oil frontiers in the peruvian amazonicta.uab.cat/etnoecologia/docs/[355]-orta thesis.pdfs’ha...

Oil frontiers in the Peruvian Amazon

Impacts of oil extraction for the Achuar of Río Corrientes

PhD Thesis

Martí Orta Martínez

May 2010

Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

PhD Programme in Environmental Science

Supervision:

Dr. Joan Martínez‐Alier Dept. d’Economia i d’Història Econòmica Facultat de Ciències Socials, UAB

Dr. Agustín Lobo Aleu Institut de Ciències de la Terra Jaume Almera, CSIC

A la memòria de Román Hualinga i de tots els Achuar que han sofert les conseqüències del petroli. A totes aquelles dones i a tots aquells homes que són, i volen ser, conscients de les conseqüències dels seus actes, i treballen i s’esforcen per imaginar i construir un món més just i sostenible.

Abstract

This work deals with environmental, social, and cultural damage caused by oil exploration

and exploitation at indigenous territories in the tropical rainforest. The thesis applies an

environmental justice framework to assess oil impacts at two different scales. Firstly, it

addresses oil impacts at a local scale, studying oil exploration and exploitation impacts on the

Achuar territory of Rio Corrientes, in the northern Peruvian Amazon. Secondly, it addresses

impacts at regional scale, scrutinizing the damages done by the oil industry in the Peruvian

Amazon. Together the results presented here improve our understanding of socio‐

environmental consequences of the human patterns of consumption and production in an oil‐

based world economy.

Oil has been extracted from Achuar territory since the 1970s. In spite of early identification

of negative impacts on the environment and repeated attempts by the Achuar to minimize

those impacts, very little research has addressed specific environmental and health impacts on

the area. Some recent governmental studies have shown extremely high blood lead and

cadmium levels in Achuar communities. In chapter 1 we review the evidence of pollution and

Achuar health status available in existing studies. We also review government and operating

oil company actions undertaken over the last 40 years. We identify knowledge gaps and

negligent actions on the part of the State and petrol companies which have hamper efforts to

respond to the environmental and health situation

From 2005 to 2009, the author collaborated with Achuar communities which sought to

develop and implement novel methods for monitoring oil spills and other impacts caused by oil

companies in their territory. A pioneering experience of indigenous cartography and

environmental monitoring that aimed to trace the past and present damages done by the oil

extraction industry. In chapter 2 we describe a protocol for the application of participatory

geographic information systems (GIS) in conflicts over resource extraction, especially oil and

gas. We analyze the achievements and shortcomings of the proposed methodology with

regard to the empowerment of communities.

The Peruvian Amazon is home to extraordinary biological and cultural diversity. However,

the rapid proliferation of oil and gas exploration zones now threatens the region’s biodiversity,

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indigenous peoples, and wilderness areas. Chapter 3 analyzes official Peruvian government

hydrocarbon information and generates a quantitative analysis of the past, present, and future

of oil and gas activities in the Peruvian Amazon. We document an extensive hydrocarbon

history for the region—over 104 000 km of seismic lines—highlighted by a major exploration

boom in the early 1970s. We show that an unprecedented 48.6% of the Peruvian Amazon has

been recently covered by oil and gas concessions, up from just 7.1% in 2003. These oil and gas

concessions overlap 17.1% of the Peruvian Amazon protected area system and over half of all

titled indigenous lands. We project a second exploration boom, characterized by over 20 000

km of new seismic testing and construction of over 180 new exploratory wells in remote,

intact, and sensitive forest areas.

In chapter 4, we argue that the phenomenon of peak oil, combined with rising demand

and consumption, is now pushing oil extraction into the most remote corners of the world.

While conflicts spread on indigenous territories, new forms of resistance appear and

indigenous political organizations are born and become more powerful. We review the impacts

of oil exploration and exploitation and indigenous resistance throughout the oil history of the

Peruvian Amazon, focusing, once again, on the Achuar people in Rio Corrientes. In a context of

peak oil and growing global demand for oil, such devastating effects for minor quantities of oil

are likely to increase and impact other remote parts of the world.

Keywords

Achuar; indigenous people; voluntary isolation; Amazon; Peru; oil extraction conflicts; oil

development; commodity frontiers; peak oil; environmental justice; political ecology;

environmental liabilities; health; accountability; participatory GIS; participatory monitoring.

Resum en català

Aquesta tesi doctoral analitza els danys ambientals, socials i culturals originats per

l’exploració i l’explotació petroliera als territoris indígenes dels boscos humits tropicals. Sota el

marc de la justícia ambiental, avalua els impactes a dues escales. Primer, tracta els impactes

petroliers a escala local, estudiant els impactes al territori Achuar del Río Corrientes, a la

Amazònia peruana septentrional. Després, els tracta a escala regional, inspeccionant els danys

de la industria petroliera a l’Amazònia peruana. Els resultats presentats milloren la comprensió

de les conseqüències socio‐ambientals dels patrons de consum i producció humans en una

economia mundial basada en el petroli.

S’ha extret petroli del territori Achuar des de la dècada de 1970. Malgrat la primerenca

identificació d’impactes negatius a l’entorn i els reiterats intents dels Achuar per minimitzar‐

los, pocs treballs d’investigació han abordat els impactes a la salut i al medi de la regió. Alguns

estudis governamentals recents indiquen nivells de plom i cadmi en sang extraordinàriament

alts a la zona. Al primer capítol, revisem les evidències de contaminació i l’estat de salut dels

Achuars als estudis existents. També revisem les accions empreses en els darrers 30 anys pel

govern i les companyies petrolieres que hi operen. Hem identificat llacunes en el coneixement,

alhora que procediments negligents per part de l’estat peruà i les companyies, que han

dificultat els esforços per resoldre aquesta situació.

Entre 2005 i 2009, l’autor ha col∙laborat amb les comunitats Achuar que buscaven

desenvolupar i implementar mètodes innovadors pel monitoratge dels vessaments de cru i

altres impactes causats per l’activitat petroliera. Una experiència pionera de cartografia i

monitoratge ambiental indígena dirigida a traçar els danys passats i presents de la industria

hidrocarburífera. Al segon capítol descrivim un protocol per l’aplicació dels Sistemes

d’Informació Geogràfica (SIG) participatius en conflictes d’extracció de recursos, especialment

petroli i gas. Analitzem també, els avantatges i desavantatges de la metodologia proposada en

relació a l’empoderament de les comunitats.

L’Amazònia peruana te una diversitat biològica i cultural extraordinària. Alhora, la ràpida

proliferació de les concessions per l’exploració d’hidrocarburs, amenaça la biodiversitat, els

pobles indígenes i les àrees ben conservades de la regió. El tercer capítol analitza informes

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oficials del sector energètic del govern peruà i presenta un anàlisis quantitatiu de les activitats

hidrocarburíferes passades, presents i futures a l’Amazònia peruana. Documentem una

extensa història hidrocarburífera de la regió –més de 104 000 km de línies sísmiques‐ que va

representar, a principis dels 1970s, el major boom d’exploració. Documentem que un 48.6% de

l’Amazònia peruana ha estat recentment operada per la industria hidrocarburífera, partint

d’un 7.1% al 2003. Aquestes concessions solapen el 17.1% del sistema d’àrees naturals

protegides i més de la meitat dels títols de propietat dels pobles indígenes. Projectem un

segon boom d’exploració, caracteritzat per més de 20 000 km de línies sísmiques i la

construcció de més de 180 pous exploratoris nous en àrees remotes, intactes i sensibles de

l’Amazònia peruana.

Al quart capítol, argumentem que el fenomen del zenit del petroli, combinat amb la

creixent demanda i consum està empenyent l’exploració petroliera a les àrees més remotes

del món. Mentre els conflictes s’estenen als territoris indígenes, noves formes de resistència

apareixen i les organitzacions indígenes naixent i esdevenen més rellevants. Revisem els

impactes de l’exploració i l’explotació petroliera i la resistència indígena al llarg de la història

petroliera de l’Amazònia peruana, centrant‐nos, un cop més, en els Achuar del riu Corrientes.

En el context del zenit del petroli convencional i de la seva demanda creixent, és probable que

aquests efectes devastadors incrementin i impactin a altres regions sensibles del planeta per

reserves menors de petroli.

Paraules clau

Achuar; pobles indígenes; aïllament voluntari; Amazònia; Perú; conflictes d’extracció del

petroli; frontera petroliera; zenit del petroli; justícia ambiental; ecologia política; passius

ambientals; salut; responsabilitat corporativa; SIG participatiu; monitoratge participatiu.

Table of contents

Abstract i

Keywords ii

Resum en català iii

Paraules clau iv

Table of contents v

Prologue 1

Introduction 3

Background and motivation 3 Energy sources in societies 5 Externalities and socio‐environmental liabilities 6 Social impacts and environmental justice 9 Commodity frontiers 12

Aims 14 Objectives 16

Structure and Methodological approach 17 Participatory Action Research 20 Geographic Information Systems 21

Study areas 23 Selection criteria 23

Chapter1 33

Impacts of petroleum activities for the Achuar people of the Peruvian Amazon: summary of existing evidence and research gaps 33

Known impacts of petroleum extraction 34 The Achuar and the arrival of the oil companies 35 Methods 37

Literature review 37 Interviews 38 Physical inspections 39

Results 39 Health exposures 40 Sources of contamination: company operating policy and remediation 46

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Company and state actions 49 Conclusion 52

Chapter 2 53

Science for indigenous activism: mapping the impacts of oil companies 53

Introduction 54 MELPGIS usefulness 56

Methodology 58 Results 61

Step 1 / Preliminary work 61 Step 2 / Data gathering: 65 Step 3 / Data storage 68 Step 4 / Outcomes and data usage 70

Discussion 72 Quality and quantity of information. Temporal and spatial accuracy, data acquisition and validation, data reliability and uncertainty 73 Geodatabase control and access. Information flows and uses: Where does information go? And what uses does it have? 76 Benefits, risks, and other unexpected results 78 Weaknesses and issues that require special attention 81

Conclusion 82

Chapter 3 85

A second hydrocarbon boom threatens the Peruvian Amazon: trends, projections, and policy implications 85

Introduction 86 Methods 88

Secondary data collection 88 Projections 89 Spatial analysis 90

Results 91 Discussion 98 Conclusion 101

Chapter 4 103

Oil frontiers and indigenous resistance in the Peruvian Amazon 103

Introduction 104 Peak oil and the second exploration boom 106 Oil impacts in the Peruvian Amazon 109 Oil Conflicts in the northern Peruvian Amazon 113 Achuar resistance methods 117

Land Titling 117 Occupation of oil wells because of claims to health 118

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Court case 120 Oil conflicts: increasingly commonplace 121 Policy recommendations 122 Conclusions 124

Summary and main conclusions 129

Impacts and existing evidence 129 Oil frontiers advance in the Peruvian Amazon 131 New resistance methods: MELPGIS 132 New questions and further research / Research gaps 135

References 137

Acronyms and abbreviations 147

Agraïments 151

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Prologue

I was trained as a biologist at the Universitat de Barcelona between 1998 and 2004, and

then studied ecological economics for a master degree at the Universitat Autònoma de

Barcelona (2005 and 2006). In 2005 I was lucky to get a Spanish scholarship for doctoral

research in Environmental Sciences at UAB. At the end of 2005 I traveled to Peru, partly

because of the contacts between Joan Martinez Alier and Oilwatch. AIDESEP (Asociación

Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana, the national organisation of the Amazonian

indigenous peoples of Peru) and Oilwatch held a workshop entitled “training indigenous

leaders in social and environmental impacts of oil exploration”. Invited by David Llistar of the

Observatori del Deute en la Globalització (UNESCO Sustainability Chair‐UPC) and Nathalie

Weemaels (Earth Rights International), I joined the workshop that took place in Atalaya

(Ucayali, central Peruvian Amazon) with more than 140 indigenous leaders of the Ashaninka,

Asheninka, Shipibo‐Konibo, Nawa, Yine and Amawaka ethnic groups. Two new oil exploration

blocks, 57 and 90, operated by the Spanish‐based Repsol‐YPF, overlapped with their ancestral

territories. The indigenous leaders came from all directions, from the heart of the jungle, after

long journeys by canoe or after walking for more than five days just to join the worshop.

The leaders were sceptical regarding the promises and presents from Repsol‐YPF and

wanted to hear testimonies from other indigenous peoples. Leaders of the U’wa (Colombia),

Waorani (Ecuador), Kichwa (Ecuador), Mapuche (Argentina) and Achuar (Peru) indigenous

people, whose territory had been affected by the oil industry during decades, also participated

at the workshop. They testified that their peoples had suffered environmental, social and

cultural damage caused by the long oil history in their territories. The workshop ended with

the signing of the Declaration of Atalaya, by which indigenous leaders rejected oil activities in

Blocks 57 and 90, and declared a “State of emergency” in their territories.

In Atalaya I met Henderson Refingio, a young Achuar leader from the Río Corrientes, and

Dr. Lily La Torre, director of Grupo de Trabajo Racimos de Ungurahui, a non‐profit

organization, founded in 1995 to provide legal and technical assistance to support indigenous

peoples to protect their environment and fulfilling their rights. In less than three months, just

enough to plan the research project with FECONACO (Federación de Comunidades Nativas del

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río Corrientes, organization of the indigenous communities from the río Corrientes), Racimos

and Shinai (another Peruvian NGO that supports FECONACO), and to get approval by

FECONACO’s general assembly, we were entering into the territory of the Achuar indigenous

people, into the 1AB oil block held by Pluspetrol del Norte SA.

The study conditions were clear, all the data and knowledge gathered, all photographs and

outcomes are copyrighted by FECONACO and the Achuar indigenous people. Its dissemination

and reproduction requires their specific authorization. Spoliation and abuse, even for

academic purposes, had lasted too long. Our work should be for the Achuar people.

Since then (2006) I have worked on this thesis, with four trips to the Achuar territory. The

thesis is composed of four chapters plus introduction and conclusion. Three chapters are

published articles (two in Environmental Research Letters and one in Ecological Economics),

while the fourth has been submitted to the Annals of the Association of American Geographers

in April 2010. In the thesis, I have slightly abridged some of the articles to avoid repetitions. All

the articles have co‐authors (researchers on the Peruvian Amazon with whom I have travelled

physically and intellectually together) but I am the main contributor to the chapters (except for

one of them with Dr Matt Finer, to which we both have contributed equally). These materials

are not submitted by anybody else for a doctoral thesis.

