I’m not sure if this even made the news in the United States, but I think some of you might be interested in what is happening with oil development here in Ecuador.

Since the 1970’s oil has become more and more a part of the Ecuadorian economy as oil deposits in the Amazon have been developed. Currently, the area drawing the most attention is an oil concession known as Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini, more popularly the ITT(a few kilometers from the research station that I’ll be spending 3 weeks at this month). This particular block happens to be located in the heart of Yasuni National Park, a huge rainforest reserve in eastern Ecuador. It is widely considered the most biodiverse area on the planet. Coincidentally, it also contains about 846 million barrels of oil, which oil companies have been itching to drill for years.

During the Copenhagen climate negotations this past December, Ecuador’s President Rafeal Correa proposed a deal asking for $350 million each year from developed nations in return for not drilling in Yasuni. The idea was that this money would replace the taxes and royalties that would be paid to the Ecuadorian government by oil companies. Essentially, Ecuador was asking for the industrialized (and largely deforested) countries, to put their money where their mouth was, and fund the conservation of the Ecuadorian rainforest. Aside from Germany, very few countries pledged a substantial amount of money, and as far as I know the United States pledged exactly nothing. The credibility of the proposal itself took a hit when Correa announced that any country that conditionally pledged should keep their money. The deal has now all but fallen through as most contributors have reneged.

This past week, the company with rights to the ITT, Petroamazonas, announced that it was investing $550 million for the extraction of oil in the ITT and Yasuni National Park, meaning that drilling will likely start in 2012. Interestingly, with the approval of their new Constitution last spring, Ecuador became the first country in the world to formally recognize that the environment had rights. However, the declaration of nature’s rights had one caveat: if the proposed activity benefits the general public, the “rights” of the environment can be ignored. Clearly in this case, the environment’s supposed rights were trumped by the world’s thirst for oil and Ecuador’s quest for prosperity.

On the one hand, it’s difficult for me to criticize the Ecuadorian government for this decision. I hail from a country that has not only deforested and developed most of its landmass, but we also drive the market for oil, which creates big incentives for drilling in poorer countries. I grew up with a roof over my head, a refridgerator full of food and a warm bed, who am I to say that Ecuadorians shouldn’t strive for the same? Here, oil is known as “negro oro” or black gold, because of the potential that it has to pull the country out of paralyzing poverty. The reality is that many oil companies build schools and infrastructure in the rural, isolated communities where they work. Many of these communities have been all but forgotten by the government, so oil presents the possibility of an education, a job, and eventually, a path out of poverty. Its hard to tell people who only want a better life for their children that they need to leave the land that could change their lives untouched.

The saddest part of this story is that 90% of Ecuadorians have never been to Yasuni, and have no way to comprehend the importance of the place that oil development in the ITT will degrade or destroy. If drilling does begin, the world will have sacrificed yet another jewel in the unquenchable thirst for oil.

Another version of this article has also been published on the sustainable slump blog, at sustainablelslump.wordpress.com

According to conventional wisdom, there probably never was a great time to pay an unpredictable Latin American country with a dodgy debt reputation a lot of money not to sell a resource which your economy is dependent on. That was essentially the reaction of the majority of the international community when Ecuador´s President Rafael Correa first asked for international “compensation” not to exploit the estimated 960 million barrels of oil in the Ishpingo Tambacocha Tipituni oilfield, located deep in the heart of the Yasuni National Park. No amount of arguing about the benefits from protecting unrivalled biodiversity, isolated indigenous groups, or even the planet´s climate could move international governments to give Correa´s flagship environmental policy anything more than faint praise. So why, in the middle of recession, have the German government just made a concrete offer of $650m over the next 13 years? In fact, the environmentalist arguments in favor of not exploiting the ITT have never been in doubt. What has changed is that Ecuador has made various compromises in order to transform the proposal from an environmentalist pipe dream to a viable alternative to an apparent development-conservation dilemma:

 1 – Ceding a certain amount of autonomy to the financiers about the use of the money, be it in biodiversity conversation, renewable energies, or social programmes.

2 – Providing guarantees to investors, by selling bonds which would convert into debt with interest if any future government were to proceed with exploitation.

3 – Agreeing that the administration of any contribution would happen under the auspices of an international organization, possibly the Inter-American Bank.

4 – Accepting that governments and companies would only invest in the Yasuni-ITT if they could use it to offset their carbon emissions.

Essentially, the Ecuadorian Government wants to issue Yasuni Guarantee Certificates, which will be linked to the price of offset credits in the EU’s caroon trading system. Let me make it clear, I agree with those environmentalists who claim that including any “offset” option undermines the environmental integrity of the proposal, because the avoided emissions from the Yasuni-ITT proposal can only be claimed if you take a long-term view that oil is finite, and any oil pemranently set aside from exploitation is therefore a benefit. In the short term, however, the oil will be made up from other countries, meaning the Yasunit-ITT will not lead to  lower emissions for some time, and therefore cannot be equated with immediate, current emissions. However, I do see the use of carbon trading as interestign because it takes a market-based concept, and uses it to actually restrict the amount of fossil fuel extraction being used to feed the market-based economy. More than anything, I do sympathise with a government proposal that aims to do the right thing by Ecuador’s natural heritage and indigenous population, but has to make do with the reality of a highly short-sited, selfish and feckless international community.

I also believe that any sceptics of the proposal need only to look at the other side of the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border to see the alternative to the Yasuni-ITT proposal. In a region which is similarly rich in oil, with parallel levels of biodiversity, and the presence of voluntarily isolated indigenous peoples, the Peruvian government, which has already shown its willingness to use its army to force the pushing back of the extraction frontier, has leased a block to Perenco. Rafael Correa is not a saint, and he is probably not, in his heart, an environmentalist, as I have explained in my other blogs. However he has at least recognize the existence of the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples, and the rights of these peoples to choose whether, when, and how they make contact with national societies. Alana Garcia, on the other hand, claims that these peoples (which have a presence on both sides of the border) were simply invented by NGO’s in a conspiracy against Peru’s development interests. I think that discource sounds familiar, I’ve heard it in other contexts, and there’ s not much need to really dwell one it. I also think that the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, warts an all, is a better alternative for all parties concerned.

On the German side, the Government appears to be demonstrating that there is no inherent reason for governments to suddenly ignore environmental issues due to budget constraints. Beyond that, the willingness to put money into such an unconventional initiative demonstrates that governments can and should look beyond the short-term realities of the slump, and actually make investments in initiatives which do not simply entail a smooth return “business as usual” based on unbridled fossil fuel extraction. If governments are brave enough to recognize that the age of unbridled fossil fuel extraction must be brought to a close, they would see that the Yasuni-ITT Initiative could be replicated in many other countries, particularly those which have proven oil reserves in areas of high environmental value.

This page contains links to information about Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. One of the greatest Natural Reserves in the world. Home of hundreds of species, and abundant flora and fauna. Site of contemporary controversy due to the illegal oil drilling and logging.
Hope you spread the word,
thnx

CLICK HERE TO GO!

Check out our site dedicated to the social and environmental issues facing one of Ecuador’s indigenous tribes, the Huaorani.

Nous avons vu dans un article précédent que les ressources naturelles constituaient non seulement un enjeu important en Amazonie mais aussi une source de conflit entre gouvernements et peuples autochtones. Au Pérou, il a fallu des affrontements violents et plusieurs dizaines de morts pour que le gouvernement abroge les décrets qui facilitaient l’exploitation des ressources sur le territoire des Indiens. En Équateur, les Indiens ont accusé le président CORREA de se vendre au secteur minier. Toujours en Équateur, l’exploitation du pétrole amazonien est un enjeu important. Dans un livre publié par HEGOA (l’Institut des Études sur le Développement et la Coopération Internationale de l’Université du Pays basque), Las palabras de la Selva, Carlos MARTÍN BERISTAIN, Darío PÁEZ ROVIRA et Itziar FERNÁNDEZ analysent les différentes conséquences de l’exploitation pétrolière, depuis 25 ans par la multinationale Texaco, sur la forêt amazonienne et sur ses habitants. On peut télécharger gratuitement cet ouvrage ici. Enfin, un article publié par Le Monde nous explique comment l’Équateur a renoncé à exploiter le pétrole:

L’Equateur renonce à exploiter le pétrole du Yasuni

LE MONDE | 07.07.09 | 15h35

Sous la jungle, du pétrole. Faut-il l’exploiter pour assurer le développement d’un petit pays comme l’Equateur ? Faut-il le laisser sous terre pour préserver la forêt amazonienne ? La “révolution citoyenne” promise par le président de gauche Rafael Correa se veut verte : Quito vient de confirmer sa décision de ne pas exploiter les 920 millions de barils qui couvent sous le parc Yasuni. Mais le gouvernement équatorien espère une compensation financière de la communauté internationale.

