forest under concession for oil and gas, and there doesn't seem to be much planning on how to do that sustainably," says John Sohn, senior associate with World Resources Institute.
Lily de Torre, director of the indigenous rights group Racimos de Ungurahui, says semi-nomadic indigenous groups such as the Nahua, Nanti, and Kirineri are increasingly threatened by fatal illnesses caused by contact with oil workers.
Reportedly, back in February, Ms. Torre and a delegation of Amazonian tribal leaders attended an oil-industry meeting of minds in Houston, Texas where Peru’s oil company, Perúpetro was busy tendering rainforest tracts.
"We told prospective companies that seven of the blocks being offered were superimposed on isolated indigenous territories," she says. "And we told them to expect problems because there they were going to come across people that would reject them and get into altercations with their workers."
An official for the Peruvian health ministry, Segundo Pergara, claims his agency is attempting to teach indigenous people about managing public health as it relates to the area’s natural resources. But the executive director of the Center for the Development of Indigenous Amazonia, Lelis Rivera, disagrees.
"The state has always been absent from the region." Mr. Riveras says his group helps natives "... prepare to deal with people who come to trample on the rights."
Mr. Rivera also pointed out that, unfortunately, according to Peruvian law, even though indigenous communities have the right to be consulted, they are virtually powerless to stop oil and gas exploration companies who carry government concessions. In a mostly ceremonial gesture, corporations do seek what they call "social licenses" with affected communities.
Nevertheless, native supporters continue to apply pressure on companies they determine whose operations are a threat to the environment even though:
"When no agreement exists between the communities and the companies," he says, "the state in the end guarantees that it will deliver the resource for the company."
A California based conservation group, Amazon Watch, and Earth Rights International released a report last week accusing U.S. based Occidental Petroleum of polluting areas in northern Peru. The report went on by saying the oil company is ignoring industry standards and following out-of-date oil operation practices. Occidental denies the claim.
Activists are also engaged with oil companies in southeastern Peru, specifically a natural gas project backed in part by Hunt Oil, a Texas based company, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The project, Camisea, is worth an estimated $1.6-billion and has generated some $700-million in government royalties in the past three-years but has also suffered a series of setbacks, including contaminated pipeline spills. The area’s indigenous people have also attributed the downgrading of fishing holes and hunting grounds to the project.
Even though project backers claim that, the problem(s) have been taken care of, E-Tech, a California non-profit engineering firm, disagrees with IDB’s analysis and wants them and other funders to deny loan requests for a piggyback project to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the U.S. by the year 2010. The project is aptly titled Camisea II.
Peter Kostishack, a Washington-based human rights activist commented on the controversy:
"People are looking to Camisea to set a standard for what goes on in the Peruvian Amazon."
Conservation groups say the challenge now is to find the best way to hold oil companies bound to their shareholders, to higher, more costly environmental and social standards. This is especially difficult in poorer countries like Peru and other underdeveloped South American countries with ineffective or corrupt regulators.
"The world is awash in private capital," says Mr. Sohn. "We see number of banks adopting better standards but many still don't see the business case for environmental standards or for free, prior, informed, consent of native groups."
Hmm, I smell sulphur.
More Info:
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting provided a travel grant to the author of this article, Kelly Hearn. For information on other Pulitzer Center projects, visit their website.
Global Response
Documentary on the indigenous people of Peru and the effect oil & natural gas exploration has on their communities
Multinational Investment and its Impact on Peru’s Amazonian Indigenous Peoples
Bush, the Rainforest, and a Gas Pipeline to Enrich His Friends
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