Introduction

Background and motivation

La vida és una activitat sistèmica que catalitza la conversió de l’entropia en

informació. És a dir, l’energia no pot utilitzar‐se dos cops seguits de la mateixa manera;

en altres termes, es degrada. Aquesta degradació s’associa amb l’augment del valor

d’una funció calculada que s’anomena entropia. Ara bé, mentre es produeixen aquests

canvis, l’energia ha interactuat amb la matèria, de manera que el que hem anomenat

degradació de l’energia apareix reflexat a l’altre costat, segurament de forma també

comptabilitzable, a través de l’adquisició de complexitat per part dels sistemes

materials en els que aquests canvis de l’energia es succeeixen. Ens trobem davant d’un

principi d’aplicació a la vida en general; i, per suposat, als sistemes ecològics que

constitueixen la coberta viva del planeta, la biosfera (Margalef‐López 1992).

Ramon Margalef, Planeta blau, planeta verd. Barcelona 1992, p XI

Oekologie (the word was introduced by Ernst H. Haeckel in 1869) is a holistic science that

sees the forest before the trees; it describes, explains and systematizes the biosphere. Ecology

has been defined, sensu stricto, as the biophysics of ecosystems, being ecosystems the level of

organization in which individuals of different species interact within a shared physical

environment (Margalef‐López 1974). Biological processes, which are needed to maintain the

life‐functions of living organisms, are accompanied by energy transfers. Energy can only be

captured and made available for life through green plants and certain bacteria which are able

to convert abiotic energy (solar radiation and chemical energy) into organic matter and other

elements vital for life. These organisms are therefore called autotrophic or primary producers

and their solar fixing ability is the very basis for practically all other ecosystem functions. All

other life on earth depends on the energy fixed by these autotrophic organisms, and the

biomass thus formed provides the structural basis for the build‐up of ecosystems. Basically,

two types of bio‐energy fixation can be distinguished, photosynthesis and chemosynthesis.

Photosynthesis is the process whereby CO2 and water are transformed into carbohydrates

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(CH2O) under the influence of sunlight. Chemosynthesis is a process whereby bacteria obtain

their energy from the chemical oxidation of simple inorganic compounds. For exemple by

converting ammonia to nitrite, nitrite to nitrate, sulfide to sulfur, or ferrous to ferric (Odum

1985).

Besides, the biosphere has limited reserves of biogenic elements such as carbon, which is

considered the most characteristic, or phosphorus, which is, relatively, the most scarce and

therefore is limiting primary production (Terrades 1989). These constraints of energy and

materials must also constrain human activities and industrial production. As Margalef stated,

“we cannot talk, as the UNESCO’s programme on interdisciplinary conservation research did,

about Man and the Biosphere (MAB), as if one could imagine humanity and the rest of the

biosphere in a negotiation table, but about Man in Biosphere” (Margalef‐López 1992), or

rather as we would say now, about Humans in Biosphere. Energy runs the world: all physical

and biological phenomena are expressions of the transformations of energy. The world has

material and energy constraints. This is (or should be) obvious to any ecologist and also to any

social scientist.

Economics followed a different course, decoupling economic systems from natural systems

and without taking into account the metabolic flows of energy and materials. The theses of

Nicholas Georgescu‐Roegen and modern ecological economics still struggle today, contrary to

mainstream economics, to recover the role of energy and materials in social and economic

systems, talking about social metabolism, studying economy and societies in terms of flows of

materials and energy or analysing bio‐physical constraints and the frontiers of exploration and

exploitation of natural resources. Georgescu‐Roegen’s book of 1971 was titled “The economic

process and the entropy law”. The relevance of entropy to the economy is easy to understand.

Energy coming into the economy can only be used once. It is “dissipated” and loses capacity to

do work. Hence the need to look for fresh supplies of fossil fuels, even if the economy were in

a steady state, even it is declined somewhat. Martínez‐Alier wrote: “According to many

handbooks, the object of economic science is to study the efficiency of the allocation of scarce

resources to alternative, present and future ends through the price system. However, Aristotle

had distinguished, in his Politics, two meanings for the word oikonomia: the study of

provisioning the oikos (household) or the polis; and the study of price generation, with the

purpose of earning money, which itself was not “oikonomia” but chrematistics” (Martínez‐

Alier and Roca Jusmet 2001:33). Economics should recover this distinction between

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“oikonomia” and “chrematistica” already pointed out by Karl Marx, Frederick Soddy and

Herman Daly.

“Conventional studies of exchange, [...] in economics, are not concerned with the physical

properties of the commodities that are traded or with the material consequences of their

production, transport, and consumption. Economics is [still] a science concerned with money,

not with flows of matter and energy, waste disposal, or loss of biodiversity. [...] An

understanding of the world‐system in terms of such material parameters provides a

completely different picture of economic growth and development than mainstream

understanding based merely in monetary mesures” (Hornborg, 2007: 2). Ecological systems

and socio‐economic systems are intertwined, mutually dependent and co‐evolve, as

environmental history has shown. The human economy is built on a physical world, which

restricts and constraints it, but also changes and evolves with it. As Hornborg states, “it is

necessary to adopt a “materialist” perspective on human activities, if taking the physical facts

of ecology seriosly means being “materialist”. [...] “Materialism” should not mean believing

that cultural patterns of consumption and production are determined by the physical

environment, only that cultural behavior takes place within a material world whose properties

constrain what is possible and determine the environmental consequences of that behavior.

We need to be able to acknowledge both the specificity of cultural motivation and the

generality of material laws” (Hornborg, 2007: 2‐3). Hence, the study of energy sources takes a

dominant role in the human economy. Some anthropologists (Leslie White, Roy Rappaport),

biologists, chemists and physicists held this view since the late 19th century and throughout the

20th century (Martínez‐Alier 1987).

Energy sources in societies

Pre‐industrial societies have relied completely on photosyntesis, and solar energy has been

their main energy source. Windmills and water mills (conversions of solar energy) made a

timid appearance in pre‐industrial societies. Draught animals and humans ate the products of

photosynthesis and converted this energy into work (with efficiencies of the order of ten to

twenty per cent). Since the industrial revolution, fossil fuels have dominated energy statstics in

affluent countries and now represent the most significant source of energy in the world at

large. Fossil fuels are the product of accumulated photosynthesis. “Contrary to widespread

belief, during the twentieth [and the twenty‐first centuries] there has not been a substitution

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of oil, gas, nuclear power and hydroelectricity, for biomass and coal at the world level. Such

substitution took place in the United States, Western Europe and the United Kingdom after

1960, but in the world in general consumption of energy from all sources has increased [along

these centuries]. New sources add to the supply of energy, they do not substitute for the old

sources” (Martínez‐Alier 2006:36). Approximately, consumption of energy from biomass

doubled during the twentieth century. In 2000 about six times more coal was extracted than in

1900. Oil and gas extraction increased many more times (Martínez‐Alier 2006). The exosomatic

use of energy has been increasing as the economy grows.

In 2006 the world was consuming 495 quadrillion (1012) MJ, more than two‐fold the

amount consumed in 1970. Between 1970 and 2006, oil consumption increased by 62%, coal

by 104% and natural gas by 189%. In 2006, 33.5% of the energy came from oil, 27.4% from coal

and 22.8% from natural gas. Thus, fossil fuels accounted for 83.5% of world energy

consumption and oil was the main energy source (EIA 2008a). Modern societies have

consumed 12 million years of decayed biomass in 300 years (Dukes 2003). Oil, a particularly

persistent accumulation of organic molecules, non‐recycled dead organic matter

(necrosphere), is therefore essential for some western societies, which depend on it to remain

as we know them. Oil has a primary economic and geopolitical role.

Externalities and socioenvironmental liabilities

Therefore, to undestand western societies since about 1920 it is essential to study the

supply of oil. However, apart from the availability of input of oil in the economy, there are

other factors that require the study of oil: the extent and importance of the environmental and

social impacts of the oil industry in extraction, transport and processing, and also after

combustion because of pollution and production of carbon dioxide.

From climate change to oils spills from tankers or drilling platforms, the origins of many of

our least tractable environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern

energy system based on oil. Today there is scientific consensus that the emission of

greenhouse gases contributes to climate change, a matter of serious concern and adverse,

irreversable and unpredictable effects. Climate change is emerging as one of the main agents

of habitat and biodiversity loss in the near future. Consumption of fossils fuels, and among

them, oil, is the main source of carbon dioxide release to the atmosphere. Hence the proposals

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to leave “oil in the soil”, “coal in the hole”, “tar sands in the land” that activists proclaimed in

Copenhagen in December 2009.

Oil refineries can expose workers to chronic hazards which include asphalt, asbestos,

aromatic hydrocarbons, arsenic, hexavalent chromium, nickel, carbon monoxide, coke dust,

hydrogen sulfide, lead alkyls, natural gases, petroleum, phenol, and silica. These hazards have

been associated with an increase in cancer risk (and other occupational diseases) among oil

refinery workers or surrounding population (Epstein and Selber 2002). The end products

themselves and the by‐products of their combustion pose significant threats to human and

environmental health. Gasoline and its additives have been associated with acute chronic

toxicities in humans exposed, through inhalation of volatile fumes at self service‐pumps, to the

hazardous byproducts of gasoline combustion. Long‐term exposure can also increase cancer

risk (benzene) or affect the central nervous system (toluene, xylene, lead, etc) (Epstein and

Selber 2002).

There are several sources of oil dumped into the ocean worldwide. So far, deep water oil

extraction has been a main threat. The BP spill near the coast of Louisiana is in the news in

May 2010 but this is not the first case in the new oil extraction frontier under the sea. Large

spills and other oil releases from refining and distribution activities account, according to the

U.S. National Research Council, for 12% of total oil into the worldwide marine waters (average

annual contribution 1990‐1999). Oil runoff from land and municipal and industrial wastes

account for 38%, while releases that occur associated to oil and gas exploration and

production activites account for 9%. Thus, natural seepage of crude oil from geologic

formations below the seefloor to the marine environment account for 47% of oil inputs to the

seal (National Research Council 2003).

Since externalities are (by definition) not factored into economic costs, oil has been a very

cheap source of energy. We can compare the different energy sources evaluating the costs of

energy systems by net energy analysis, a technique that compares the quantity of energy

delivered to society by an energy system to the energy used directly and indirectly in the

delivery process, a quantity called the energy return on investment (EROI) (Cleveland et al.

1984). Photovoltaic energy has an EROI of six energy units produced per each unit invested;

windmills have an EROI of 15‐20:1; agrofuels may have an EROI of about three to one at best,

and less than one to one at worst; nuclear has a debatable moderate energy return on

investment (5‐15:1), while energy return on investment from coal is presently ranging from

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perhaps 50:1 to 100:1. The running average EROI for global finding and production of oil and

gas has dropped from greater than 100 units of energy returned per unit invested in the 1930s

to about 20 to one today (Hall, Powers, and Schoenberg 2008; Kubiszewski and Cleveland

2009). Tar sands (as in Alberta, Canada) have of course a lower EROI.

The more favourable EROI values of alternative energy (windmills and solar panels)

sources are explained by very recent technological improvements. The balance has long been

clearly favorable to fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have provided a plentiful supply of energy, easy to

extract and burn (from the steam engine to the internal combustion engine to combined cycle

electric power plants), which encourages squandering. Increased efficiency of conversion

might have encouraged “rebound effects”, as Jevons explained in 1865 for steam engines

driven by coal. Technology provided the means to take advantage of so much energy, hence

the use of more and more energy in agriculture, industry, transport, households, and the

building industry. The “energy‐subsidy” from fossil fuels helped also the increase in population

growth up to 7 billion people (Giampietro and Pimentel 1993).

Cheap oil induced a spatial distribution of human activities based on low cost transport.

Thus, the availability of cheap energy leads to a trade system and a territorial distribution of

activities that require large amounts of transport of materials, commodities and people. Cheap

oil has allowed urban sprawl, increasing distances from workplaces to homes or services. It has

also prompted a territorial division of labor, based on increasing distances between the

centers of production and the centers of consumption (components are manufactured in

distant points and can travel thousands of kilometers just to be assembled, packaged or sold at

large distribution centers). U.S. maize and Argentine or Brazilian soybeans to feed pigs in

Europe, Australian organic oats (CCPAE certification) for sale in Veritas shops in Barcelona,

airport infrastructure and low cost flights for weekend trips. They are economically viable only

when energy is cheap; activities with a huge impact on land cover change (soil sealing) and

habitat loss, subsidized by cheap oil.

Oil accounts for 95% of transport fuels used in the world. Such abundant energy has

enabled an unprecedented prosperity and has also made possible a scientific and technical

development hardly achievable in other circumstances. But it has also enabled massive

exploration and exploitation of other natural resources which have in turn jeopardized habitat

and biodiversity conservation. Today we have a world heavily impacted by industrial

production based on powerful techniques and on a very cheap energy.

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In summary, cheap oil has fostered economic growth and in doing so, has also spurred

world demand for natural resources. The overwhelming economic growth in the last two

centuries has been based on increasing the energy available. Cheap oil has allowed the illusion

of an endless economic growth. Plentiful energy supply has generated surplus in other

economic sectors, increasing material flows and thus, increasing environmental and social

impacts.

So, the consequences of oil extraction should be assessed not only in extraction and

transport but also after consumption. This thesis, however, focuses only on extraction. Here

we must notice, on the one hand, that increasing scarcity of supply (because of approaching

“peak oil”) drives exploration to the furthest frontiers (under the sea or in Amazon territory),

and on the other hand, that extraction causes local “externalities”.

Social impacts and environmental justice

Increased distance between oil extraction centres and consumption centres exacerbate

exploration and exploitation impacts. Pedro Garcia Hierro, an activist lawyer from Racimos de

Ungurahui, exemplified: “an English friend was horrified when we were killing a chicken in the

Cenepa River [in the Peruvian jungle]. When we, surprised by her surprise at a daily practice

for a staple human food in the jungle, asked her what she felt, she replied that she would had

never imagined that [...] a chicken, sold in supermarkets wrapped in cellophane, had had such

a bloody history”. Pedro concludes that progress is oil‐based and many are surprised by

indigenous’ opposition to oil extraction in their territories. But not many are aware of the

painful history of oil behind “the glittering multicolored lights of petrol‐stations” (La Torre

López 1999) : 37). We wanted to study those hidden problems that become invisible to

consumers.

Due to the difference in standards, regulations and control capacities of governments

between north and south (the “pollution haven” hypothesis), and to the NIMBY (Not In My

Backyard) movements in the consumption centers with high purchasing power, it has been

argued that the last decades had seen a relocation of polluting industries to less stringently

regulated environments (Neumayer 2001). It is also argued that companies use sub‐standard

technology in poor countries, unconsistent with the state‐of‐the‐art practices and regulations

9

in the home countries that could largely avoid human health and environmental damage

(Eskeland and Harrison 2003).