“Alors que le réchauffement climatique est devenu une priorité mondiale, nous allons éviter l’émission de 410 millions de tonnes de CO₂ dans l’atmosphère, en laissant le pétrole sous terre”, explique Roque Sevilla, président du conseil de direction de l’initiative Yasuni-ITT – du nom des trois champs pétroliers Ishpingo, Tambococha et Tiputini. Une délégation équatorienne est venue en Europe, en Allemagne et en Grande-Bretagne, notamment à la mi-juin, pour présenter le projet.

Le protocole de Kyoto s’est fixé pour objectif la réduction des émissions de dioxyde de carbone. L’Equateur veut faire reconnaître la valeur de la “non émission”. L’idée est d’émettre des certificats de garantie Yasuni (CGY) et de les faire accepter sur le marché des certificats de réduction d’émission de carbone (CER). Au tarif du jour, la non exploitation de Yasuni pourrait rapporter plus de 5 milliards de dollars (3,6 milliards d’euros).

Le parc Yasuni est une réserve inégalable de biodiversité : “1 000 espèces d’arbres dans toute l’Amérique du Nord, 1 000 espèces d’arbres par hectare du parc Yasuni”, résume M. Sevilla. Ce parc s’étend sur 950 000 hectares de forêt à la frontière péruvienne.

Outre la richesse de sa flore et de sa faune, il abrite deux des derniers peuples isolés de la planète. Les Tagaeri et les Taromenane, déjà menacés par les trafiquants de bois, ne survivraient sans doute pas à l’arrivée des forages et des derricks.

Les compagnies pétrolières jurent, elles, que les techniques propres permettent de réduire au minimum l’impact environnemental de l’extraction du brut.

En 2007, M. Correa avait présenté aux Nations unies une première version de l’initiative Yasuni, en forme “d’ultimatum écologique”. Pour ne pas exploiter son pétrole, l’Equateur exigeait de la communauté internationale une compensation annuelle équivalente à la moitié du manque à gagner estimé pour le pays, soit 350 millions de dollars pendant treize ans. Les Etats ne se sont pas bousculés au portillon pour payer. Seul le Parlement allemand a montré un réel intérêt en votant une motion.

Depuis, l’Equateur a adopté une nouvelle Constitution qui reconnaît des droits à la nature. Le prix du baril s’est effondré. Et Quito a peaufiné sa proposition, grâce aussi à des études de faisabilité financées par les Européens. “L’Equateur renonce une bonne fois pour toutes à exploiter le pétrole de Yasuni”, martèle M. Sevilla. Toute idée de marchandage ou d’ultimatum a disparu. Mais la volonté d’obtenir une compensation demeure.

Il est vrai que les réserves du Yasuni représentent 20 % des réserves certifiées de brut du pays. L’Equateur, qui a réintégré l’Organisation des pays exportateurs de pétrole (OPEP), produit 500 000 barils par jour. Le pétrole fournit plus de la moitié de ses exportations et plus du quart des recettes de l’Etat. L’argent obtenu de la vente des CGY sera versé sur un fonds géré sous contrôle international. Il permettra de financer la politique écologique du pays et le développement social de l’Amazonie.

La reforestation d’un million d’hectares en trente ans est inscrite au programme, ainsi qu’une stratégie d’économie et de substitution d’énergie – pour assurer, notamment, la mise en valeur des ressources géothermiques de ce pays andin riche en volcans. Selon le gouvernement, ces programmes devraient permettre d’éviter plus de 1 000 tonnes d’émission de CO₂.

En décembre, à Copenhague, l’Equateur espère servir de modèle. “L’initiative Yasuni pourrait servir de projet pilote pour renégocier et perfectionner le protocole de Kyoto”, affirme M. Sevilla, ancien maire de Quito, patron de la plus grande entreprise de tourisme du pays et écologiste. “Quand, en 1989, l’organisation Natura que je dirigeais ici a proposé le premier rachat de dette équatorienne contre nature, pour un montant de 10 millions de dollars, tout le monde nous a traités de dingues. Cela a marché”, rappelle-t-il, enthousiaste.

A jaguar recently captured in a camera trap in Ecuador. (Photo/Santiago Espinosa)

The Amazon forests of Ecuador may be some of the most biologically rich on Earth, and thanks to the innovative technology of camera traps triggered by body heat, the Wildlife Conservation Society has captured 75 images of American jaguars in little more than a year. The photos help biologist Santiago Espinosa and his team survey wildlife populations in Yasuni National Park and Waorani Ethnic Reserve – 6,500 sqaure miles of wilderness threatened by increasing oil development, invading road systems and bushmeat trades.

Espinosa is working with indigenous Waorani groups to set up and monitor the complex camera networks. So far the traps are proving a success, giving researchers and the public a glimpse at rarely seen Amazon wildlife in their natural habitat, including white-lipped peccaries, (a type of wild pig and important prey of the jaguar), and the truly bizarre-looking short-eared dog. While there are plans to extend the range monitored by camera traps to other regions of Ecuador, you can catch up on more photos from Yasuni National Park and Waorani Ethnic Reserve for the meantime at the Wildlife Conservation Society Web site.

October 2008

Published by the Council of Hemispheric Affairs, www.coha.org

As well as being hailed as part of a broader progressive trend in Latin America, the 2006 election of the left wing economist Rafael Correa in Ecuador elections was also seen as a significant advance for the country´s indigenous and

President Correa inspecting the damage done by oil development to local populations and ecosystems

environmentalist movements. Correa had famously learnt Quichua whilst doing voluntary work in the Ecuadorian Andes in his youth, and duly received significant electoral support from the country´s indigenous populations, as well as the backing of indigenous party Pachakutik. Moreover, his espousal of environmental causes and political alliances with ecologically minded politicians was greeted with cautious optimism by the country´s environmentalist movement. At the same time, though, Correa was elected on a platform to increase spending in services such as health and education, spending which is largely dependent on the revenue brought in by environmentally destructive activities such as oil and mining. This has led analysts to claim that the Government is caught in a classic development-conservation contradiction.

The Yasuni – Ishpingo Tambacocha Tipituni (ITT) Initiative

The Government´s stated commitment to indigenous rights and environmental conservation manifested in the unprecedented proposal to leave almost 1 billion barrels of oil in the Ishpingo Tambacocha Tipituni oilfield unexploited, in return for international compensation totalling half of projected revenues. The need to avoid exploitation was justified on three grounds: The need to conserve the unrivalled level of biodiversity of the Yasuni National Park, the protection of the “voluntarily isolated” Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples, and the international need to avoid the emission of 436 million tonnes of carbon. The compensation would be used for spending on social services, environmental conservation, and for generating environmentally sustainable sources of energy to move the country towards a “post-oil economy”. This initiative was quickly lauded by local and international environmentalist campaigners as being an original and innovative way of combating climate change by avoiding extraction (Acosta 2008).

Waorani Territory, the Yasuni National Park, and oil concessions

As yet, despite significant rhetorical support for the Initiative, the international community has failed to respond to the proposal with any significant offers of compensation. The Government has agreed to a request by the German Parliament to extend the deadline for the proposal until January 2009, and it is hoped that this will allow time for the proposal to be considered and embraced by the developed world. Even so, the timid response thus far has contributed to a sentiment in Ecuador that rich countries act hypocritically by demanding poor countries assume environmental responsibilities, but fail to respond to Initiatives like this.