However, there are different ways of writing the history of environmental problems. A

political ecology perspective can be adopted (Hornborg, 2007). “The dominant mode has been

to assume a common human history, a global we experiencing the arrow of time through

cumulative changes such as population growth, technological development, and new patterns

of resource use. Ecological degradation, seen from this perspective, is the collective concern of

a generalized humanity prompted to exploit new territories, harness new energy sources, and

develop new transport technologies. Environmental problems, although alarming, are

presented as the inevitable side effects of our global success history. [... ] But landscape

changes are not a collective human experience over time, and such changes are distributed in

space. The humanity is not a single we but deeply divides in terms of reaping the benefits

versus carrying the burdens of development. If the world‐system (the world as a social system

much more inclusive than individual nations) for a long time has built on unequal power

relations between rich core areas and impoverished peripheries, this inequality can also be

expected to show in how environmental burdens have been distributed”(Hornnog, 2007: 1).

According to the dominant way of writing the history, “environmental costs of production

and wealth creation were considered, when considered at all, in the aggregate and not the

particular. In consequence, pollution became a “social cost,” implying that the burdens were

collective, as were the benefits. Nothing could be more misleading; the costs and benefits of

pollution were sharply and equivocally divided within society and between societies from the

onset of industrialization to the present day” (Byrne, Toly, and Wang 2006:268). This tendency

is sometimes described as “privatization of benefits, socialization of costs”. The costs can not

be seen as “externalities” arising from “market failure”; they should be understood as “cost‐

shifting successes”. This is why we can speak of an “ecological debt”, or of “environmental

liabilities”, resulting from both the uncompensated costs of negative impacts in exporting

countries and the use by wealthy states of the common space (atmosphere, the oceans) as

carbon dioxide sinks, for instance (Martínez‐Alier 2002). We are not only discussing the

relationship between the rich and the poor, the core and the periphery, but also between the

living and their future descendants, distinguishing among different generational claimants to

the distribution of resources: the young, the adults, the elderly and the unborn (Wallerstein

2007). And also other species.

10

Contrary to the theory of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (Panayotou 1993) which claims

that pollution increases with economic growth to a certain threshold of income, after which it

begins to decline, ecological economists believe there is no evidence of a general decline in the

indicators of pollution (Martínez‐Alier and Roca Jusmet 2001) although some of them (sulphur

dioxide in cities) follow the EKC. Rather, pollution (externalities) is transferred.

Inequality is also evident in the distribution of benefits. Fossil fuels have made a large

amount of energy accumulated in hundreds of millions of years of photosynthesis available to

some groups. Exosomatic energy consumption is a key factor to understand social inequality.

We as a species have genetic instructions regarding our endosomatic consumption of energy

(bio‐metabolism or food intake: the use of energy needed to maintain the physiological

processes, the internal metabolism, of a human being,) but not our exosomatic use of energy

(the use of energy for societal metabolism, outside the human body). Exosomatic use must be

explained by economics, technology history, politics and culture. These social differences in

exosomatic energy consumption are crucial for the understanding of human ecology.

Thus, as Martínez‐Alier and Roca (2001) state, a poor worker who cycles to work consumes

part of his 2500kcal (approximately 11 MJ) of food intake, while a wealthy worker who goes to

work by car spends about 20 000kcal of oil per day in a return 15‐kilometres trip. Furthermore,

a businessman or a tourist can spend 2,000,000 kcal in a one‐way flight from Barcelona to

Buenos Aires. Differences in exosomatic energy consumption of human groups can range from

averages of less than 5 000kcal to 100 000kcal daily (this includes direct energy consumption ‐

electricity and transport‐ and indirect ‐energy spent in the production of consumer goods‐)

(Martínez‐Alier and Roca Jusmet 2001: 23). We can calculated the metabolic profiles of

individuals, regions and nations, drawing attention to inequalities among those who benefit

from the combustion of fossil fuels and those who do not. In general, the greater the wealth

and income, the greater the exosomatic energy consumption. We can also trace the relations

between the metabolic profiles of different countries (and regions) and the environmental

conflicts (ecological distribution conflicts) that arise at different scales (international, national,

regional). The economy is not only constrained by bio‐physical properties: the economy is

embedded in social property rights, social distribution of income, and in economic systems

where power is unequally distributed.

11

Commodity frontiers

Oil is an exhaustible resource that the petroleum industry sells cheaply as it does not

include in the price the environmental liabilities generated by the extraction, transport and

refining processes, or in the treatment of the final residues produced, the necessary

environmental remediation, and mitigation of the consequences. Nor do they include the

amortization of the resource, that is the value that compensates for the loss of a non‐

renewable natural resource. In other words, the price of crude does not recognise the

difference between yield and plunder, between production and extraction; between

production and decapitalisation; the price of crude does not take into account the fact that the

sale or the depletion of crude is like the sale of an inheritance, like the dilapidation of natural

resources to the sacrifice of future generations. The price of oil is based on the ability to

transfer the costs of exploration, extraction and consumption to less well off and minority

populations and to future generations.

The unsustainability of oil extraction has long been noticed. In Latin America, the writer

Arturo Uslar Pietri coined in 1936 the slogan sembrar el petróleo (Martínez‐Alier and Roca

Jusmet 2001)) that in today’s ecological economics would be seen as a plea for at least “weak

sustainability”. The World Bank economist El Serafy proposed in the 1980s a rule for oil

exporting countries, to divide the revenue from oil into two parts: one that could be consumed

(as true income), and one that should go into investment so as to be able to keep the same

level of income after oil runs down. The investment part was not true income. Of course, how

large the investment fund would have to be depends on the reserves of oil and the rate of

interest. The larger the reserves and/or the rate of interest, the lower the investment fund

would have to be (the question was raised by critics on how the economy could have positive

rates of interests once we run out of oil, that fuels economic growth).

El Serafy’s rule is a macroeconomic application of the microeconomic insight of Hotelling in

1931 (Devarajan and Fisher 1981). What is the optimal path of extraction of an exhaustible

resource? The price of a non‐renewable resource, according to Hotelling, should be based on

the cost of extraction plus a scarcity rent, which would follow a trajectory of price increases.

The owner of the resource would compare the present net value of profits leaving oil in the

soil with the interest gained in the bank by extracting and selling the marginal barrel of oil

today.

12

The actual price of oil cannot really be explained by Hotelling’s microeconomics. It

depends on many factors. It increases in periods of war; or because of monopoly power and

the restriction of supply of the OPEC countries. It also can increase with the limitations of the

extractive capacity of each company and country. This latter is determined by earlier decisions

about investments in infrastructure, for example for exploration and extraction. The price of

crude oil, not in nominal prices, but in real prices, taking inflation into account, has been until

1973 between 10 and 20 dollars (in chained 2000 dollars1) per barrel. There were two large

peaks in 1973 and 1979 as a consequence of the embargo by the principal Arab producers and

the Islamic revolution in Iran, following which oil price stabilized at between 20 and 30 dollars

per barrel (1986‐2003). From 2004 rising oil prices have hit the media headlines as they

surpassed previous records and reached an unprecedented 75 dollars (in chained 2000 dollars)

in 2008 (EIA 2009d).

A number of explanations have been put forward for the rapid increase in the price of oil,

whether it is due to speculation or peak oil (that justifies an anticipation of higher prices).

What we can say in all assurance about these price fluctuations is that the concept of resource

stock is not only physical. It is related to available technology and to existing prices that

determine the extent to which it is profitable to exploit an oil field or not. We must also factor

in reasonable previsions regarding new deposits of oil that will be discovered and exploited in

the future. Here the notion of EROI becomes relevant again. In any case, it is obvious that to

exploit a resource it must be found in sufficient concentration and under certain conditions.

Hence, we can ensure that recoverable reserves are not comparable to a much greater (and

unknown) total physical quantity of a material that forms part of the Earth’s crust. Whether

the total base of existing resources is to be converted to a greater or lesser extent into

effective resources will depend on economic factors: on the monetary cost of exploration,

extraction and transport, on demand, and on the availability of substitute resources. There are

also physical limitations, because as exploitation of resources increases, only the more difficult

to access or lower quality reserves remain, which generally results in rising costs in terms of

the energy required to access them. There is, therefore, a moment in which the energy

required to exploit the resources will be greater than the energy they can produce: in other 1 Chained dollars: A measure used to express real prices. Real prices are those that have been adjusted to

remove the effect of changes in the purchasing power of the dollar; they usually reflect buying power relative to a reference year. Prior to 1996, real prices were expressed in constant dollars, a measure based on the weights of goods and services in a single year, usually a recent year. In 1996, the U.S. Department of Commerce introduced the chained‐dollar measure. The new measure is based on the average weights of goods and services in successive pairs of years. It is "chained" because the second year in each pair, with its weights, becomes the first year of the next pair. The advantage of using the chained‐dollar measure is that it is more closely related to any given period covered and is therefore subject to less distortion over time (U.S. Energy Information Administration Glossary).

13

words, no net energy will be obtained, or rather the net energy will decline so much that the

economy can no longer prosper as before.

However, in this process, rising petroleum prices enable the oil exploration and extraction

frontier to advance into more remote and difficult to access areas, usually wilderness areas of

high ecological value, where activity was previously very expensive; but also into areas

previously disregarded as containing unprofitable reserves. As a consequence, in the

exploitation of the “worst” quality deposits, the environmental impacts would also rise. Thus,

we are likely to see many socio‐environmental conflicts as we come down the Hubbert curve

(see chapter 4), after peak oil is reached.

As Moore stated, natural resources exhaustion, precipitated by the advance of exploration

and exploitation frontiers are not simply consequences of western societies expansion; “they

were in equal measure constitutive of such expansion, condition as well as consequence.

Degradation and relative exhaustion in one region after another were followed by recurrent

waves of global expansion aimed at securing fresh supplies of land and labor, and thence to

renewed and extended cycles of unsustainable development on a world‐scale” (Moore 2003)

:309).

Aims

There are many reasons to study the oil industry such as the centrality of extraction,

refining and distribution of the energy produced from oil; the power disputes for its control

and the fossil fuels lobby; the resource wars and the military conflicts as a social implication of

the continued dependence on oil (Klare 2004, 2002). However, my training as a biologist led

me towards environmentalism and a sense of urgency of the survival of many ecological

systems to ensure peace and a healthy environment for human societies. This brought me to

work on this topic.

Biological criteria single out the oil extraction industry as one in great need of monitoring

and rigorous impact assessment. The oil industry is at the root of the current environmental

crisis (Pimm et al. 1995), participating as a protagonist in the two major causes. Firstly, as

supplier of cheap energy that allows economic activity with a “very powerful technical capacity

to disturb lands and vegetation […]”, driving us to the “current stupid misappropriations” , as

14

one of the great Catalan botanists –Oriol de Bolós‐ had already confirmed in 1976; a technical

capacity that favour the loss of habitats and biodiversity, and land use changes (Vigo Bonada

2008:12). Secondly, for being responsible for supplying society with energy resources whose

consumption is the main source of greenhouse effect gasses released into the atmosphere,

and the principal cause of climate change.

In terms of human rights, the study of the oil industry is also a priority. The distance of the

main consumption centres from the centres of extraction, and sometimes the location of the

latter in outlying areas, results in an impact on minority human populations, such as

indigenous communities, that is largely ignored. Furthermore, the toxicity of the products and

by‐products of the oil industry can result in serious environmental effects and huge social

conflicts.

Within the area of our study (the northern Peruvian Amazon) a number of peoples have

been (and are) extinguished or disappeared (such as the Munichi, the Andoa, the Taushiro,

the Maynas and the Cocama) as a result of colonisation, the pillaging of their resources and the

imposition of the evangelical and catholic religions; peoples who also went through a process

of transculturation in which they suffered profound cultural transformations and were

progressively absorbed into mestizo society (Defensoría del Pueblo 2006; La Torre López 1999;

Working Group on article 8J and related provisions of the Convention on biological diversity

2003). Their testimonies together with my direct experience with the Achuar, Urarina and

Kichwa communities, have given my work a sense of purpose – not only to increase scientific

knowledge, not only to gain an academic degree but also, mainly, to help these peoples regain

a place in history and explain how mistreated they have been. This has scientific and technical

aspects (accounting of the damages, possibly a translation into money values in court cases)

but also humanist aspects, an expression of solidarity.

When we study the ecological (in)sustainability of the human economy, we cannot leave

aside the physico‐chemical limits and the physical evaluation of the environmental and social

impacts. Sustainability is no longer understood as a sentiment, “when love for nature was

looked upon as the sentimental indulgence of a privileged group and the protection of wild

species was considered an unnecessary waste of time and money” (Groot 1992). In the study

of the ecological sustainability of human societies, we understand sustainability in two senses.

Weak sustainability allows for the depletion of so‐called “natural capital” provided that

investments compensate for it. This is, as we have seen, the perspective of neoclassical natural

15

resource economics. Strong sustainability looks at the environment in terms of the absolute

necessity to protect those ecological functions (regulation of the chemical composition of the

atmosphere, regulation of the local and global climate, prevention of soil erosion, recycling of

nutrients, source of medical resources, replenishing water resources, water purification, etc.)

essential for the survival of humanity.

The author of this thesis is inclined towards “strong” sustainability. However, working in

the field makes one aware of the power of money to buy resources and even to buy people’s

health and livelihoods. Is this real “compensation”? Are the interests and values of the

“stakeholders” in Río Corrientes really commensurable? The thesis will explore such questions

in a very empirical way. I am concerned with the environmental crisis which is a cause and a

consequence of social inequalities, and I also try to propose alternatives that promise the

construction of a more egalitarian and more sustainable system. Such alternatives grow (in

part) from the resistance movements that I observe in the field.

Objectives

The objectives of this thesis come from two main research lines: 1) to compile information

on oil impacts for a little known Peruvian case study and 2) to generate and provide indigenous

people with tools to face oil impacts. The main objectives of the thesis are:

- To explore the impacts of oil exploration and exploitation in the Peruvian Amazon and

in the particular case study of Río Corrientes, Achuar territory;

- To establish the methodology for monitoring environmental impacts of oil industry in

tropical rainforests done by and for indigenous peoples;

- To investigate the history of of oil and gas frontiers in the Peruvian Amazon since the

1970s;

- To discuss the consequences on indigenous peoples and biodiversity conservation of

the advance in the oil frontier, as well as the growth of different forms of resistance of

indigenous people;

- To delve into solutions and alternatives to avoid or mitigate oil impacts in a world‐

system perspective.

16

The ultimate goal, social rather than strictly scientific, has been to give back the

information collected and generated to indigenous peoples affected by oil impacts and, in

particular, to the Achuar people and their federation. Information that should be in a useful

format to allow its analysis, use and application. When one does “action research”, giving back

results and involving people in the research process is indeed a methodological requirement.

Structure and Methodological approach

This is an interdisciplinary thesis, its purpose is to cover the objectives listed above, by

explaining a “story” (oil activities, local impacts and reactions) appealing the different

disciplines needed to make sense of the story: from anthropology to ecological economics,

from biology to political ecology, from social history (where forms of social resistance have

been analyzed) to ethnoecology, from geography to environmental chemistry and public

health, from geology (“peak oil”) to the study of public policies, from studies on Science‐in‐

society (the use of science in social conflicts, the assessment of risk, decisions under

uncertainty and ignorance) to rural sociology. The concepts used in this thesis have several

sources. This thesis has evolved, draws on, and resonates with several traditions that directly

or indirectly have contributed to it. Nothing new. It is framed in the environmental sciences,

where these sources and traditions have intermingled more and more over the last decades in

the complex issues of sustainability and respect for human rights. We have also used several

methodologies for data gathering and analysis and different scales (temporal and spatial) to

select and analyze the case studies.

Each of the research questions raised is separately dealt in the chapters presented below.

Although a detailed description of the methods may be found in the initial sections of each

chapter, here a brief outline is also given.

In chapter 1, we explore the impacts of oil industry in the Achuar territory, in the

Corrientes basin of the Northern Peruvian Amazon, overlapped by two oil blocks, 1AB and 8,

since the 1970s. The evidence of pollution and health status available in existing studies is

reviewed as well as government and operating company actions over the last 40 years, based

on an extensive literature review but also on qualitative methods such as individual structured

and unstructured interviews and focus group discussions in the field. We also conducted a

number of physical inspections to identify impacts in situ. This sheds light on the current state

17

and risk to indigenous health on the Río Corrientes. The data reviewed are significant because

the Achuar have lived in the shadow of the most important oil installations in Peru since 1971

and as such are the indigenous people with the longest exposure to potential contamination

due to these activities. Since new concessions in indigenous lands are being opened at record

breaking rates, evidence of impacts on the Achuar are important to inform current and future

oil activity on indigenous territories.

Chapter 2 stems from the need to explore the tools available to indigenous people to face

the impacts of oil activities described in the first chapter, to achieve a change in oil industry

operational practices and procedures and to achieve an effective mitigation of the

environmental and health impacts related to oil extraction activities. As a result, we set a

protocol for the application of participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) to map and

monitor environmental liabilities of oil exploration and exploitation. Such protocol is based on

indigenous mapping methodologies (ethno‐cartography), but also on individual open‐ended

interviews, time lines and map biographies. To plan and design the protocol we conducted

group discussions, brainstorming, focus groups, and other participatory methods. A tool called

MELPGIS, monitoring environmental liabilities through participatory geographic information

systems, was developed.

In chapter 3, we dig into the oil history of the Peruvian Amazon for a complete picture of

the impacts of oil activity at regional level. To better elucidate recent analysis that indicate

that there is a rapid proliferation of oil and gas exploration zones, we analyzed official Peruvian

government hydrocarbon information and generated a quantitative analysis of the past,

present, and future of oil and gas activities in the Peruvian Amazon. We review the

hydrocarbon activities across the region over the past 40 years, to better undertand the

changes of the oil frontier. We increase the temporal and spatial scale to get an historical and

regional perspective and to comprehend the importance of oil industry in human ecology. The

work is based on analyses of official government data supported on Geographic Information

Systems to conduct spatial analyses and calculate overlaps among hydrocarbon concessions

and other land‐use categories as proxies of the impact on biodiversity and indigenous people.

In chapter 4, we pinpoint the impacts of the oil frontier advance as described in chapter 3.

From a world‐system perspective, we analyze the oil frontier in a context of peak oil, high oil

prices and growing global demand for energy; we use concepts stemming from Ecological

Economics and Political Ecology to understand the impacts, conflicts, and resistance methods

18

related to oil exploration and exploitation in the Peruvian Amazon. This chapter is an attempt

to consider the links between global oil metabolism and the ecological distribution conflicts in

the Peruvian Amazon. The driving forces, impacts, and responses to the current oil exploration

boom are analyzed from an environmental justice perspective. This chapter therefore contains

both a description of forms of resistance by the Achuar and an analysis of the results

presented of the third chapter, illustrated with some of our field experiences in Río Corrientes.

In the present thesis, the word resistance is used in a sense similar to J Scott. In social

history, the different actions of social movements have been studied. Peasants resort to

"jacqueries" and land invasions, industrial workers go on strike and do boycotts. Socio‐

environmental movements also behave in certain ways. For instance, trees like eucalyptus are

sometimes uprooted, or shrimp farms are destroyed and mangroves are replanted. Such

collective actions take place in distant territories, by groups of people who never knew of each

other. Another example: mining communities increasingly resort to local referendums.

Complaints by rural peoples (peasants or indigenous) often are expressed by roadblocks.

Scholars of the "environmentalism of the poor" ‐like Ramachandra Guha in his history of the

Chipko movement (Guha 1989), and Guha and Martinez‐Alier, in their book Varieties of

Environmentalism (Guha and Martínez Alier 1997), have been influenced by social historians

such as E. P. Thompson who looked at European class conflict over the privatization of forest

lands, and James Scott who theorized peasant protest in Weapons of the Weak: Everyday

Forms of Peasant Resistance (Scott 1985). The opposition between a "moral economy" (the

oikonomia) and the market, figures prominently in these narratives. In the present thesis, a

description and analysis of forms of resistance by indigenous groups to oil exploration and

extraction is carried out.

******

In general terms, the whole thesis is rooted in a specific research framework, Participatory

Action Research. At the same time, the thesis often relies on a tool with an increasingly

widespread use, the Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

19

Participatory Action Research

The methodology we adopted for some of the chapters of the thesis was established

within the framework of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Action Research

(PAR), a “growing family of approaches and methods to enable local people to share, enhance

and analyze their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan and to act” (Chambers 1994) :953).

Such family of concepts, methods and practices emphasizes the active participation of people

in knowledge production so as to solve problems they may have. PAR sees research as a

collective generation of knowledge, as a process of social transformation and as a source of

empowerment.

PAR is a collective, self reflective inquiry that researchers and participants undertake so

they can understand and improve upon the practices in which they participate and the

situations in which they find themselves. PAR differs from most other approaches to research

on that it is based on reflection, data collection, and action that aim to reduce inequities

through involving the people who, in turn, take actions to improve their own situation. The

reflective process is directly linked to action, influenced by understanding of history, culture,

and local context and embedded in social relationships. PAR grew as a methodology enabling

researchers to work in partnership with communities in a manner that led to action for

change. PAR seeks to understand and improve the world by changing it (Baum, MacDougall,

and Smith 2006).

PAR owes much to the work of Paulo Freire, who stated that if knowledge does not imply

transforming the reality, it is not real knowledge (Freire 1968) and to Orlando Fals Borda, who

wrote about study‐action (Fals‐Borda 1973). It is also related to the post‐normal science

approach that emphasizes an “extended peer review” of technological and environmental

risks, because of the urgency and uncertainty surrounding the facts (Funtowicz and Ravetz

1994).

Since our subject of study is rich in conflicts and since the people involved in such conflicts

have suffered from historic social exclusion, we considered participatory action research as a

general framework suitable for the present study. PAR differs from conventional research in

the following ways (Fals‐Borda and Brandao 1987 ; Fals‐Borda and Rahman 1991; Pereda, de

Prada, and Actis 2003; Reason and Bradbury 2001):

20

- PAR affirms that, apart from academic science, there are other types of knowledge

from unrecognized worthy sources like the rebel, the heretical, the indigenous, the

common folk and the poor, and seeks a convergence between popular though and

academic science.

- PAR reflects questions about the nature of knowledge and the extent to which

knowledge can represent the interests of the powerful and serve to reinforce their

positions in society. PAR encourages poor and deprived communities to examine and

analyse the structural reasons for their oppression.

- PAR contrasts with less dynamic approaches that remove data and information from

their contexts. Most research involves people, even if only as passive participants, as

“subjects” or “respondents”. PAR advocates that those being researched should be

involved in the whole research process actively.

- PAR focuses on research whose purpose is to enable action. Action is achieved through

a reflective cycle, whereby participants collect and analyse data, then determine what

action should follow. It has a praxis‐inspired commitment for social transformation.

PAR, to solve the separation between theory and practice, tries to theorize and obtain

knowledge enriched through direct involvement, intervention or insertion in processes

of social action.

- PAR is understood as an essential requirement to trigger collective action, because

knowledge is based on experience and the research process can produce personal

behavioural changes as well as social empowerment.

Geographic Information Systems

As mentioned earlier, GIS have been a basic tool for this thesis. The use of this

methodology, in a PAR framework, has strongly conditioned the results, due to the tension

between participation and technology. Working with indigenous peoples, the gap between GIS

and PAR comes from the compatibility between geographic technologies and indigenous world

views. ON the one hand, GIS empower indigenous peoples, or at least this has been a guiding

idea in this thesis. To some extent, this is certainly true. For instance, newspapers and

21

television chains have informed of oil spills in Achuar territory as they would not have done.

On the other hand, GIS technology can become a tool for so‐called epistemological

assimilation, a new attempt by western societies to subsume indigenous cultures. Moreover,

GIS are highly technical and expensive, especially for indigenous communities, who lack

internet and computers, or even electricity to start with. Hence the technology is almost

unavoidably controlled by outsiders, leaving communities once more in a situation of

dependency and exclusion. All these arguments open the debate on whether the application of

GIS can weaken the indigenous movement and even facilitate its collapse, threatening again

the survival of indigenous cultures.

These criticisms remind us of the need to carefully examine a number of issues prior to

deployment of participatory GIS. Questions that are not trivial and are not to be taken lightly.

Indigenous peoples have historically suffered injustices, discrimination and dispossession that

have threathened their survival as peoples. We must consider carefully under what

circumstances GIS will empower or marginalize indigenous peoples; what can be done to

extend the benefits of GIS and spatial technologies; whether or not GIS can nourish rivalries

among communities or ethnic groups; who gains and who loses; and, how data access, closure

and disclosure should be managed.

All these questions are essencial for any PAR project particularly when using GIS. A PAR project

takes up peoples’ time and efforts, and raises expectations. A forecast error on the usefulness

and suitability of the methodology selected (in our case, GIS) may become counteproductive

involving a decrease in indigenous mobilization, a loss of confidence in indigenous

organizations, in other institutions and even in future projects. The main outcomes of this

thesis are maps, reports and scientific articles. The technological rift and the language rift can

determine the exclusion of the researched, the people who have the problem. If the research

process and results do not compensate for these flaws, they can weaken indigenous

movement and resistance.

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Study areas

Selection criteria

The oil frontier is advancing worldwide. One hundred of the 192 member states of the UN

extract oil (EIA 2010). Studying the impacts of oil exploration and exploitation, monitoring the

oil frontier advance and developing tools to avoid or mitigate these impacts are arduous tasks.

Hence, they require a careful selection of the study areas. The following four criteria were

relevant to define the study area for this thesis, both at regional and local levels:

- Global biodiversity conservation priorities. The location of and threats to biodiversity

are distributed unevenly (Brooks et al. 2006), human actions are causing a biodiversity

crisis, with species extinction rates up to 1000 times higher than background (Pimm et

al. 1995); natural resources degradation and exhaustion are due to an increasing social

metabolism; and there is a limited conservation funding. To address this situation, a

biodiversity conservation priorization is essential for a more efficient allocation of

limited conservation funding to minimize rapid biodiversity loss. Biodiversity

conservation organizations and the scientific community have proposed several

templates of global priorities. Nine major targets have been considered over the past

decade (Brooks et al. 2006): crisis ecoregions (CE); biodiversity hot spots (BH);endemic

bird areas (EBA); centers of plant diversity (CPD); megadiversity countries (MC); global

200 ecoregions (G200); high‐biodiversity wilderness areas (HBWA); frontier forests

(FF); and last of the wild (LW) –see Figure 1‐. “Conceptually, they all fit within the

framework of irreplaceability [measures of biological importance: number of endemic

species in a region, taxonomic uniqueness, unusual phenomena, global rarity of major

habitat types and species richness] relative to vulnerability [measures of temporal

conservation options: habitat loss, land tenure ‐measured as protected area coverage‐,

threatened species and human population growth and density], which is central to

conservation planning theory” (Brooks et al. 2006:58). Both high irreplaceability and

high vulnerability are considered. We can prioritize areas of high threat and high

irreplaceability, or areas of low threat and also high irreplaceability. “The former are

considered in theory the most urgent priorities in conservation planning theory

because unless immediate conservation action is taken, unique biodiversity will soon

be lost. The latter are often de facto priorities, because the opportunities for

23

conservation in these are considerable” (Brooks et al. 2006:60). The Amazon territories

are usually considered “low threat” (compared to the Brazilian Atlantic forest, tropical

islands such as Madagascar, Malaysia and Indonesia, or even Mediterranean‐type

systems, such as California and the Mediterranean itself, for instance).

Figure1. Nine major templates of global priorities: : crisis ecoregions (CE); biodiversity hot spots (BH);endemic

bird areas (EBA); centers of plant diversity (CPD); megadiversity countries (MC); global 200 ecoregions (G200);

high‐biodiversity wilderness areas (HBWA); frontier forests (FF); last of the wild (LW). From Brooks et al. 2006.

Over the last years, regional and detailed spatial data sets have been compiled,

particularly for mammals, birds, and amphibians biodiversity, improving the inputs for

global priorization templates (Baillie, Hilton‐Taylor, and Stuart 2004; Finer et al. 2008).

All these templates of global priorities helped to select the study area (see Figure 2).

- Indigenous peoples’ territories. The General Assembly of the United Nations

recognized that “indigenous peoples have suffered from historic injustices as a result

of, inter alia, their colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories and

resources” (UN 2007:2). This thesis focuses on aspects of environmental justice.

Working with indigenous peoples was really pertinent because, firstly, they suffer

increasing severe cases of injustice, marginalization and human rights violation (UN

2009); and, secondly, because of the urgent need to respect and promote the rights of

indigenous peoples in order to bring to an end all these forms of discrimination and

oppression (UN 2007). Working hand in hand with the organizations that legitimately

represent indigenous peoples, we sought to promote indigenous people

24

empowerment, convinced that control by indigenous peoples over developments

affecting them and their lands, territories and resources will enable them to maintain

and strengthen their institutions, cultures and traditions, and to effectively exercise

their political, economic, social, cultural and territorial rights indispensable for their

existence, well‐being and integral development as peoples.

Figure 2. Number of species of mammals, birds and amphibians in America. From Finer et al. 2008.

Additionally, such movements are a force worldwide for environmental

sustainability. Previous studies indicate a “geographical overlap between biological

richness and linguistic (cultural) diversity and between indigenous territories and

25

biologically high‐value regions (actual and projected protected areas); previous studies

have also recognized the importance of indigenous peoples as main managers and

dwellers of well‐preserved habitats, and certificated a conservationist‐oriented

behavior among indigenous peoples derived from its pre‐modem belief‐knowledge‐

practices complex” (Toledo 2001). The understanding that indigenous peoples have of

the ecological processes and their relationships with the environment have led some

authors to think that the preservation of this knowledge could contribute to

biodiversity, endangered species, protected areas and ecological processes

conservation (Maffi 2001). It could also contribute to the sustainable use of resources

and, of course to preserve their own cultural diversity. This traditional ecological

knowledge has been attributed to societies that have historicaly used natural

resources without a loss in ecosystems resiliency.