I

The Government and Civil Society

Meanwhile, environmental groups like Accion Ecologica are preoccupied by the Government´s decision to promote the proposal on the basis of “carbon trading”. This is seen by campaigners as being a betrayal of its radical principles, as carbon trading mechanisms would allow donor countries to use their contributions as an excuse to keep contaminating domestically (Accion Ecologica 2008). This distrust is part of a growing rift between the Government and environmental groups, a rift which was also widened by the Government decision to give an environmental license to Brazilian company Petrobras to exploit Block 31, an area adjacent to the ITT (Although Petrobras have since withdrawn from Block 31). Moreover, whilst the new Constitution contains some significant advances such as the recognition of the “Rights of Nature”, it does not explicitly prohibit extractive activities from vulnerable areas, nor does it give affected local communities a right to veto harmful projects (Constitution 2008). The Government´s dispute with the environmentalist movement is matched by its appalling relations with the country´s historically influential indigenous organization, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). As well as the previously mentioned issues, the CONAIE accuse the Government of diluting its proposal for a plurinational state, and resisting the promotion of the status of Quichwa.

CONAIE President Marlon Santi´s formation was forged by his struggles against oil companies

Whilst supporting the “yes” vote in the upcoming referendum on the new Constitution, CONAIE President Marlon Santi believes Correa ´s desire is to coopt the country´s indigenous peoples, and has accused him of maintaining “racist” and “neo-liberal” policies (Santi 2008). For his part, Correa has repeatedly accused Ecuador´s social movements of being “extremist” or “infantile”, and has gone as far as saying “I hope that the Leftist radicals who do not believe in the oil companies, the mining companies, the market or the transnationals go away” (Cited in Denvir 2008). Such disputes between the leftist Government and civil society clearly have negative implications for the generation of pro-indigenous and environmentally sustainable policies in Ecuador.

The Waorani and the Oil Companies

In some ways, such debates are far removed from the reality of many Waorani living in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve, an area which includes the Yasuni National Park and the ITT oilfield. Whilst the effects of contamination and contact linked to oil exploitation could be potentially disastrous for the the voluntarily isolated Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples, the majority of their Waorani relatives have over 20 years of experience with the oil companies on their territory. This contact has caused significant cultural changes, and many Waorani live in modern houses with Western appliances such as fridges, televisions, DVD players, and even cars. In the communities of Tiguino and Bataboro, the Waorani receive free health care and education from the Canadian oil company Petrobell, as well as regular well-paid manual labour. Petrobell´s community relations representative is an extremely popular individual within the communities, and there are currently plans to establish a micro-enterprise. This would involve Petrobell buying fabrics, with which the Waorani women would make the uniforms for the oil workers, which they would then sell back to the oil company. Whilst many of the women are excited about this possibility, it seems clear that this enterprise will deepen their level of dependence on Petrobell. Given that oil reserves are expected to deplete within the next generation, the future of such communities is far from secure.

Waorani woman working for Petrobell oil company

Meanwhile, many Waorani are becoming increasingly conscious of the negative environmental effects of oil development on their territory. Despite oil companies´ claims to be using the cleanest technology available, contamination has still been significant, as can be seen by the leaking of 2000 barrels of oil and contaminated water near the community of Dicaron earlier this year (Terra Actualidad – EFE 2008).

Welcome to Repsolandia: This sign, in the thick of the Amazon rainforest and on the entry to Repsol´s concession "Block 16", warns oil workers to be keep all their operations secret, and to immediately report all outsiders who "could damage the integrity of the company". Entry into Block 16 is highly restricted (I didn´t manage it) as the company looks to prevent any kind of scrutiny about its operations there.

This has led to leaders like President of the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador (NAWE) Ewenguime Enqueri, who had previously signed deals with oil companies, to adopt increasingly oppositional positions towards oil development. Many communities, such as Baameno, are looking at ways of expanding community tourism and the sale of artisans as sources of income which do not contaminate the environment. This has been reflected by the formation of the Association of Waorani Women of the Ecuadorian Amazon (AMWAE), a sister organization of NAWE which opposes oil exploitation and promoted alternatives.

The Waorani and the Correa Government

Historically, the Ecuadorian state has effectively “privatized” its responsibilities towards the Waorani to private entities. The Waorani were first subjected to an intensive campaign of evangelization by American missionaries from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and the highly paternalistic “community relations” programs implemented by oil companies to dampen any resistance to their work there. Government officials are keen to proclaim a new era of participation and mutual respect with the region´s Waorani communities, and claim to have had an extremely positive response towards the ITT Initiative from virtually all Waorani communities, and its political leadership(Ra mos 2008). Such claims, however, have to be treated with extreme caution, as can be seen by the following conversation I had with Ewenguime Enqueri:

Enqueri: “Yeah, I had a conversation with someone from the Government. She said they were going to change, from oil, to carbon trading…But I´m not so sure, I think it could be worse than oil!”
Rachel Godfrey Wood: “But at least carbon trading won´t contaminate the environment…”
Enqueri: “Really? What, so, is it a good thing? Ever since they told me about this, I´ve been asking everybody if carbon trading´s a good thing or a bad thing…”

This demonstrates that rhetoric about “participation” does not necessarily mean a genuine inclusion of indigenous peoples in the formulation of policies, and therefore it is no surprise that the Waorani are often ambivalent or skeptical about the Government´s intentions. Leaders like Enqueri are unsure whether the Government´s professed concern for the Waorani and the Amazon is sincere. This skepticism manifests in the widespread belief among the Waorani that the Government is planning to use their land for colonisation projects, a claim which are justifiable given the history of the Waorani, but which has little basis in reality. Other Waorani, for example Huane, community leader of Noneno, see Government attempts to increase environmental controls as an imposition on their efforts to bring in income, and demand up to $1000 per month in order to stop cooperating with the loggers (Enqueri 2008). Government officials are aware of the difficulties of increasing environmental protections, and claim to be increasing participation with communities in order to generate alternatives. Clearly, though, participation needs to be genuine, and the Government must act quickly if it is to convince the Waorani that it generally wants to offer them social services and environmentally friendly sources of income.

Conclusion

Clearly, the implications of Correa´s “21st Century Socialism” for Amazonian indigenous communities and the natural habitats they live in remain unclear. The question of whether or not Ecuador manages to break with its history of promoting destructive oil exploitation in the Amazon and move towards a low carbon economy is largely dependent on the international communities´ will to recognize its own responsibilities, and assist in this process. At the time of writing, concrete assistance has been limited, suggesting that oil importing countries are more concerned with perpetuating their own unsustainable levels of consumption than genuinely aiming to combat climate change. At a national level, the Ecuadorian Government´s intentions with regards to natural environments remain ambiguous. In many ways, progress will depend on the strength of the new Constitution, and the ability of more environmentally minded politicians and civil society to use it to push towards a more environmentally sustainable economic model. With regards to the Waorani, whilst the Government has shown a clear intention of increasing environmentally sustainable income opportunities towards such communities, such intentions need to be matched by a significant, long term policies of genuine participation if “21st Century Socialism” is to mean anything more than “business as usual” in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Rachel Godfrey Wood 2008

Bibliography
Accion Ecologica, El ITT Versus el Yasuni: Alerta Verde 156 de Accion Ecologica, (September 2008) http://www.amazoniaporlavida.org/es/Noticias/El-ITT-versus-el-Yasuni-Alerta-verde-156-de-Accion-Ecologica.html
Acosta, Alberto, Mantener el Crudo en Tierra. Un Desafio parael Ecuador y el Mundo (June 2007), http://www.yasuni-itt.gov.ec/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=13
Denvir, Daniel, Wayward Allies: President Rafael Correa and the Ecuadorian Left, (July 2008), http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?article3586
Nueva Constitucion de le Republic del Ecuador, (2008), http://asambleaconstituyente.gov.ec/nueva-constituci-n-de-la-rep-blica-del-ecuador.html
Terra Actualidad – EFE, Posible Sancion Contra Repsol-YPF por Derrame en Yasuni, (February 2008), http://www.amazoniaporlavida.org/es/Noticias/Posible-sancion-contra-Repsol-YPF-por-derrame-en-Yasuni.html
Interviews
Interview with Marlon Santi, June 11 2008
Interview with Juana Ramos, June 16 2008
Interviews with Ewenguime Enqueri, June 20 – July 4

Action Alert: Ask the Ecuadorian Government to Protect Human Rights During Upcoming Anti-Mining Demonstrations

The Ecuador Solidarity Network, an organization based in Canada and the United States, is joining human rights and indigenous peoples organizations in calling on President Rafael Correa to respect human rights during nation wide protests against large-scale mining that will begin on Monday January 19th.