These four main sets of evidences have nourished a bio‐cultural axiom: “biological

and cultural diversity are mutually dependent and geographically coterminous”

(Toledo 2001). World’s rapid decrease in nature and culture diversities points to the

“converging extinction crises” of these diversities (Maffi 2005). Hence, “world’s

biodiversity will only be effectively preserved by preserving diversity of cultures and

viceversa” (Toledo 2001). The term “biocultural diversity” was coined in the 1990s

(Maffi 2001).

For the reasons detailed above, but particularly due to the current threat and

vulnerability of indigenous peoples’ belief‐knowledge‐practices complex, together

with the fact that protected areas are often inside their ancestral territories, their

empowerment could be one effective way to sustainabily. Such empowerment should

cover a wide range of areas, from the recognition of collective territorial rights to the

indigenous’ involvement in the management of protected areas; but also to the

enhancement of their cultural identity.

- Utility of the results. We sought the usefulness of the research project outcomes to

promote changes towards equity and sustainability. This criterion is an amalgam of

factors. We took into account factors such as that the demand for the research project

had emanated from grassroots organizations; the organization’s strength; the

presence of support organizations to accompany the indigenous people through the

26

research project; the link with other institutions and organizations to make use of the

outcomes; and the link with Spanish civil society. We look for a case study where a

Spanish‐based oil company was involved (operating company of the oil block or

holding company) to raise major awarness among shareholders, employees and

customers about the impacts the company may be responsible for. In general,

research aimed to cover the issues of corporate social responsibility, and corporate

accountability and socio‐environmental liabilities of European companies overseas,

often raised in the European Parliament.

- Feasibility of the research project. The design, implementation and therefore the

results of any study are always subordinated to a number of practical and logistic

elements. Support networks and infrastructure, budget restrictions, confidence with

local social organizations are key factors to facilitate or hinder any study. In remote

environments such as the tropical rainforests (when access depends on expensive river

travel), this criterion was indeed relevant.

The Peruvian Amazon, as a regional case study, met the selection criteria. It is a priority

conservation area due to its elevated “irreplaceability” (see Figure 2) according to the G200,

MC and HBWA models; and likewise for its low vulnerability, according to the FF, LW and

HBWA models. At the same time, the Peruvian Amazon is particularly notable for its

indigenous population. The world's indigenous population is around 370 million and it is

distributed across 90 countries (UN 2009). In the Peruvian Amazon the indigenous population

belongs to thirteen different linguistic families (Arahuaca, Cahuapana, Harakmbut, Huitoto,

Jibaro, Pano, Peba‐Yagua, Quechua , Tacana, Tucano, Tupi‐Guaraní, Zaparo and unclassified),

which makes Peru among the most heterogeneous countries in America, perhaps with the

largest number of linguistic families (see Figure 3). Furthermore, the Peruvian Amazon is also

home to around 60 distinct groups of indigenous peoples (INEI 2008, INDEPA 2009), including

an estimated 14 or 15 groups still living in voluntary isolation (Defensoría del Pueblo 2006,

Survival International 2008). Therefore, Peru is the second largest South American country in

number of ethnic groups in voluntary isolation after Brazil.

27

Figure 3. Map of linguistic families of the indigenous population of the Peruvian Amazon (Source: INEI

2008b:13).

28

According to the Commission on the Amazon region and Indigenous and Afroperuvian

Issues (CAAIA) of the Congress of the Republic of Peru, in 1993 the indigenous population of

Peru was made up of 8 million Quechua, 1,8 million Aymara and 300 thousand Amazonian

indigenous peoples ‐according to the 2007 census, the indigenous population of the Peruvian

Amazon was 332,975 inhabitants (INEI 2008b)‐, representing 41% of the Peruvian population.

Of these populations, 69% were poor and 47% lived in extreme poverty (CAAIA 2005),

although “poverty” is a category to be used with care for people whose livelihood does not

mostly depend from the market. The TEEB project (The Economics of Ecosystems and

Biodiversity project of UNEP and DG Environment of the European Commission) uses the term

“the GDP of the poor” to indicate how indigenous peoples directly use environmental

resources and services outside the market, and their small money income does not signal

therefore scarcity of well‐being (Sukhdev 2008). Conversely, loss of territory impoverishes

indigenous people not so much perhaps in money terms, as in terms of access to

environmental goods. It is not surprising the emphasis on territorial rights that indigenous

peoples make.

In terms of the social utility and potential application of the results of our research, the

situation in Peru is encouraging. The AIDESEP (Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva

Peruana) which emerged in 1980 from efforts to gain titles for indigenous territories, is a

strong organisation, enjoying considerable legitimacy among the indigenous population.

AIDESEP has played a fundamental role in the defence and promotion of the rights of

indigenous peoples, especially through the fight for territory, which enabled them to become

an increasingly relevant political actor (Aidesep 2005). Among their earliest successes, one can

find 1) the establishment of the Coordination of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin

(COICA by its Spanish acronym), in 1984, founded together with the CONFENIAE (Ecuador), UNI

(Brazil) , CIDOB (Bolivia), ONIC (Colombia); 2) the success of their project to liberate the

Ashanika population enslaved in the central Peruvian Amazon; 3) the implementation of the

Bilingual Teacher Training Programme in the Peruvian Amazon (FORMABIAP) since 1988; 4) the

establishment of the first three reserves for indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation in 1997;

and 5) the establishing of the Working Commission for the defence of the rights of indigenous

peoples in the face of hydrocarbon operation in 2003.

Regarding the local case study, the FECONACO (Federación de Comunidades Nativas del río

Corrientes), a grassroots organisation member of AIDESEP representing the Achuar, Kichua and

Urarina communities of the Río Corrientes, is also a well consolidated organisation, constituted

29

on 10th June 1991. In October 2001, FECONACO contributed to set up the Bi‐national

Coordination of the Achuar Nation of Ecuador and Peru (COBNAEP), together with the Achuar

people of the Pastaza basin, ATI (Achuarti Iruntramu) and ORACH (Organización Achuar

Chayat), and the Achuar Nation of Ecuador (NAE). Furthermore, prior to the formulation of the

demands that led to the research we are presenting here, FECONACO leaders had already

been feverishly active in trying to solve the problems caused by the impact of oil industry

activity in their territory, and they had met with representatives of Pluspetrol and the public

institutions. At the General Assembly of FECONACO (Novembre 2005) they had already signed

a statement in which they unanimously swore “not to accept more development of oil

operations in their territory” (FECONACO 2005).

In the case of the Achuar of Río Corrientes, there is also a series of organisations which

offered logistical facilities and provided certain guarantees for the continuity and use of our

research, such as the Racimos Ungurahui and Shinai. The former is an NGO created in 1995

deboted to provide legal services and general capacitation of indigenous communities in

aspects of rights and socio‐economic development, with a long history of work with AIDESEP

and FECONACO. The latter is also an NGO, created in 2000 which worked with the ATI and

ORACH on the mapping and titling of their ancestral territories.

Since our initial aim was to study a Spanish oil company, we centred on the study of the

areas of exploration and exploitation of two companies: Repsol‐YPF and CEPSA. At the stard of

the research, in 2005, Repsol‐YPF was the biggest Spanish oil company both in terms of

exploration and extraction and refining. It occupied the number 97 in the ranking of the world

major transnationals (Repsol‐YPF occupied the number 76 in 2009), according to volume of

income, being the eighth largest non‐state oil company in the world. CEPSA, on the other

hand, occupied number 386 in the ranking (Fortune 2009, 2005). 89.14% of developed and

undeveloped reserves of crude oil, condensed oil, LPG and natural gas of Repsol‐YPF were

located in Central and South America (Repsol‐YPF 2006b).

Due to a confusion of company names of subsidiaries, parent companies, mergers and

company buy‐outs, we initially thought that Repsol‐YPF participated in Pluspetrol Nord S.A, the

company holding the concession for Block 1AB which affects Achuar territory, in the local case

study. But it did not. The confusion was created by the fact that Repsol‐YPF do participate in

Pluspetrol Energy S.A and Pluspetrol S.A., holding 44.6% and 30% of shares respectively

(Repsol‐YPF 2006a). At the end, the thesis discusses the actions of three companies, Occidental

30

31

Petoleum (Oxy), Pluspetrol del Norte SA and Petróleos del Peru (Petroperú), but not of Repsol‐

YPF.

Chapter1

Impacts of petroleum activities for the Achuar people of the Peruvian Amazon: summary of existing evidence and research

gaps2

2 Authors: Martí Orta‐Martínez, Dora A Napolitano, Gregor J MacLennan, Sylvia Ciborowski, Cristina O’Callaghan‐Gordo and Xavier Fabregas‐Peries. Published 20 November 2007. Environmental Research Letters. Online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/2/045006

Cite as: Orta‐Martinez, M., D. A. Napolitano, G. J. MacLennan, C. O'Callaghan, S. Ciborowski, and X. Fabregas. 2007. Impacts of petroleum activities for the Achuar people of the Peruvian Amazon: summary of existing evidence and research gaps. Environmental Research Letters (4):045006.

Acknowledgments: Field data was collected with the essential participation of the Achuar communities of the Corrientes River area and their environmental monitors. The literature review portion of our research was aided tremendously by the facilities and research database provided by FECONACO, the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River. We are grateful for the support of Andrés Sandi Mucushua, Gonzalo Payma, Henderson Rengifo, Petronila Nakaim Chumpi and other indigenous leaders of FECONACO; Segundo Walter Hualinga, José Chimboras, Gil Dahua, Ramón Salas, Guevara Sandi, Miguel Carijano and other members of the environmental monitoring team.

33

At the end of 2006 more than 56% of the Peruvian Amazon (the largest land area of

Amazonian rainforest after Brazil) was under concession for petroleum and gas exploration

and exploitation (our calculation, based on data from Perúpetro and INRENA) and more

concessions continue to be offered for foreign investment each year. In this context a

thorough evaluation of the impact of existing petroleum projects was fundamental to

protecting hundreds of thousands of people throughout Peruvian Amazonia.

The case described here is the longest running petroleum production project in the

Peruvian rainforest and the Achuar report substantial declines in health and well‐being over

the same period. The authors of this chapter have been working with the Achuar people of the

Río Corrientes for several years in an effort to achieve recognition of the pollution and health

problems they live with (see, for example, La Torre López 1999). This review seeks to examine

the Achuar’s situation today using the theoretical framework of environmental justice. We

present first the available evidence of environmental and health impacts of petroleum

extraction for remote Achuar communities in the Peruvian rainforest, followed by examples of

company and government actions that constitute the enabling context in which rights

violations have been allowed to occur unchecked.

The objectives of this study are:

(a) to evaluate the current status of knowledge on historical and current environmental

liabilities generated by the hydrocarbon activities and the current health status of the

indigenous population of the area,

(b) to review actions taken by public bodies and companies in relation to their awareness

of environmental contamination and other impacts generated by the industry.

Known impacts of petroleum extraction

There are some studies, although few in number, which describe links between extractive

petroleum activities in remote areas and health problems for local indigenous peoples, such

as: elevated rates of spontaneous abortion, cancer and a deterioration of other indices of

health in the Ecuadorian Amazon (Hurtig and San Sebastián 2002, 2004; San Sebastián et al.

2001; San Sebastián, Armstrong, and Stephens 2001, 2002). Testimonies suggest similar effects

34

in other oil producing regions such as Alaska (Wernham 2007) and there are also reports of the

social inequities created by major oil projects, and the disregard for expert advice on best

practice in carrying them out (Jobin 2003).

The Achuar and the arrival of the oil companies

The Achuar are one of the “Jivaro” peoples of the Amazon and live on both sides of the

border between Ecuador and Peru in small communities which depend on their territory to

hunt, fish and plant small gardens (slash and burn agriculture) for daily subsistence. Figures are

uncertain, but the total population is estimated at close to 20 000 in both countries (DGE

2006:67). The Peruvian Achuar are 10 919 (INEI 2008b), 3.3% of total amazonian indigenous

people in Peru.

The Achuar in Peru have been in contact with Western society since the 16th century and

have endured waves of evangelizers, violent attacks from slave raiders and invasions by

treasure seekers attracted first to the gold deposits in the area and later by the rubber boom

(approximately 1880–1915). It was only in the second half of the 20th century, however, after

the 1941 war between Ecuador and Peru, that some outsiders began to settle in Achuar

territory, associated with mission organizations3 and oil companies. Since 1960s (ILV 2006),

and due to the evangelization by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), the Achuar from Río

Corrientes settled into communities around bilingual schools. The discovery of the first oil

fields in the Peruvian Amazon under the Achuar’s ancestral territory at the end of the 1960s

marked the beginning of a new wave of exploitation of natural resources on their lands.

In recent years all of Achuar territory in Peru has been overlapped by petroleum and gas

concessions4, created by the state oil and gas company Perúpetro. Achuar territory on the Río

Corrientes5, however, has been in production since the early 1970s. More than 4000 Achuar6

3 For example, Philippe Descola writes that Achuar communities in Ecuador only began to accept the presence

of Protestant missionaries in 1974 (Descola 2005). 4 We use concession or ‘block’ to refer to a specified area under contract between a company and Perúpetro

S.A. for the exploration and/or exploitation of hydrocarbons. 5 In Trompeteros and Tigre districts, in Loreto province, and in Andoas district, in Alto Amazonas province; all

them in Loreto region. 6 Mostly Achuar but also Urarina and Kichwa. In both oil blocks there is also mestizo population (in the distric

capitals: Intuto, Villa Trompeteros and Andoas) settled as result of a policy known as fronteras vivas or living frontiers (laws that stimulated colonization of the remaining amazonian lands due to the Ecuadorian‐Perivuan territorial dispute), or as result of oil exploitation (ex‐employees).

35

live in this river basin, in 32 communities along the river, affiliated to the Federation of Native

Communities of the Corrientes (FECONACO 2007). The concessions known as Blocks 1AB and 8

were drawn over their ancestral territories: their homes and their hunting grounds (see Figure

4 for the location of these concessions in relation to others in the Peruvian Amazon). Although

both oil blocks nowadays cover 497.027ha and 182.348ha, respectively, they had previously

occupied the whole of the Corrientes, Pastaza and Tigre river basins, covering a total of

8.770.000ha (own calculation).

Figure 4. Map of petroleum and gas concessions on Peru’s northern border in August 2007. Source: Perúpetro

S.A. (August 2007).

In 1969 the state company Petroperu started exploring for petroleum in the Corrientes

watershed, in the area that would become Block 8[8x]7. In 1971 the Peruvian government and

the American company Occidental Petroleum Corporation of Peru (Oxy) signed the contract for

Block 1AB. It was the first contract for hydrocarbon operations in Peru. In 1972 Oxy drilled the

first productive well and shortly thereafter Blocks 1AB and 8 became the most productive in

the country, at their peak accounting for 67% of national petroleum production (calculation

7 Block 8 was divided into 8 and 8x after its privatization in 1996. The area of Block 8x was concessioned in

March and June 2005 with two separate contracts for Burlington Resources Peru Limited (Block 104) and Petrolífera Petroleum (Block 106).

36

based on data from (MEM 2000). The case described here is the longest running petroleum

production project in the Peruvian rainforest and the most productive in the whole oil history

in the country, with an average of 70,000 barrels per day from 1971 to 2008 (own calculation).

At first, the crude petroleum was transported by cargo ship to Iquitos, but from the late

1970s onwards has been pumped directly from the wells to the Bayovar refinery on the Pacific

coast along the North Peruvian Oil Pipeline. A series of smaller pipelines, connecting producing

wells and storage sites to the major pipelines, criss‐cross Achuar lands. Of the crude oil

extracted from these two blocks, 45.9% is sold on the international market to clients such as

Shell, Enap, Chevron‐ Texaco, Glencore and Trafigura (Apoyos & Asociados 2006).

In 1996 and 2001 Blocks 8/8x and 1AB respectively were transferred to Pluspetrol

Corporation S.A.8 (later Pluspetrol Norte S.A.9) which took on all existing problems, including

earlier pollution and the poor disposal practices of production waters10. The original period of

exploitation for Block 1AB was extended by the Peruvian state in 2001 until 2015, while the

concession for Block 8 expires in 2026 (Apoyos & asociados 2006).

Methods

In order to respond to the research objectives three approaches were employed, as

detailed below.

Literature review

An extensive literature review was conducted on all available bibliography on the oil

industry in the Río Corrientes basin. This includes reports by:

8 Transferal of Block 8/ 8x approved by Supreme Decree: D.S. No 030‐96, on 21 July 1996. Transferal of Block

1AB approved by Supreme Decree: D.S. No 007‐2000‐EM on 18 April 2000. 9 Separation of Pluspetrol Norte S.A. approved by Supreme Decree: D.S. No 048‐2002‐EM on 20 November

2002. 10 Formation, produced or production water is defined as “water originating from the natural oil reservoir, that

is separated from the oil and gas in the production facility” (UNEP‐IE/E&P‐Forum 1997:56). The physical and chemical quality of the water varies in each oil field, but broadly speaking “produced water is at least four times saltier than ocean water and often contains “industrial strength” quantities of toxins such as benzene, xylene, toluene, and ethylbenzene. Heavy metals such as barium, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, and mercury have also been found in produced water. Produced water can also be radioactive—in some cases, as much as 100 times more radioactive than the discharge of a nuclear power plant” (Doyle 1994).

37

• Official sources, principally the Ministry of Energy and Mines and related energy sector

bodies such as OSINERG (Regulatory Body for Energy Investment), PerúPetro, DGAAE

(General Direction for Environmental and Energy Affairs); the Ministry of Health and

related health sector agencies such as DIGESA (Environmental Health Agency), DESA‐

Loreto (Regional Health Department of Loreto), and the Epidemiology Division

(DGE); the Ministry of Agriculture, in particular the body responsible for natural

resources, INRENA (previous known as ONERN);

• Sources related to the operating companies: Occidental Peruana Inc (Sucursal del

Perú), Pluspetrol Norte S.A. and credit rating agencies (Apoyos y Asociados,

FitchRatings y Pacific Credit Rating);

• Documents prepared by non‐governmental organizations working in the area, such as

the Institute for Investigation of the Peruvian Amazon (IIAP), WWF‐Peru and

Racimos de Ungurahui.

These resources enabled us to create a chronological synthesis of reported impacts and of

sources of contamination in the area. Although different approaches to the problem (and

different methods of analysis) are applied by the various authors, this in no way undermines

the objective of this review. It gives a historical perspective on the awareness of different

organizations and government agencies of the pollution generated by the extractive activities

and its effects. The same sources have been searched for mitigation or remediation activities

on the part of state agencies and concessionary companies and are briefly reviewed.

Interviews

To evaluate the completeness and accuracy of the data presented in official and company

reports, we carried out a total of 36 individual structured interviews and six focus group

discussions in five native communities in the Corrientes basin (in Block 1AB). A similar number

of unstructured interviews were carried out with other villagers in these communities11.

11 These interviews were carried out by MOM, GJM, CO, SMC and XF during a total of 3 months in the

communities.

38

All the interviews were carried out with men, in a variable age range from 17 years

upwards. The interviewers were assisted by Spanish‐Achuar translators from the same

community as the interviewee. All interviews were aimed at gathering as much information

about impacts and their location as possible, in order to identify places that were not

mentioned in official reports or remediation practices that were not up to best practice

standards or applied incorrectly. Timelines were also used during the structured interviews to

get a better idea of the relative time of various impact events.

Physical inspections

A number of walks were carried out to identify impacts described by community members

in situ. A total of 50 walks, covering some 500 km, were carried out on foot by MOM, GJM, CO,

SMC and XF, along with local guides and a team of indigenous environmental monitors. The

authors have a visual record of 762 photographs and four videos of georeferenced impact

locations.

This study’s limitations include the fact—as we shall show—that official, company and

NGO records are incomplete and cannot describe the full range and depth of environmental,

health and social impacts of oil extraction. Similarly, respondent recall of environmental

impacts going back over 30 years is probably incomplete, and the physical inspection of the

territory could not cover the whole area affected by oil activities. In spite of these limitations,

the data gathered are sufficient to paint a picture of the environmental contamination of the

Río Corrientes and the communities who live there that warrants further study.

Results

Some basic figures give a sense of the scale of operations: the Ministry of Energy and

Mines (MEM) recorded 11 578 km of seismic lines cut for exploration before 1986 in Block

8/8x alone, with the corresponding 50 000 holes drilled for seismic detonations, equivalent to

750 km drilled and more than 200 000 kg of explosives applied (MEM 1998). Since 1971, 398

productive wells have been drilled across Achuar territory, 223 of which have now been

abandoned (Apoyos & Asociados 2006). Today, an average of two spills12 a year are officially

12 Peruvian legislation does not establish a difference between a ‘normal leak’ and a spill, whether they are

temporary or permanent. The legislation only defines those spills or leaks of more than one barrel of liquid

39

reported in both concessions (OSINERG 2007) but our research suggests that there are far

more that go unreported (see below).

Health exposures

The Achuar report increasing mortality which they attribute to acute cases of poisoning,

cancer and other unfamiliar illnesses including allergic reactions of the skin and eyes (La Torre

López 1999). Other environmental impacts are also reported in the area: there are

innumerable testimonies of illegal logging, illegal trafficking in protected animal species, and

hunting and commercialization of bushmeat, all undertaken by petroleum company workers

and subcontracted companies (often through official company airports), to the detriment of

indigenous peoples’ subsistence resources. Thus petroleum operations have had direct and

indirect impacts on Achuar health, both through exposure to toxic substances or as a result of

malnutrition associated with the reduction in animal populations available to hunt and fish,

caused by contamination or overexploitation of limited forest resources13.

In this chapter we summarize the environmental exposures reported in official documents

by the Peruvian authorities. Some of the studies presented below were carried out in part due

to application of current legislation and as part of state supervision activities; others were the

result of actions of resistance and denunciation by the native communities and their

federation FECONACO (2007). These studies include results from tests of surface water, water

for human consumption, sediments and some biological samples of fish tissue and human

blood. While this section refers to values for contaminants found in soils and sediments in the

Corrientes area, Peruvian legislation lacks official standards for contaminants in soil and

sediments. Table 1 lists soil and sediment standards used in the United States as a reference

for these values.

hydrocarbons as a ‘loss requiring report’, according to Supreme Decree No 015‐2006‐EM. Until this decree replaced the previous one (No 055‐93‐EM, superseded in 2006) the volume of crude lost that was judged ‘reportable’ was 10 barrels.

13 The overexploitation of faunal resources is the result of a high demand for bushmeat from company workers in and around communities. It was one of the very few sources of income for families who did not have a relative working for the company. Until 1996 the operating companies did not employ any Achuar to work at the installations. Since then the trade in bushmeat has declined but continues.

40

In 1984 ONERN (previous government agency for natural resources) drew attention to the

intense deterioration of the region, describing it as “one of the most damaged critical

environmental areas in the country” (ONERN 1984).

Table 1. Soil and sediment standards used by EPA in the United States. Compiled from data found in EPA

2004. Values noted as “NV” indicate no value for the parameter.

a Petroleum hydrocarbons is a general term used to describe mixtures of organic compounds

found in or derived from geological substances such as oil, bitumen and coal. Petroleum

hydrocarbons are comprised of four fractions: F1 (C6–C10), F2 (>C10–C16), F3 (>C16–34), and F4

(>34). For the purpose of this study, the four fractions have been added to give a composite

value for petroleum hydrocarbons, comparable to “total petroleum hydrocarbons” used by

Peruvian legislation. b The number in parentheses is the maximum concentration of the contaminant for medium and

fine textured soil, and the other number is the maximum concentration in coarse textured soil.

In 1998 the Ministry of Energy and Mines itself, as part of the World Bank’s Technical

Assistance Program for Energy and Mines, published a Territorial Environmental Evaluation of

the Tigre‐Pastaza basin (including the Río Corrientes) presenting certain conclusions about the

historical environmental damage caused by petroleum exploitation in the region (MEM 1998).

This report recorded high concentrations of contaminants such as oils and fats14, and mercury

in all the rivers receiving production waters, even in the larger ones (such as the Corrientes,

Tigre and Pastaza) despite their capacity for dilution. High concentrations of hydrocarbons,

14 Peruvian legislation gives no maximum permissible limit for total petroleum hydrocarbons in water or

sediment. It does provide a parameter for oils and fats, defined according to the ‘Standard Methods’ as ‘any material recovered in the form of a soluble substance in the solvent’; trichlorofluoroethane is the recommended solvent (DGAA 1996; MEM (nd)).

41

barium, lead and chlorides15 were also found in samples of surface water from tributary

streams. Petroleum spills of varying sizes were identified on the surface of rivers and on land

and the results of river sediment analysis showed contamination by heavy metals and

chlorides, hydrocarbon concentrations of 54.5 mg kg−1 P.S. with some as high as 43 595.5 mg

kg−1 P.S., and oil and fat concentrations of more than 21 mg kg−1 P.S. with a maximum of 7378

mg kg−1 P.S. Analysis of air quality around production installations (which aims to quantify

pollution from gas flaring), revealed hydrogen sulfide concentrations that were four times the

maximum permissible levels (MEM 1998).

Calculations of affected areas around the production installations, evaluated on the basis

of barium analyses, found that 34 ha were seriously polluted, 95 ha moderately polluted and

292 ha had slight pollution (MEM 1998). Evaluations of deforestation and other kinds of

impacts classified 427 ha as “seriously to moderately affected” in Block 8 (Pluspetrol). In Block

1AB alone the surface area deforested, affected by effluents or covered by crude oil spills, was

calculated at 10 538 ha. In addition, the perforation of 348 wells was estimated to have

contaminated 52.2 ha due to the unprotected dumping of drilling muds16 (MEM 1998).

In 2004 OSINERG (the regulatory body for energy investment) recorded the presence “of

areas saturated by contamination due to old and recent hydrocarbon activities” (OSINERG

2004:19) and the existence of “extensive areas of cleared and deforested rainforest, presence

of visible petroleum spills in rivers, soils and around all production installations” (OSINERG

2004:16). Analysing environmental samples, OSINERG reported that: “of 46 samples taken of

natural soils and river water, streams, areas of soil restoration and others [...] 36 present levels

of contamination above maximum permissible limits” (OSINERG 2004:16) due to high

15 The presence of chlorides in waterways is probably due to the extremely high salt content of Corrientes

production waters. 16 According to the definition given in Peruvian legislation, drilling muds are ‘the fluid circulated during

operations inside the well, with special characteristics to keep it clean and controlled’ (DS 055‐93‐EM). E&P Forum/UNEP is more specific, describing these muds as the ‘specialized fluid made up of a mixture of clays, water (sometimes oil) and chemicals, which, once drilling commences, is continuously circulated down the drill pipe and back to the surface equipment. Its purpose is to balance underground hydrostatic pressure, cool the bit and flush out rock cuttings’ (UNEP‐IE/E&P‐Forum 1997:7). The specific composition of drilling muds varies at each oil field. E&P Forum/UNEP suggests that ‘water‐based drilling fluids have been demonstrated to have only limited effect on the environment. The major components are clay and bentonite which are chemically inert and nontoxic. Some other components are biodegradable, whilst others are slightly toxic after dilution. The effects of heavy metals associated with drilling fluids (Ba, Cd, Zn, Pb) have been shown to be minimal, because the metals are bound in minerals and hence have limited bioavailability. Oil‐based drilling fluids and oily cuttings, on the other hand, have an increased effect due to toxicity and redox potential. The oil content of the discharge is probably the main factor governing these effects’ (UNEP‐IE/E&P‐Forum 1997:13). They affirmthat major risks arise from spills and leakage of chemicals and oil, and that simple preventative techniques such as segregated and contained drainage systems should be incorporated into facility design and maintenance. Other authors estimate the risk to be considerable since ‘common components of drilling fluids can solubilize the barium, creating hazardous waste’ (Doyle 1994).

42

temperatures, presence of total hydrocarbons, chlorides and barium. In addition they find that

production water monitoring by the company is carried out at points that do not correspond

to actual outlets of production water, and thus monitoring reports by Pluspetrol Norte S.A. are

not valid. Also documented is the fact that “Pluspetrol Norte S.A. only does a very inefficient

separation of hydrocarbons and fats before dumping the production waters on the ground or

into streams. The effluent contains high concentrations of chlorides, oils and fats, as well as

high temperatures” (OSINERG 2004:5) and that the method of remediation of soils used by

Pluspetrol Norte S.A. is deficient, since high levels of total hydrocarbons have been identified

that exceed the maximum permissible limits established by existing legislation (OSINERG

2004:18).

Although the monitoring points do not correspond to the places where production waters

are really being dumped into water ways, as OSINERG reports, the company’s monthly

monitoring reports to MEM show annual average levels of contaminants that exceed

acceptable limits: more than 250 mg l−1 of chlorides in nine out of 25 monitoring points and

barium and lead concentrations over maximum permissible levels at two monitoring stations,

one for each parameter. Thirteen monitoring stations show specific monthly readings for

barium, lead or pH levels over maximum permissible levels (Pluspetrol Norte S. A. 1997‐2002).