The protests will spread from the Amazon and reach Quito, Ecuador’s capital, on January 20th. Anti-mining protests earlier this month were met with police violence in the Southern provinces of Azuay, Loja, Zamora Chinchipe and Morona Santiago. A number of activists were beaten and detained, and one leader was critically injured after being shot in the head.

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and a number of farmer and environmental organizations are protesting against the recent approval of a mining law by Congress, opening the country to large-scale metal mining. Canadian mining companies would benefit from many of the concessions. The CONAIE and other organizations contend that the new law will allow large-scale mining in protected areas and contaminate critical community water supplies. The CONAIE is also protesting against government plans to drill for oil in the Yasuni National Park, the rainforest home of two indigenous communities in voluntary isolation.

Following recent statements from the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (APDH) and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the Ecuador Solidarity Network calls on activists around the world to support the human rights of protesters demonstrating against large-scale metal mining in Ecuador. The CONAIE emphasizes that the demonstrations will be peaceful and calls on President Correa to not use police or military forces against protesters.

E-mail President Rafael Correa and President of Congress Fernando Cordero and ask that the government take preventative action to ensure that protesters’ human rights are respected. We also denounce any attempt by right-wing organizations in the U.S. or Canada to opportunistically use the upcoming mobilizations to attack President Correa for motives that have nothing to do with indigenous rights or environmental protection.

Please send emails to:

Presidencia de la República, Presidente Rafael Correa:

presidencia @ presidencia . gov . ec

Presidencia Legislativa, Presidente de la Comision Legislativa y de Fiscalizacion, Fernando Cordero Cueva:

presidencia @ asambleaconstituyente . gov . ec

Please send a carbon copy of the messages to

ecuadorsolidarity @ gmail . com

Media Contacts:

Ecuador: Jennifer Moore, Ecuador Solidarity Network (593) 8-877-8928 / jenmoore0901 @ gmail . com

Canada: Jamie Kneen, Mining Watch (613) 761-2273

This is a letter from some of the people that Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s neo-capitalist, authoritarian president, calls “infantile” and “romantic”, probably because they didn’t go to the fancy white man’s schools that the fine president attended to learn that most anti-human of trades called economics, which is some sort of brain washing thing where you are taught that the human being is an entirely self-interested, rational agent who just wants to go shopping and doesn’t care for her community.

The letter is from the Waorani women who are getting systematically killed by the oil industry, which is enjoying strong protection from the Ecuadorian state, led by Correa:

“Manuela Omari Ima, who is the new chairperson of Waorani women’s organization, Amwae, has first hand experience in the devastating consequences of oil exploration. “The indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon have been decimated in just a few decades,” she says. “The Waorani people alone numbered around 16,000 at the end of the 1960s, when the oil exploration began. Today, there are no more than about a thousand of us left… I don’t know how much longer we can survive under the current conditions. Perhaps the industry will out-live us – judging by how it has wiped out other tribal peoples in the Amazon. Maybe the earth will have nothing left to give when the companies leave.”

Altogether, an estimated 90% of the indigenous peoples in the Amazon region of Ecuador have been wiped out over the past few decades, according to the FDA. Contamination from the oil industry, forced relocations, militarized violence and civilization-borne diseases are the critical factors behind the process of extinction.”

Letter of WAORANI women to the Government of Ecuador

Lago Agrio, 6th of November 2008

We, as women, made this document in paper and in your language. We cannot speak to you because we live far away and because you don’t understand our language.

Look at this paper Mr. President, it contains our words, the words of the Waorani women.

We want to live in a large territory, our culture is based on a large territory, it is ours, not because the State decided so, but because God gave it to us, therefore we talk of our land, our children, our language. As our ancestors told us: without land, we cannot live.

We do not want that they continue to enter and continue to contaminate our land. The companies must leave our territory in peace, here lived our grandfathers and we want everything to be clean again like before. Before, oil companies entered our land without us being aware, they provoked many problems and diseases, this cannot continue.

If oil exploitation is not stopped, the companies will continue to destroy our territory. The companies must leave us in peace, we want clean rivers and forests.

We want the government to tell these companies of foreign countries to stay away. We don ‘t want oil companies to enter in our territory, never again. We want to live in peace and in good health. Oil companies shouldn’t come here, negotiations with them should be stopped.

You, as the government, should recognize our territory and you shouldn’t allow oil companies to enter in our territory.

We don’t want oil, nor wood exploitation in the whole of the Waorani territory. We aren’t a “Bloc” or oil concession, we are a territory where we live and where our grandfathers have lived.

Where will our children cultivate their crops when they reach our age? From what will they live?

For a long time, the Tagaeris and Taromenanes have had to live hidden from wood loggers, who have entered to steal the cedar. These people have asked our husbands to go into the forest with them to kill our own people, to kill our own race. The loggers want the Tagaeris and Taromenanes dead, so they can enter and steal the wood, because the Tagaeris defend their territories with their spears, like did our grandfathers. We want them to live in peace, nobody should bother them, nobody should want to kill them, no lumber companies should be allowed to enter our house.

We know that there are 3 oil blocs in Yasuní over which you are taking decisions: bloc 16, 31 and 43 (ITT). We want that the oil will not be exploited in these blocs. We want that in bloc 16, the company be obliged to clean what it has destroyed, we want them to leave the land as it was before.
Stop the contamination and the wood exploitation.

Many Waoranis negotiate with companies the things which the government should provide, the government should understand this. Many times, leaders meet with companies to negotiate while the community is not aware of that. The government should help the Waoranis to take care of their territory, they shouldn’t help the companies to destroy it.

We, Waorani women, will continue to insist through our organization because we also claim for our children.

Signed by women from the following communities: Tarangaro, Miwaguno, Kacataro, Teweno, Batavoro, Kiguaro, Dayuno, Ñoneno, Nemampare, Bameno, Kewairuno, Gareno, Tiguino, Wantaro.

Learn more about the Waorani people here:

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/929/49/

http://www.waorani.com/

http://intercontinentalcry.org/the-continuing-struggle-of-the-waorani/

ricevuto il 08/10/08 alle ore 08:39

“Ore dieci e trenta… appena finita lezione con Yasuno sensei… è il vero boss di rappongi! Veramente da paura!”

Here is an article in English that mentions some of the sources referred to by colonos when noting that Rafael Correa don’t give a toss about the indigenous people and campesinos whose self-described saviour he likes to present himself as in the global media’s corporate eye – something which he to quite some extent share with his Bolivian partner in populistic crime, Evo aMoralas, who:

“…rejected oil and gas expropriation, supports Big Oil interests, and embraced business as usual policies. Under nationalizations Morales-style, current contractual arrangements are effectively intact, and the country’s mineral resources have been sold off to the greatest ever number of foreign investors.

In addition, Morales broke his promise to triple the painfully low minimum wage, increased it 10% instead, and maintained previous neoliberal fiscal austerity and economic stability policies. He also tolerates the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s intrusive presence and the Pentagon’s Chapare military base; appointed hard right economic, defense and other ministers; opposed agrarian reform; supports large landowners; provides them large subsidies and tax incentives; and backs the Confederation of Private Businessmen in Bolivia by promoting foreign investment, social spending cuts, prioritization of exports, and other pro-business policies above the interests of the people who elected him. Petras says Morales “excels in public theater” by combining “political demagogy” to his base while backing neoliberal IMF austerity and business-friendly policies”. (Read more about forgotten promises here.)

We’re much too busy to translate, sooo many documents floating about these days, so here goes from Upsidedownworld.org, beginning with a highlight:

“According to the CONAIE declaration, “We reject President Rafael Correa´s racist, authoritarian and antidemocratic statements, which violate the rights of [Indigenous] nationalities and peoples enshrined in international conventions and treaties. This constitutes an attack against the construction of a plurinational and intercultural democracy in Ecuador. Correa has assumed the traditional neoliberal posture of the rightist oligarchy.“

Ecuador: CONAIE Indigenous Movement Condemns President Correa
Written by Daniel Denvir and Thea Riofrancos
Friday, 16 May 2008

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) declared itself in opposition to the government of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on May 12. The CONAIE accused the president of continuing right-wing neoliberal economic and racist social policies. The harsh condemnation focused on Correa´s opposition to two key demands: the recognition of Ecuador as a plurinational state in the new constitution and the requirement that communities must offer prior consent before large-scale mining and other major extractive projects take place.