The waters of the Río Corrientes have been classified (for application of the Water Law) as

“Waters of areas for the preservation of aquatic fauna and recreational or commercial fishing”

with the acceptable lead levels set at 0.03 mg l−1. In analyses undertaken by the Regional

Health Department (Dirección Regional de Salud) in Loreto in 2005, lead levels exceeded

acceptable limits according to the General Water Law (Ley General de Aguas) in two of 37

samples analysed (DESA 2005). The Corrientes and tributaries are not considered waters for

human consumption, although the Achuar communities have always used them for drinking

and cooking. WHO guidelines recommend that lead levels in water for human consumption

should not exceed 0.01 mg Pb l−1 but the reported results only state that the remaining 35

samples had <0.025 mg Pb l−1, thus making it impossible to judge if WHO guidelines are

exceeded. Results for cadmium and copper are similarly difficult to evaluate, in the first case

because the detection limit of the study method (0.01 mg Cd l−1) is substantially higher than

the established permissible limit (0.004 mg Cd l−1), and in the second because there is no limit

established for copper in the Water Law. Concentrations of total petroleum hydrocarbons

found in this study were below the detectable limit of the method of analysis used (1 mg l−1),

43

but in any case the Water Law has set no maximum permissible limits for this parameter (DESA

2005).

Another study carried out by the Environmental Health Agency (DIGESA, part of the

Ministry of Health) concludes that three17 out of 17 surface water samples contained chloride

concentrations over a reference value taken from an Ecuadorian Technical Environmental

Regulation (250 mg l−1) (DIGESA 2006). Of five sediment samples, all showed concentrations of

total petroleum hydrocarbons between 370 and 1560 mg kg−1 P.S. and lead levels of 18–24 mg

kg−1 P.S. (DIGESA 2006). These results were considered merely informative by DIGESA since

there is no limit for these substances established in Peruvian law.

The same study presents the results of 74 blood samples taken from 2 to 17 year olds in six

native communities and in Villa Trompeteros, the District capital, in 2005 (Table 2). Acceptable

WHO blood lead levels (BLL, maximum permissible limit = 10 μg Pb dl−1) were exceed in 66.21%

of the samples. In the same study, of 125 adult blood samples (aged 18–60 years) 79.20% have

levels of 10–19.9 μg Pb dl−1 (DIGESA 2006). All fall below 20 μg Pb dl−1, the absorption limit for

people not occupationally exposed to lead, according to the American Conference of

Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and

Lauwerys and Hoet. USAID indicates that no safe BLL is known and that even BLLs of less than

10 μg dl−1 have adverse health effects in children. In adults, high BLLs are related to

hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Lead can be carried from maternal to foetal

circulation through the placenta and exposure of the foetus to lead, even at maternal blood

levels of less than 10 μg dl−1, adversely affects foetal brain development (USAID 2005).

17 In fact, according to the corresponding table presented in the DIGESA report, it would appear that four

points exceeded the reference value (DIGESA 2006: Cuadro 11) but the text reports only three.

44

Table 2. Results of analyses of lead in blood (Source: table created with data from DIGESA (2006)). Note:

acceptable blood lead levels according to the WHO, ACGIH, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Lauwerys and

Hoet are: 10 μg Pb dl−1 (children), 20 μg Pb dl−1 (adults not occupationally exposed to lead) and the biological

tolerance limit is 40 μg Pb dl−1.

Blood samples in this study were also tested for cadmium (Table 3) which led to the finding

that 98.65% of 2–17 year olds exceeded acceptable limits for people not occupationally

exposed (<0.1 μg Cd dl−1), 37.84% were classified as at risk with 0.21–0.5 μg Cd dl−1 and 59.46%

exceeded the biological tolerance limits (BTL18) for cadmium (>0.5 μg Cd dl−1). Of the adult

samples 99.20% were over established permissible limits and 68% were over BTL19. Both

cadmium and lead are considered to be among the six most toxic metals for humans (Spadaro

and Rabl 2004).

Table 3. Results of analyses of cadmium in blood (Source: table created with data from DIGESA (2006)). Note:

acceptable blood cadmium levels according to the ACGIH, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Lauwerys and

Hoet are: 0.1 μg Cd dl−1 (non‐smoking adults not occupationally exposed to cadmium), 0.2 μg Cd dl−1 (adults who

smoke but are not occupationally exposed to cadmium) and the biological tolerance limit is 0.5 μg Cd dl−1.

18 BTL: maximum permissible amount of a chemical compound or its metabolites in a worker, or the maximum

permissible deviation from the norm of a given biological parameter, induced by these substances in human beings. 19 For the interpretation of adult results, DIGESA used references and BTL values proposed by the American

Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Lauwerys and Hoet. For children, DIGESA applied the maximum permissible levels recommended by the WHO and the scheme for follow up of lead intoxication proposed by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).

45

In addition to these documents and reports prepared by public bodies, the authorities

have also been notified of the results of several studies carried out by other institutions.

Reports published by the Research Institute of the Peruvian Amazon (IIAP) between 1983 and

1987 found high concentrations of lead and copper in the Río Corrientes and in the tissues of

fish from rivers and lakes in the region. The levels in tissue samples were above acceptable

limits for human consumption, indicating bioaccumulation of these compounds. IIAP also

reported the incipient pollution by hexavalent chromium (Cr6+), considered carcinogenic and

also one of the six most toxic heavy metals for humans (Spadaro and Rabl 2004), in the

Macusari River (tributary of the Corrientes) and other areas of exploitation. IIAP concluded

that the main sources of exposure were the production waters discharged into the rivers and

streams of the Corrientes basin (IIAP 1985, 1987). None of IIAP’s findings were followed up by

the relevant authorities.

There are substantial gaps in our understanding of the environmental and health impacts

generated by the activities of Occidental Petroleum, Petroperu and Pluspetrol in Achuar

territory. However, as we have shown, successive Peruvian administrations and the

concessionary companies have produced official reports—dating as far back as the 1980s—

drawing attention to the serious pollution of the Corrientes basin and recommending

intervention to design and carry out containment, remediation and mitigation measures.

Sources of contamination: company operating policy and remediation

Official documents identify the following as potential sources of contamination related to

the petroleum activity in the area:

• the dumping of:

* solid domestic waste, calculated at 3.85 tonnes/day for both lots (MEM 1998);

* drilling muds: according to MEM, in 1998, “348 wells have been perforated in

the watershed, so approximately 52.2 ha are estimated to be contaminated by

drilling muds” (MEM 1998). In addition, “during the drilling of a typical well in

the region of 3000 m in depth, some 300–600 tonnes of mud may be used, and

1000–1500 tonnes of cuttings produced” (UNEP‐IE/E&P‐Forum 1997:15). Given

46

that the depth of the productive wells in the Corrientes basin is between 9000

and 13000 ft (2500–4000 m) (MEM 1998: section 5.3) we can estimate a total

production of drilling muds from 398 wells (in 2006) at 676 600 tonnes;

* petroleum spills (from broken pipes, wells and storage tanks): “the area

deforested (in Block 1AB), the areas altered by discharges of produced water

and the areas covered by petroleum spills total 10 538 has” (MEM 1998).

Meanwhile in Block 8 an estimated 427 ha were affected (MEM 1998). In

addition, according to the record of spills reported to OSINERG between 1998

and 2006, a total of 6619.7 barrels of crude oil have been lost (OSINERG 2007).

This record underestimates the real volume of spills since it does not consider

hydrocarbons discharged into the environment in production waters, nor spills

of less than 10 barrels (minimum spill size reported until 2006);

* daily (continuous) production waters: from 1972 to 1997, the extractive process

in Block 1AB alone produced a daily average of 762 000 barrels of production

water (compared to a daily average of 52 286 barrels of petroleum, MEM 1998).

Although the historical average is not known for Block 8, in 1997 a daily average

of 183 000 barrels of production waters were dumped into local waterways

(MEM 1998). This waste water has high concentrations of chlorides, heavy

metals, metalloids and total petroleum hydrocarbons on the surface and in

emulsion;

• gaseous emissions from:

* petroleum storage tanks;

* gas venting;

* gas flaring;

* electric generators and petroleum burners (incinerators) in the camps.

The PAMA (Programme of adaptation and environmental management) gives the total

annual emissions of Block 1AB in 1996 as 6050 tons of nitrogen oxides, 1443 tonnes of carbon

monoxide, 442 tonnes of non‐methane hydrocarbons, 435 tonnes of particulate matter and

304.9 tonnes of sulfur dioxide (Oxy 1996). In reaching these figures, Oxy only considered gas

flaring at the central production facilities, but not emissions from petroleum tanks, gas

venting, generators or incinerators.

47

There are undoubtedly more sources of contamination than those identified by the

government inspectors to date. In December 2006, we witnessed and documented some of

Pluspetrol Norte’s poor procedures for elimination of spills, including burning them (and

nearby vegetation) and burying them without adequate sealing measures (one of the ways in

which the company attempts to “clean up” spills). The company appears to have no efficient

systems to mitigate or contain spills early on or to respond rapidly and restore areas affected

by spills. In addition we have documented and gathered testimonies of the following

practices—many of which are still in use:

• Abandonment of open waste pits (for drilling muds and petroleum) without proofing,

or discharge of drillingmuds and production tests straight into the nearest water

bodies.

• Absence of drainage systems at well sites and waste pits (containing drilling muds, spilt

hydrocarbons or production waters) to cope with run‐off due to heavy rains or

excessive dumping.

• Inefficient separation systems discharging production waters at high temperature and

with high content of oil and fats.

• Spills of between two and six barrels per week at each well due to maintenance and

pressure control activities (“operational leaks”).

• Unreported leakages and spills throughout the system of pipelines (including some

abandoned ones).

• Completion of control and recovery actions after spills, without any action being taken

with regard to oil products that could not be recovered.

• Use of obsolete technology to contain and recover spills. Examples include:

* manual recovery of crude with buckets tied to sticks with lianas;

* recovery containers with holes in them;

* use of tree trunks and palm leaves as containment barriers;

* use of buoys without appropriate methods for fixing them in place;

48

* absorbents20 abandoned in the waterways where they are applied.

• Periodic cleaning of pipelines takes place in open areas and without systems of

recovery or drainage. Residues removed from the pipeline are abandoned in situ.

• The use of untreated hydrocarbon residues from the bottom of storage tanks for

company road maintenance.

• Burning of petroleum spills: crude oil from spills is collected in metal barrels and burnt

or alternatively an entire area affected by a spill is burnt without any action to restore

the area.

• All kinds of solid waste are abandoned on the land and sometimes sold by workers to

indigenous communities: e.g. old containers previously used for toxic wastes are sold

to the communities where they are commonly used to store food.

Other documented practices that are not related to waste management but with clear

negative health consequences for the local indigenous population are the demand for

prostitution in communities and sexual abuse of Achuar women, with additional potential for

the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. Foreign workers may also bring new

diseases to the area which the Achuar have not encountered before. In addition, alterations

caused to the natural drainage system also present a risk, for example the creation of large

areas of standing water are conducive to the proliferation of the mosquito Anopheles sp., the

principal vector for malaria—a significant health problem along the Corrientes.

Company and state actions

It seems clear that either through negligence or cost‐cutting, the operating companies’

(currently Pluspetrol Norte S.A. but previously Petroperu and Oxy) do not and have not taken

adequate steps to mitigate the environmental and health impacts of their activities, including

poor daily practice in waste management, the quality and security of their installations and

infrastructure and the non‐implementation of contingency plans. The dumping of untreated

20 Absorbents are water‐repelling cleanup agents for industrial and marine oil spills that absorb most types of

oils. They contain cellulose, lignin, protein, starch and calcium.

49

production waters into freshwater streams and waterways is a clear example: when

operations began on the Corrientes in the 1970s, such practices had been illegal or severely

restricted for decades in most oil producing states in the USA (Goldman, La Torre López, and

Lya Ramos 2007). We consider of particular concern the companies’ repeated denials to the

Achuar communities of the existence of pollution in their territories and of the risk to these

communities in case of exposure, as well as the absence of channels of communication to

warn, inform and help protect communities in case of spills or where effluents are discharged

into the rivers.

The health situation in the Achuar communities is further aggravated because the

concessionary company appears to be covering up the impacts of its activities. As previously

cited, “the real production water outlets are not at the points declared by the company”

(OSINERG 2004) in the monthly monitoring reports to MEM, thus invalidating the company’s

water monitoring results and casting doubt on other data provided by the company. Such

practices make it impossible for the authorities to initiate appropriate mechanisms on behalf

of local communities. This has led the communities to sue Oxy, as an American corporation, in

the United States and the case is currently before a Los Angeles Superior Court (New Scientist

2007).

However, the responsibility for the current “health emergency” (FECONACO 2007) in the

Achuar communities of the Río Corrientes does not fall exclusively on the operating companies

but also on the State. The absence of a public authority in this remote area of rainforest means

that the health service is practically nonexistent, without any direct role or intervention to

affect health status. The first general evaluation of Achuar health has only recently been

published by the MoH’s Epidemiology Division (DGE 2006) and many communities have no

access to health care.

In addition, regulatory or supervisory bodies have failed to apply any significant sanctions

to any of the companies that have operated in these concessions. Pluspetrol Norte S.A. has

been fined by OSINERG several times for contamination, but has appealed all of these

resolutions and is often exempted, for example in May 2005 the Fiscal Tribunal found in favour

of Pluspetrol Perú Corporation, annulling fines in excess of $5m US (Resolución del Tribunal

Fiscal No 02197‐5‐2005, cited in Pacific Credit Rating 2005. Local, regional and national

governments have not responded to repeated requests by the communities and their

50

federation, nor to the now numerous technical reports described above that highlight the very

real possibility of an environmental and human disaster along the Río Corrientes.

The authorities’ inaction has been in evidence for some time. In a recent example, even

after completing the blood tests that showed alarmingly high blood lead and cadmium levels,

the Ministry of Health took no action. Nearly a year passed from the time the samples were

collected, in June 2005, until their publication and delivery to the communities in May 2006.

Even achieving this apparently simple and ethical response required the presentation of

notarized letters to the Minister of Health, Dr Pilar Mazetti Soler. No health action plan had

been designed or considered during the intervening 11 months.

Another complication of evaluating the contamination on the Corrientes relates to the lack

of technical legislation in Peru on permissible levels of many pollutants in water or sediments,

which means that results are considered merely informative and led to no action (DESA 2005;

DIGESA 2006; OSINERG 2004). In addition, the limits of detection of the methods used by

government bodies in analysis of samples are often higher than the permissible limits

established by law (or international precedent) and cannot therefore discern violations of

existing legislation or best practice.

The government of Peru, the President and Congressmen, all know “that the communities

living along the banks of the rivers inspected rely on the water sources in Block 1AB mainly to

satisfy basic nutritional needs” (OSINERG 2004) and yet no action has been taken. Hardly any

of the numerous recommendations made in the various reports had been implemented before

the indigenous communities paralyzed oil production in both blocks for two weeks in October

2006 (La Torre López and Napolitano 2007). A few days after agreement was reached and the

Achuar lifted their strike, an engineer at the Environmental Health Agency (DIGESA) claimed

that there was no evidence of health impacts caused by petroleum activities among the

Achuar: “up to the present time there is no medical study with regard to the impact the

petroleum activity has caused to the Achuar. What has been found are the remains of lead and

cadmium in the blood of a group of inhabitants [. . .] neither of these heavy metals are

originated by the petroleum activity” (Peralta Liñán 2006).