Ecuador is currently governed by a Constituent Assembly, which is writing a new Ecuadorian constitution as well as performing all legislative functions. The Assembly was convened after voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional referendum in April 2007. Members of Correa´s Alianza Pais party won 74 of the 130 seats. Patchakutik, the CONAIE’s electoral arm, has four representatives in the Assembly.

While the CONAIE has supported a number of Correa`s programs, most social movement activists in Ecuador say that this conflict was foreseeable. Correa`s support for large scale mining and his opposition to plurinationality run up against the indigenous movement’s top political priorities.

Plurinationality is a broad framework that encompasses a number of key indigenous movement demands, including cultural rights—such as bilingual education and culturally appropriate healthcare—and collective economic rights such as the requirement of affected communities’ consent before any exploration or extraction of non-renewable resources, whether by State or multinational corporations.

The CONAIE’s strong position against large-scale mining and for prior consent is a boon to Ecuador`s anti-mining movement, led by the National Coordinator in Defense of Life and Sovereignty. Over the past several months, the Coordinator has organized massive road blockades in Southern Ecuador, sparking government condemnation and repression. In response, a large pro-mining march took place in Quito in early May, apparently organized by government and industry forces.

The environment is a central issue for the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, as they see cultural rights as closely tied to territorial rights and the preservation of biodiversity. The CONAIE’s environmental demands extend beyond the indigenous movement and involve close collaboration with local and international environmental organizations. The CONAIE, along with a wide range of regional social movements, rejects the South American regional integration plan known as the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA). The development program, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank and other regional financial institutions, such as the Brazilian Development Bank and the Andean Development Corporation, consists of mega-development projects such as dams and hydroelectric plants. According to the Bank Information Center, the IIRSA “poses one of the greatest challenges to environmental sustainability and social justice today.” In Ecuador, the main IIRSA project is the Manta-Manaos multimodal transportation axis between Ecuador and Brazil, which includes building a port and the construction of several new roads leading to and from the coast. In the words of the Ecuadorian government, this transportation project will achieve the “dream of joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through a terrestrial-river route,” and will facilitate the creation of a new East-West trade axis.

The CONAIE also strongly criticized the negotiations for a Free Trade Deal (misleadingly called “Association Agreement”) between the European Union and the Andean Community, which took place three weeks ago.

The CONAIE’s leadership is now visiting and holding consultations with its constituent base communities throughout Ecuador. The leadership will reconvene at the end of the month to make decisions about what actions to take next. It is widely rumored that the CONAIE will launch a national indigenous uprising, events that have in the past shut down the entire country. According to the CONAIE spokesperson Pacha Taran, “We are not calling for an uprising. But we are not ruling that out, either.”

While certain members of Correa´s Alianza Pais (AP) party have made statements in support of plurinationality, Correa and a number of AP assembly members either oppose the measure or support it symbolically while opposing its substance of collective territorial and cultural rights. As Taran put it, “Correa likes us, except for when we start to protest. Then he tells us to shut up.”

According to the CONAIE declaration, “We reject President Rafael Correa´s racist, authoritarian and antidemocratic statements, which violate the rights of [Indigenous] nationalities and peoples enshrined in international conventions and treaties. This constitutes an attack against the construction of a plurinational and intercultural democracy in Ecuador. Correa has assumed the traditional neoliberal posture of the rightist oligarchy.”

The declaration goes on to accuse the government of “handing over national and indigenous territories to transnational oil, mining, pharmaceutical, logging and hydroelectric companies.” The CONAIE also demands that the Constitutional Assembly support food sovereignty and declare Ecuador “free of transgenics and agrofuels.”

Furthermore, the twelve-point resolution called for the firing of Minister of Mines and Petroleum Galo Chiriboga and Minister of the Environment Marcela Aguiñaga. Chiriboga has been widely criticized for allowing foreign companies, namely the Brazilian state company PetroBras, to violate Ecuadorian law. Aguiñaga is accused of allowing large scale logging in the Amazon and of failing to adequately investigate the murders of an undetermined number of Huaoroni indigenous people earlier this year. It is widely believed that the Huaorani were killed by either loggers or paramilitary groups hired by logging companies. They have also called for action to be taken against Attorney General Washington Pesántez. Pesántez is accused of persecuting social movement activists from unions and indigenous groups and organizations like Indymedia.

Finally, the CONAIE declared its solidarity with the people of Bolivia and President Evo Morales. They condemned the Bolivian right-wing’s attempt to declare wealthy regions like Santa Cruz “autonomous” and warned against pro-autonomy statements by Ecuadorian opposition leader Jaime Nebot. Although this resolution represents the indigenous movements’ strongest public condemnation of Correa to date, the CONAIE makes it clear that they are not part of the right-wing opposition and oppose Correa on their own terms.

Daniel Denvir and Thea Riofrancos are independent journalists from the United States and collaborators at the Latin American Information Agency (www.alainet.org) in Quito, Ecuador. They are also editors at the forthcoming journal Caterwaul Quarterly (www.caterwaulquarterly.com). Daniel Denvir is a 2008 recipient of NACLA’s Samuel Chavkin Investigative Journalism Grant.

Rafael Correa is the poster boy of neo-socialism – he wears Quechua shirts and bathes himself in the limelight of indigeous peoples’ struggle in the global media, makes promises to the poor and the illiterate (and also delivers on some of his promises) – but more than anything he is increasingly despised by the indigenous peoples and the campesinos “who mean nothing to him” and who he represses violently if they organise against the foreign companies that Correa contracts their land away to. Also known in international socialist and even environmental circles as the saviour of the Yasuni national park. But nothing could be further from the truth – as has been reported by the colonos blog since before Correa entered office.

I have just returned from a meeting where yachaks (shamans) from various regions of “el Oriente” (basically the Ecuadorian Amazon) have gathered all weekend to discuss, among other things, Correa’s rejection in the constituent assembly processes of collective rights and a range of specific demands made by the indigenous movements as part of the rewriting of the Ecuadorian constitution. Talks are of strikes and some suggest that another uprising is brewing – at any rate Rafael Correa is very unpopular with indigenous people and campesinos, because he arrogantly have stated that he cares not about their demands since “they only constitute a few percent of his voters“.

So what does Mr. Correa care about – well, like the Clintons he seems mostly fascinated by inscribing himself into the white man’s history of conquest of the world through an industrial economy that is essentially based on exploitation of labour and pachamama (mother earth).

“Unasur to boost financial self-sufficiency in S America:

BRASILIA, May 23 (Xinhua) — Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said here Friday that the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) will boost programs to help realize financial self-sufficiency in the region.

After signing the bloc’s constitutive agreement in the Brazilian capital, Correa said it was “a historical day for South America, which brings great expectation and hope.”

“We can do like the European Union (EU). As the EU has to explain why they united, we will have to explain to our children and grandchildren why we took so long to do it,” he told a press conference.”“

Correa’s vision and that of UNASUR is about entrance into an economy that many ever since its inception – with the conquest of new worlds and the industrial production apparatus that makes wars for more profit possible – have been fighting. And for quite some years it has been quite clear that it is a very unsustainable economy that the planet cannot sustain.

Of course it is the rich and the powerful who mostly have to change their wasteful ways, but to happily join that horrible economy that Correa is so blinded by and which accelerates climate change and destroys civilization is plain stupid. However, the middle classes who get better roads (this, the year where it seems like we have to take drastic measure and actions to counter climate change, is the year of asphalt in Ecuador), nicer cars to drive them on and bigger supermarkets to park them by and shop in, and of course the capitalists that exploit the natural resources that he so happily gives to foreign and private interests are laughing all the way to the bank while the earth cries.

The rest of the chinese article follows.

“The Ecuadorian president said the integration will bring about fast and concrete results.

“We can no longer be rhetorical, and Unasur must develop itself with concrete improvements in living standard of our peoples,” he said.

In addition, Correa mentioned the project of financial integration through the Bank of the South as “fundamental.”

“We can be self-sufficient in financial terms,” said Correa, adding that, if member states keep their money “together,” they will avoid having to “kneel down to get a small loan here and there.”

Correa also spoke of the importance of cooperation in energy and transportation in the region, saying that it “would safeguard our sovereignty and enhance our capacity to make our own decisions.”

He also agreed with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet on the harmonization of social and educational policies in the region.

For example, Correa said certificates are to be recognized in all Unasur countries.

Referring to Brazil’s proposal to create a South American defense council, Correa said he approved of it, although it was not his country’s priority and that it would be necessary to reach true regional consensus before turning words into action in that matter.

He called on all countries to “permanently commit to following international law,” in reference to Colombia’s military incursion into Ecuadorian territory on March 1.“

How about Correa committing to environmental justice and the human rights of indigenous peoples!??!

On January 1 of this year, a major oil spill occurred in the Yasuní UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve as part of the workings of Spanish oil giant REPSOL. REPSOL is working in the oil fields of concessionary Block 16, which happens to overlap Huaorani ancestral territory.

Even though several months have passed since the spill was detected, and despite the severity of the event and the insistent pleas of the Huaorani community Dícaro that the company may undertake the necessary clean up and remediation, no action has been taken by REPSOL.

Timeline:

16th of February 2008: The Huaorani community presents a complaint to the local Human Rights Council of Orellana (an Amazonian province of Ecuador) asking for the immediate intervention of this authority.

14th of April 2008: The Human Rights Council of Orellana summons the parties (REPSOL YPF and the community Dícaro) for a Public Mediation Audience that is later suspended upon discovery that the lawyer representing the company was not accredited for this function.

21st of April 2008: A second Public Mediation Audience is convened at which no representative of REPSOL appears.

28th of April 2008: A third Public Mediation Audience is convened, at which the once again absent REPSOL representatives are being declared in contempt of court by Dr. Vinicio Jiménez, Human Rights Commissioner of Orellana.

The Huaorani community Dícaro and the human rights and environmental organizations of Orellana demand the immediate remediation and the adoption of all the means necessary to be able to recuperate and decontaminate the affected and surrounding zone. Moreover they demand full compensation and redress for the harm caused.

In the meantime (late March), president Correa met with REPSOL head Antonio Brufau in Quito, where they “expressed their wish that the ongoing talks to renegotiate oil contracts can be successfully concluded over the coming weeks”.

All information in this post is from the press releases of the independent Press Committee of Orellana, which also states: “the oil companies have never before been so at ease and protected by the armed forces as under Correa” – “Anyone protesting is put in prison and called a terrorist”.

The formal complaint is signed by:

Comunidad Waorani Dícaro
Orellana Human Rights Committee
Asociación de Líderes Comunitarios Red Ángel Shingre
Asociación Catalana de Ingeniería Sin Fronteras

(This article was first published in an abridged version by CarbonWeb)

The Ecuadorian National Park and UNESCO Worldwide Biosphere Reserve, Yasuní, has recently become the main stage for discussions alluding to, insisting on, and negotiating pathways to an oil-free future – or rather to a future where oil remains undisturbed in its subterranean place of origin. Some oil at least. The “Leave the oil in the soil” proposal, instigated by environmental grassroots organisations, and taken on by Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, who announced it at the UN High Level Meeting on Climate Change last September, is to not drill for oil in some parts of the Yasuní National Park. Ecuador will leave the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil fields untouched in exchange for international compensation. Compensation of about US$ 450 million per year for ten years would entail a commitment by the South American state not to exploit nearly 920 million barrels of petroleum, and hence has been presented as preventing the emission of around 111 million tons of carbon. (At the moment Ecuador is South America’s fifth-largest oil producer, with a daily production of about a half-million barrels of crude.)

It seems that the neo-socialist revolution in Ecuador has found its sunshine story that has already inspired similar proposals with regard to oil and other natural resources in several other countries. But behind this glamorous initiative lurks the reality of the wider project of Ecuadorian reform in the context of contemporary geopolitical change. The current political processes in Ecuador incorporate the development of radical social-democratic programmes for the redistribution of health, wealth, and education. At the same time, as part of the Latin American integration project (UNASUR), Ecuador’s political and economic changes include the expansion of projects which are oriented towards global free market capitalism – albeit with a changed geopolitical emphasis: not the US or Europe, but China is now the most popular partner in town – and these projects encourage and are dependent upon accelerated exploitation of the natural resources of the Amazon.

The radical Ecuadorian ITT proposal, hence, has to be understood as staged against a backdrop of intensifying development and infrastructural integration of the entire Amazon basin. Mega-projects to improve and enlarge road and river transport, the so-called interoceanic corridors, combined with dams for hydroelectricity stations and extensive power and communications cabling, are set to tear open the rainforest, facilitating intensive agricultural use of the area, above all for ranching, soya and biofuel crops, facilitating logging, mining and of course oil exploitation. The corridors will connect the Pacific with the Atlantic, boosting trade links between the most important economic hubs of the region, and with China whose shipping companies will be able to avoid passing through the US-controlled Panama canal to reach booming Brazilian cities, thereby increasing and accelerating the global circulation of goods that enriches the few and bedazzles the many.

There is already a road straight into Yasuní – for the exclusive use of the oil companies and the military. Passing by Yasuní on the Napo River, it might surprise the innocent traveller to encounter trucks, docks, and general industrial activity. The Manta-Manaus corridor, a multi-modal transport structure from the Ecuadorian to the Brazilian coast will transform this river into something of a major motor way, and bring the inevitable ecological and social pressure that accompanies such infrastructural undertakings right onto Yasuní territory. Yasuní might soon resemble a zoo on the outskirts of a big city.

Moreover, the ITT reserve does not equal Yasuní. The entire Ecuadorian Amazon is divided up into concessionary oil blocks, five of which overlap Yasuní territory. It is also interesting to note that the National Park Yasuní is not coextensive with the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Yasuní. The latter is larger and includes an equally biodiverse area just outside the Park’s boundaries, the ancestral territory of the Huaorani people, now full of oil wells belonging to Block 16 and the company REPSOL. 70% of Block 31, contracted to Brazilian Petrobras, lie inside the Yasuní National Park, and 100% inside the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. According to seismic studies from 1998, this block is estimated to contain 230 million barrels of heavy crude. 65% of Block 14 are also within the National Park, as are smaller percentages of Block 15 and 17. Block 17 partly extends into the “Untouchable Zone”, home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane, peoples in voluntary isolation, who refuse to have any contact whatsoever with other human groups, and who will kill to clarify their point, which in turn has made them the targets of (often indigenous) illegal loggers and oil workers and resulted in a massacre of a family of 12 in 2003.

Reality in the Ecuadorian Amazon, like everywhere, is messy. Of course, nobody living in the area wants to see more oil spills, contamination, disease. But people have real and really imagined cash needs, and mostly it is the oil industry which offers the easiest route into the web of wage labour and market relations that enables a kind of perceived fulfilment of some of these needs.

Creating popular alternatives to the oil economy is pivotal. In Ecuador, eco-tourism is the leading contender. But for eco-tourism to work in North-West Amazonia, a heart-breaking amount of oil spills and other environmental disasters would need to be cleaned up and remedied. Whole generations of people would have to find ways of luring and serving easy-adventure-seekers in ramshackle communities that lack such basic facilities as clean water and authentic traditions. It might be possible, but it is not straightforward. Especially not nowadays when protests, no matter to which end, in oil-producing communities are severely punished. A recent protest concerning as harmless a demand as the failure to pave major stretches of a main road has led to the suspension of basic civil rights. President Correa has made his intolerance towards unrest around oil wells and other production structures crystal clear and declared a State of Emergency in the province of Orellana in November 2007. Curfews, military patrols, violent raids, incarcerations of dozens of people under terrorism and sabotage charges, including the governor of the province for her support of the protests, were all intended to “guarantee oil production”.

More recent news have it that Venezuela’s and Ecuador’s state oil companies will team up to build a US$ 5.5 billion oil refinery in the coastal province of Manabí with a processing capacity of 300,000 barrels a day. Correa’s zero-tolerance attitude to demonstrations in oil producing areas, combined with such “energy integration” ventures as the joint refinery, make the purportedly radical environmental proposal of leaving the ITT oil in the soil appear in an opportunistic rather than a green light.

Of course, Correa is not the only one pushing the ITT proposal in Ecuador. Alongside the government, there is also a civil society campaign for deeper socio-economic change that combines ITT demands with the search for pathways towards a Post-Oil Ecuador where all remaining oil, not just from beneath the ITT reserve, would stay underground. Not everyone working on the broader campaign envisions it to be reliant on the international community for compensation. Even though there are attempts to frame the proposal as a matter of ecological justice – as a reparation or ecological debt which the North owes the South – prevalent global power dynamics are likely to favour the usual “market solutions to market disasters” and convert Yasuní into a set of pollution licenses for sale to the highest bidder in the new bioeconomic world order of environmental services and carbon trade.

In her recent piece in the Carbonweb newsletter, Esperanza Martinez from OilWatch Ecuador argued that sovereignty, the concept and the practice, cannot be commodified. But, she also realises, the struggle over the meaning of, and over the means to sovereignty remains unsettled. Whose self is the self in self-determination? Appeals to sovereignty are still very much haunted by the spectres of the nation state, place, and property. To generate a vision of shared planetary self-determination, subversion of such concepts is probably indispensable. Sovereignty implies supreme decision-making power. If linked, as it is, to a nation state and its territory in a context of hegemonic private property, it amounts to a license to exploit, destroy, sell off, as “the nation” sees fit. For the time being, the official ITT proposal is just a conversion of one commodity (extracted oil) into another (unextracted oil), with no particular reference to the self-determination of those locally implicated – in fact, their rights to voice their opinion in this specific context are being systematically undermined through the investing of ever more draconian powers in the army and police force. Framing the proposal in terms of ecological debt is a more radical move, which cannot, however, remain conditional on a country’s geographical luck of extending over an oil field. What about the ecological debt owed countries without oil wells, or mega-diverse rainforests for that matter? There still remains some groundbreaking conceptual work to be done.

Data on oil blocks from: “Atlas Amazonico del Ecuador: Agresiones y resistencias” by Accion Ecologica and CONAIE (funded by Oil Watch et al.). Limited edition. 2006.

More info on:

http://www.liveyasuni.org/

http://www.sosyasuni.org/en/

http://colonos.wordpress.com/category/yasuni/

We watched Leonardo DiCaprio’s “11th hour” last night (you might be able to watch it here or via quicksilversreen.com and read more about it here) and although it was by no stretch of the imagination a very good film on any terms (structure, presentation of material, cinematography or in terms of delivering a profound radical political message) it was still a positive surprise. But hey! what would you expect, come on, be honest?

In the critical (mainstream environmentalist?) words of Rikke Bruntse-Dahl, writing for smartplanet.com:

“The overall message was that we’ve forgotten that we’re part of nature and even though the Earth as such will survive, it will not be a pleasant — or indeed habitable — place to be if we don’t start looking after it and each other. While it’s undoubtedly a good message, which we’d like as many people as possible to hear, the film itself is just not up to scratch.

An hour and a half of interviews with some interesting, inspiring people (and some random not-so-inspiring people), stock library footage of gigantic factory chimneys, oil rigs, melting icebergs and fires coupled with often cheesy music (uplifting when beautiful nature footage was shown and moody when the camera turned to smoke and fire) seemed dated and not very creative.

And then there were Leo DiCaprio’s comments and questions thrown in now and then for good measure. We normally adore him and his passion for the planet, but in The 11th Hour his narrator role came off stilted and unnatural — almost like he was acting too much for a role that really required earnestness (we wanted Leo, not Jack from Titanic or some other character). The directors could have used him in a much more exciting way, if you ask us.”.

I generally agree, that’s about it.

It begins with a series of footage that reminds you of Baraka (gone wrong)- which is a truly beautiful film – but rather than a stylish and self-respecting reference to Baraka it felt like poor plagiarism in a dis-jointed and at times essay-like unfolding. However, the opening message that, for a change, a certain degree of anthropocentrism is required (in the context of climate chaos and change) positively commenced the experience of the 11th Hour for me: “it is not a question of saving the planet, but saving ourselves (from ourselves)”. It somehow requires a self-transcendence to come to terms with changing our own lives so profoundly as we need to, now, we know, in order to save our selves. It’s a bit like the exercise thing if you have a modern knowledge economy job, if you don’t do it you degenerate – and we degenerate. The human being is a sick, unintelligent species collective speaking.

A good starting point and thread picked up on here and there – and I also liked the choice of many philosophical statements (from the environmental elite), some of which have profound anti-capitalist logical conclusions if you think about it and live it for while, but such conclusions, I found, were never reached (also rarely in the minds of the environmental establishment/vanguard, so perhaps no wonder…).

The 11th Hour – the last chance to act – goes as far as to tell us that the corporate board rooms of oil companies are to blame, that we as complicit consumers are to blame (“we cast a vote when we buy things” – [quoted from memory]) and that opportunism and greed defines human culture and always has defined human culture – given its bestial origins – but what is crucially missing from this “analysis” is that we live under an authoritative (patriarchal) system called capitalism which enhances, accentuates and rewards opportunism and greed. Our culture is based on a narrow, indeed opportunistic and greedy conception of property. It is not enough to discipline the politicians and the filthy few of the €xxonMobil, sHell et al. to reorganise our global culture. We live in a system that basically perpetuates our very worst of qualities – something at which we are bestially good: opportunism and greed.

To reconfigure our culture wholesale changes have to happen – from collective land rights and indigenous/permacultural stewardship and reforestation of forests (no more capitalistic logging, farming, and other destructive industrial processes) to solar and wind powered (no more fossil fuel, no industrial, large scale, monocultural biofuel either and so on, you know what I mean – a total micro production society, non-central, networked) Free information and communication networks (no more non-free software, no more AT&T, and google fully disclosing all code, no Micro$oft). If not opportunism and greed: then cooperate and share!

Hence, our culture of opportunism and greed won’t change through opportunistic and greedy companies designing and selling us green houses with renewable energy built in, or multimillion dollar profit stewardship of operating systems (Novell, RedHat etc.) to bring us into cyberspace “freely” … it goes a little deeper than that, it’s a … necessity to change that very basic system that ru(i)ns our world and which rewards opportunism and greed; in other words: capitalism is the primary obstacle to saving ourselves from total climatic disaster.

Despite the lacking political edge we agree that it is worth seeing (but we didnt have very high expectation at all, indeed it exceeded our expectations of a Hollywood production distributed by Warner Brother$) – smartplanet.com’s Rikke continues: “We admit we had high expectations, and despite our disappointment we do encourage everybody to go and see it anyway when it’s out in March.” So it was out last month in the UK and also to be found everywhere in the information piracy sphere.

In another related dimension we find old school, old guard Lester Brown, who was a pioneering founder of Worldwatch.org, with the – I dare say – great Matters of Scale (..oh those walls…) and other things like Vital Signs. He went on to present the policies necessary to save ourselves with Earth-Policy.org which publishes Plan B - now in its third edition:

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. You can – naturally – get the whole book directly here.

…….and here is Brown’s take on the latest disaster – where capitalist globalisation and climate change comes fully together, there were you cannot even feed those who run away from the wars that you call freedom fights. Recall that Fidel Castro long since warned about the food crisis, “when he launched an attack on the biofuels policy of his ideological enemy, the United States, saying it was pushing up food prices and threatening global famine.

“More than three billion people in the world are being condemned to a premature death from hunger and thirst,” Castro wrote in his first column.

“It is not an exaggeration; this is rather a conservative figure,” he wrote, criticizing plans to turn food crops into fuel as a “sinister idea” hatched by the Bush administration and the U.S. auto industry.

In recent weeks, riots have broken out in more than a dozen countries, from Indonesia to Egypt and Cameroon, some countries are restricting food exports, and global panic buying of rice forced even some U.S. retail chains to limit purchases.“

So here we go:

April 16, 2008 – 4

Copyright © 2008 Earth Policy Institute

WORLD FACING HUGE NEW CHALLENGE ON FOOD FRONT
Business-as-Usual Not a Viable Option

Lester R. Brown

A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Over the past half-century grain prices have spiked from time to time because of weather-related events, such as the 1972 Soviet crop failure that led to a doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices. The situation today is entirely different, however. The current doubling of grain prices is trend-driven, the cumulative effect of some trends that are accelerating growth in demand and other trends that are slowing the growth in supply.

The world has not experienced anything quite like this before. In the face of rising food prices and spreading hunger, the social order is beginning to break down in some countries. In several provinces in Thailand, for instance, rustlers steal rice by harvesting fields during the night. In response, Thai villagers with distant fields have taken to guarding ripe rice fields at night with loaded shotguns.

In Sudan, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is responsible for supplying grain to 2 million people in Darfur refugee camps, is facing a difficult mission to say the least. During the first three months of this year, 56 grain-laden trucks were hijacked. Thus far, only 20 of the trucks have been recovered and some 24 drivers are still unaccounted for. This threat to U.N.-supplied food to the Darfur camps has reduced the flow of food into the region by half, raising the specter of starvation if supply lines cannot be secured.

In Pakistan, where flour prices have doubled, food insecurity is a national concern. Thousands of armed Pakistani troops have been assigned to guard grain elevators and to accompany the trucks that transport grain.

Food riots are now becoming commonplace. In Egypt, the bread lines at bakeries that distribute state-subsidized bread are often the scene of fights. In Morocco, 34 food rioters were jailed. In Yemen, food riots turned deadly, taking at least a dozen lives. In Cameroon, dozens of people have died in food riots and hundreds have been arrested. Other countries with food riots include Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Senegal. (See additional examples of food price unrest.)

The doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices has sharply reduced the availability of food aid, putting the 37 countries that depend on the WFP’s emergency food assistance at risk. In March, the WFP issued an urgent appeal for $500 million of additional funds.

Around the world, a politics of food scarcity is emerging. Most fundamentally, it involves the restriction of grain exports by countries that want to check the rise in their domestic food prices. Russia, the Ukraine, and Argentina are among the governments that are currently restricting wheat exports. Countries restricting rice exports include Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Egypt. These export restrictions simply drive prices higher in the world market.

The chronically tight food supply the world is now facing is driven by the cumulative effect of several well established trends that are affecting both global demand and supply. On the demand side, the trends include the continuing addition of 70 million people per year to the earth’s population, the desire of some 4 billion people to move up the food chain and consume more grain-intensive livestock products, and the recent sharp acceleration in the U.S. use of grain to produce ethanol for cars. Since 2005, this last source of demand has raised the annual growth in world grain consumption from roughly 20 million tons to 50 million tons.

Meanwhile, on the supply side, there is little new land to be brought under the plow unless it comes from clearing tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo basins and in Indonesia, or from clearing land in the Brazilian cerrado, a savannah-like region south of the Amazon rainforest. Unfortunately, this has heavy environmental costs: the release of sequestered carbon, the loss of plant and animal species, and increased rainfall runoff and soil erosion. And in scores of countries prime cropland is being lost to both industrial and residential construction and to the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots for fast-growing automobile fleets.

New sources of irrigation water are even more scarce than new land to plow. During the last half of the twentieth century, world irrigated area nearly tripled, expanding from 94 million hectares in 1950 to 276 million hectares in 2000. In the years since then there has been little, if any, growth. As a result, irrigated area per person is shrinking by 1 percent a year.

Meanwhile, the backlog of agricultural technology that can be used to raise cropland productivity is dwindling. Between 1950 and 1990 the world’s farmers raised grainland productivity by 2.1 percent a year, but from 1990 until 2007 this growth rate slowed to 1.2 percent a year. And the rising price of oil is boosting the costs of both food production and transport while at the same time making it more profitable to convert grain into fuel for cars.

Beyond this, climate change presents new risks. Crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, and the melting of the Asian mountain glaciers that sustain the dry-season flow of that region’s major rivers, are combining to make harvest expansion more difficult. In the past the negative effect of unusual weather events was always temporary; within a year or two things would return to normal. But with climate in flux, there is no norm to return to.

The collective effect of these trends makes it more and more difficult for farmers to keep pace with the growth in demand. During seven of the last eight years, grain consumption exceeded production. After seven years of drawing down stocks, world grain carryover stocks in 2008 have fallen to 55 days of world consumption, the lowest on record. The result is a new era of tightening food supplies, rising food prices, and political instability. With grain stocks at an all-time low, the world is only one poor harvest away from total chaos in world grain markets.

Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. Food security will deteriorate further unless leading countries can collectively mobilize to stabilize population, restrict the use of grain to produce automotive fuel, stabilize climate, stabilize water tables and aquifers, protect cropland, and conserve soils. Stabilizing population is not simply a matter of providing reproductive health care and family planning services. It requires a worldwide effort to eradicate poverty. Eliminating water shortages depends on a global attempt to raise water productivity similar to the effort launched a half-century ago to raise land productivity, an initiative that has nearly tripled the world grain yield per hectare. None of these goals can be achieved quickly, but progress toward all is essential to restoring a semblance of food security.

This troubling situation is unlike any the world has faced before. The challenge is not simply to deal with a temporary rise in grain prices, as in the past, but rather to quickly alter those trends whose cumulative effects collectively threaten the food security that is a hallmark of civilization. If food security cannot be restored quickly, social unrest and political instability will spread and the number of failing states will likely increase dramatically, threatening the very stability of civilization itself.

=================================

So that’s all for now folks!

When Rafael Correa came into government he soon announced that he was investing more powers in the police and the military to repress popular protests, which is one of the main means of political expression for many largely illterate indigenous and campesino communities; and those powers are “well” used, Upside Down World writes:

“The peaceful demonstration began at 5am was met with state repression around noon, leading to the arrest of 17 protestors, which include the parish priest of Victoria del Portete, dairy farmers, and University of Cuenca students. Approximately 80 soldiers blasted tear gas into to the crowd of protestors— around 300 strong. Female students report that they were later taken to a casino for police and forced to undress.
“We are here to defend the right to pure and clean water,” declared Miriam Chuchuka, a 36-year-old dairy farmer from Victoria del Portete. Small farmers fear that cyanide and mercury related to gold mining and production will pollute local water sources.

Local farmers draw drinking and irrigation water from the high paramo where Toronto-based Iamgold has discovered the second largest gold deposit in Ecuador. Protestors want the government to nullify Iamgold’s mineral concession.

Farmers and rural residents working under the National Coordinating Committee in Defense of Life and Sovereignty had staged a national twelve-hour protest to nullify four major gold and copper concessions in southern Ecuador. They oppose the stance of President Rafael Correa, who despite a leftist rhetoric, wants to develop large-scale export oriented gold and copper mining projects to finance education and healthcare programs. Residents in the path of these projects are concerned about their short and long-term environmental impacts.

Detained protestors were released the next day, but they may face sabotage and terrorism charges. In his nationally-syndicated radio show, President Correa lambasted the National Coordinating Committee and said that anti-mining protestors will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Anti-mining activists have said that Correa’s response threatens the right to dissent and criminalizes activism.”

It is therefore increasingly difficult to support the trajectory of Correa’s revolution or reform or whatever it should be termed; however, it is not an easy thing to walk the fine line of social and political change in a world run by greedy old white men in white houses – Prensa Latina writes:

“Ecuadorian writer and essayist Jaime Galarza warned that the life of President Rafael Correa is in danger because of his commitment to change and real independence for the Andean nation.

The presence of the US Central Intelligence Agency in the country will bring no good, “when Ecuadorians are aware that we finally want to be the free nation of which Eloy Alfaro dreamt,” Galarza said.

Correa´s denunciation that the CIA has penetrated Ecuadorian intelligence services poses a serious threat to his life, as CIA plans are never good, he highlighted.

“We Ecuadorians know perfectly well the bad consequences of the CIA presence, as one of our presidents, Jaime Roldos Aguilera, was killed by that agency in an alleged aircraft accident in 1981, for raising his voice against the empire,” the writer stressed.

When speaking during an act in the capital, Galarza warned of shady CIA actions in Ecuador in last decades, and of the US intention to prolong its presence at the Manta base and turn it into another Guantanamo, a Cuban territory illegally occupied by the US.“

Dan Collyns for BBC News writes about the struggle of the Achuar in Peru that their “story is an emblematic case of resistance for indigenous Amazonians and is unprecedented in Peru“. The article provides a little bit of information, but it is not contexualised very well. There is a similar struggle fought by the Cofan in Ecuador which also only gets minimal time and attention in the mainstream media – and also generally only reported on in isolation. Between the territories of the Cofan and the Achuar lies the Yasuni National park, about which much has been written in this blog. While we keep compiling more comprehensive information and try to tie these obviously mutually relevant scenarios together, we seem to be waiting in vain for editors of the environmental sections of what is left of a critical voices in the corporately led world of media to bring stories that connect these struggles with the “leave the oil in the soil” proposal and the general discourse of climate change.