51

52

Conclusion

In sum, both the operating companies and the State have been highly negligent or

incompetent in their approach to exploitation of the Corrientes oil fields and the impacts on

the Achuar communities who live there and depend on the health of their territories for their

survival and well‐being.

The few exposure and human health parameters studied so far in the Achuar communities

along the Corrientes reveal an extremely serious situation and highlight the need for an in‐

depth evaluation of the health status of all the region’s inhabitants. Accurate baseline

information is lacking for the appropriate design of a health plan to respond to communities’

needs21. Similarly, a study in environmental epidemiology is urgently needed to better

establish the relations between petroleum contamination detected in surface water,

sediments and soils, the presence of these substances in the human population, and possible

long term effects on the health of the Achuar. Without such a study any action plan to address

health impacts will fall short of the objective.

An in‐depth analysis of the culture of the companies and the government oil sector would

also be illuminating and perhaps suggest better ways of ensuring efficient supervision of

activities, thus mitigating impacts.

21 Such a plan should be funded by Pluspetrol as one of several commitments reached at the end of the

Achuar’s protest in October 2006, but progress has been limited.

Chapter 2

Science for indigenous activism: mapping the impacts of oil companies 22

22 Authors: Martí Orta‐Martínez, Gregor J MacLennan, Sylvia Ciborowski, Wendy Pineda, Aurelien Stoll, Cristina

O’Callaghan‐Gordo and Xavier Fabregas‐Peries. Submitted 29 April 2010. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Authors acknowledge the work of the monitors and the help from FECONACO, the IEMT and the Achuar indigenous communities of the Corrientes River. The field data were collected with the essential participation of the Achuar communities of the Corrientes River basin and their IEMT members. We are grateful for the support of Andrés Sandi Mucushua, Gonzalo Payma, Henderson Rengifo, Petronila Nakaim Chumpi and other indigenous leaders of FECONACO; Segundo Walter Hualinga, José Chimboras, Gil Dahua, Ramón Salas, Guevara Sandi, Miguel Carijano, José Tamani, Patricio Piñola, Wilson Sandi, Niver Peraza and other members of the environmental monitoring team. We thank Joan Martinez‐Alier, Victoria Reyes‐García and Jaime Paneque‐Galvez for reviewing the manuscript and Agustín Lobo‐Aleu for fieldwork design supervision. The MELPGIS project was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science through a FPU grant AP‐2004‐7103, a US Fulbright Scholarship and the NGOs 11.11.11, Racimos de Ungurahui, Shinai, RNF, FAS‐UAB and WWF‐Perú.

53

Introduction

In March the 24th, 2008 The BBC News published that in the jungles of Peru, indigenous

peoples armed with Global Positioning System (GPS) were reporting on the occurrence of oil

spills before the authorities and the oil companies themselves knew about them (Collyns

2008). Such news, echoed by the Peruvian press (La República 2008), were born from the

practices explained in the present chapter. The work described here began following the

demand of the indigenous groups of Río Corrientes (Figure 5) who wanted to have maps

describing their territories and resources, as well as document the impacts caused upon them

by oil exploration and extraction activities. Our ICTA‐UAB team and the NGOs Racimos de

Ungurahui and Shinai were initially asked to jointly map with FECONACO those sites impacted

by oil extraction (the so called externalities, or cultural, social and environmental liabilities).

Soon after starting the mapping process we realized the potential usefulness of a permanent in

situ indigenous monitoring of oil impacts. Thus, we planned and developed an “indigenous

system for mapping and monitoring the oil industry impacts” that was based on a particular

application of indigenous mapping methodologies.

The objectives of the system were to empower indigenous people through the

reinforcement of their own perception of impacts, and also to link them to government policy‐

makers and to the national and international civil society to prompt both the Peruvian State

and the oil companies to take the necessary steps to mitigate the environmental and health

impacts related to oil extraction activities. In this chapter we present a general protocol for

Monitoring Environmental Liabilities of extractive industry through Participatory GIS

(MELPGIS).

54

Figure 5. Achuar communities involved in the MELPGIS project. Overlap of oil and gas blocks with the Achuar

territory of Río Corrientes, titled communities, protected areas and territorial reserves for the protection of

indigenous people in voluntary isolation.

Indigenous mapping (IM) has been defined as a family of “methodologies for mapping

done by and for indigenous peoples to achieve political goals” (Chapin, Lamb, and Threlkeld

2005). IM began in Canada and Alaska in the 1950s and 1960s. Since the 1960s the

development of this methodology has been mostly related to the evolution of the indigenous

people movement and its political goals. In that sense, IM has mainly been used to fight for the

recognition of indigenous peoples’ territorial rights, a key right to guarantee the

accomplishment of health, cultural and political rights for indigenous people (Surrallés and

Garcia‐Hierro 2004). IM has also been used for cultural reinforcement (documentation of

history and culture to salvage and reinforce cultural identity, known as cultural mapping)

(Poole 2003), empowering or strengthening indigenous political organization, economic

planning, natural resource management and conservation biology (Ferguson and Messier

1997). In this chapter we follow Chapin 2005 and use indigenous mapping to refer to a set of

similar methodologies that are found in the literature with different terms, such as traditional

knowledge and land use studies, traditional land use and occupancy studies, subsistence

55

mapping, resource use mapping, participatory mapping (Chambers 1997), community mapping

(Fox 2002), ethnocartography (Chapin and Threlkeld 2001) or those that stem from a more

technological approach, like participatory GIS (PGIS) (Abbot J 1998) or public participation GIS

(Jordan 2002; Obermeyer 1998). However, it is important to note that some of these terms

may have applications far beyond that of IM, which only concerns indigenous peoples.

MELPGIS usefulness

Indigenous territories are on the frontiers of many commodities, such as agricultural and

ranching products, agrofuels, timber, rubber, oil, gas, coal, iron ore, gold, bauxite and other

minerals (Bedoya 2004; Finer et al. 2008; Watson 1996). Political ecology has been shown to

be useful when studying resource extraction conflicts at the commodity frontiers (Martínez‐

Alier 2002). Political ecology, recognizing the extent to which environmental changes and

societal processes are intertwined, gives us a “materialist” perspective on environmental

history by considering that societal processes take place within a material world whose

properties constrain what is possible and determine the environmental consequences of

human patterns of consumption and production (Hornborg, McNeill, and Martinez‐Alier 2007).

From this materialist perspective, we realise that the more materials and energy the economy

makes use of, the more waste it produces and the more relevant is the advance of the

commodity frontiers. In the case of non‐renewable energy resources, there is the combined

force of increasing consumption and world demand, and decreasing extraction rates and

discoveries. The oil extraction peak in Hubbert’s curve has possibly been reached

(Tsoskounoglou, Ayerides, and Tritopoulou 2008) and there is now a need to travel further into

the frontiers of extraction, often territories where there are human populations. Likewise,

applying political ecology to the analysis of modern societies may be useful to show the

differential distribution of costs (such as the impacts caused by the oil industry) and benefits of

production and consumption of natural resources among countries, regions and social groups,

which creates ecological distribution conflicts and, as a consequence, increases the

movements complaining against environmental injustices. In fact, the demands by FECONACO

that gave birth to this project can be seen as claims for environmental justice.

Oil exploration and exploitation have been very pollutant in peripheral countries that lack

supervision capacities (Goldman, La Torre López, and Lya Ramos 2007; Korovkin 2003); see

56

also chapter 1). They have also contributed to cultural assimilation and integration to the

market economy (Suarez et al. 2009). However, the safeguard of cultural diversity coupled

with the use of simple technology and a limited access to external markets have been shown

to favour biodiversity conservation (Hames 2007; Toledo 2001). Previous research has claimed

that for theses reasons, indigenous peoples are biodiversity guardians or allies. The recognition

of territorial rights for indigenous people whose ancestral territory overlaps with oil activities

seems to be, by itself, an insufficient measure to avoid the various cultural and environmental

impacts emerging from oil industry in these areas (Surrallés and Garcia‐Hierro 2004). Under

such circumstances, we argue that indigenous participatory monitoring can prove to be a

useful tool.

Recently, new IM approaches have been proposed and implemented to face informal,

illegal, and small‐budget extractive activities. Although no scientific literature has addressed

this issue, some examples and practical experiences can be found on the web. For example,

Mark Plotkin and the NGO Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) along with the Tumucumaque

indigenous people of Suriname, undertook this mapping approach pursuing to protect their

territory against encroachment by illegal and informal gold miners ‐cited in Butler (Butler

2006)‐. In this chapter we propose a protocol for applying IM to monitor formal, industrial,

legal, big‐budget, and usually transnational oil activities conducted on indigenous territories,

to defend indigenous peoples ancestral lands and resources from the advancement of the

commodity frontiers. The novelty of the present chapter springs from the fact that there is no

scientific work on the arena of indigenous monitoring of oil industries nor the application of IM

for this purpose has been described in scientific terms to date. This applies so far to extractive

industries in general.

As just mention in the previous chapter, despite Peruvian state agencies have identified

the negative impacts on the Achuar territory for more than two decades, barely any action to

stop or mitigate them has been undertaken either by the Peruvian government or the oil

companies until recent days (see chapter 1). Furthermore, although oil exploration and

extraction in the Peruvian Amazon dates from the 1920s, the Peruvian Amazon is currently

experiencing a new oil exploration boom (see chapter 3). As a consequence, hydrocarbon‐

related socio‐environmental conflicts are increasing in the Peruvian Amazon. In 2008 and

2009, hostile confrontations erupted between Amazonian indigenous peoples and the

Peruvian government’s forces (see chapter 4).

57

At present, some 180 oil and gas blocks cover about 688,000 km2 of the western Amazon

(Finer et al. 2008), including Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia. Therefore, the case of

the Achuar, Kichwa, and Urarina is by no means the only one. In fact, it is likely that several

large recent oil discoveries in the remotest forests of the Peruvian Amazon will trigger a new

wave of encroachment upon indigenous titled lands in Peru. We argue that the oil industry

indigenous mapping and monitoring system presented here (MELPGIS) can be successfully

deployed by other indigenous people to control and defend their territory in other areas of the

Amazon as well as in any other oil frontiers elsewhere. Likewise, we believe that it can be

tailored to monitor other extractive industry activities undertaken in indigenous territories.

In this chapter we present MELPGIS as a schematic project sequence to serve as a guide

for anyone interested in undertaking mapping projects to promote indigenous rights and to

monitor environmental liabilities of oil or other extractive industries operating across their

territories. In section two we explain the theoretical and methodological protocol that has

been used for the design, implementation and evaluation of MELPGIS. In section three we

expand on a general protocol to monitor extractive industries, built upon our particular

experience with FECONACO about oil industry monitoring. Finally, in section four, we discuss

the achievements and shortcomings of our protocol in terms of empowerment of indigenous

people and mitigation of the impacts; in addition, we make some policy recommendations that

might improve these results.

Methodology

The protocol we adopted to deploy MELPGIS was established within the framework of

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Action Research (PAR). PAR and PRA were

considered the appropriate theoretical and practical framework for this project for three main

reasons. First, both approaches have provided the framework of PGIS development, especially

for those using IM as an indigenous political tool to back their rights and claims (Chapin, Lamb,

and Threlkeld 2005). Second, PRA has been proven to be an effective tool for development and

empowerment (Chambers 1994), which was also a key objective of our project, namely, the

improvement of indigenous peoples’ health and of the state of environment in their territory

and the production of tools to safeguard the indigenous rights against oil activities. Third, the

application of PGIS to monitor the impacts of the oil industry was initiated in response to local

demands of Achuar, Kichwa, and Urarina indigenous communities associated to FECONACO. In

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that sense, the indigenous communities wanted to join our research team in the design,

implementation, and evaluation of the monitoring system. Thus, PAR and PRA provided us

with the tools and methods we deemed necessary to meet the requirements of the indigenous

communities.

The MELPGIS protocol was developed following the next steps:

• Indigenous mapping literature review. Firstly, we selected an IM standard method. The

protocol presented here integrates the new requirements of monitoring oil impacts

with a standard approach for IM, selected on completion of a comprehensive

literature review. We decide to adopt the methodology described in Chapin and

Threkeld (2001) and followed the code of ethics as proposed by Rambaldi et al. (2006).

However, the protocol of Chapin and Threkeld was further refined by the use of GIS,

GPS and remote sensing, in a more technically‐oriented PGIS methodology.

• We reviewed literature about the oil industry exploration and production process, oil

industry operational practices and procedures (UNEP‐IE/E&P‐Forum 1997), oil

pollution and impacts (Beristain, Páez, and Fernández 2009; Epstein and Selber 2002;

Jochnick, Normand, and Zaidi 1994; Kimerling 1991; O'Rourke and Connolly 2003; San

Sebastián et al. 2001) and searched for data and methodologies that could be relevant

to oil pollution monitoring systems. We found a number of methodologies, from

different scientific disciplines such as remote sensing and aerial photography analysis,

chemical analysis, time lines, trend and change analysis, oral histories and ethno‐

biographies, key informants (DESA 2005; DIGESA 2006; Groth 1998; Messina et al.

2006; Viña, Echavarria, and Rundquist 2004). All of them are discussed below.

• Planning and protocol design. Group discussions, brainstorming and focus groups with

FECONACO leaders (two meetings attended by all FECONACO leaders), FECONACO

assemblies (one assembly attended by the traditional authorities or Apus of each

community), indigenous community assemblies (one assembly per community) and

the indigenous environmental monitoring team –IEMT‐ (six meetings attended by the

fifteen members of the IEMT) were held jointly with our external team. During such

meetings and focus groups the objectives of the protocol, who would participate and

how, budgets and schedules to accomplish these objectives were discussed and

established. Target communities for the pilot project and the members of the IEMT

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were also selected. Their responsibilities, participation and control were decided as

well. In addition, the indicators to be monitored, the methods and techniques to be

used, and the logistics that were necessary to deploy the project were similarly

established.

• Implementation. The pilot project was implemented by the IEMT in five communities

(of the thirty‐two associated with FECONACO. See Figure 5) from 2005 to 2006 (Orta‐

Martínez 2007). A population of more than 800 persons, from a total of about 5000

(SICNA 1997) were involved in the implementation. The IEMT consisted of twelve

monitors, two coordinators, one FECONACO leader responsible for the project, and 2‐3

external advisors from ICTA‐UAB, the NGOs Racimos de Ungurahui and Shinai. The

pilot project spanned one year before it was extended to the other twenty‐seven

indigenous communities.

• Evaluation and fine‐tuning. IEMT workshops and groups discussions with FECONACO

leaders, traditional authorities, FECONACO assemblies and indigenous community

assemblies allowed to re‐define IEMT members’ responsibilities and to identify and

address any methodological, political or logistical problem found on the protocol after

its implementation. During such workshops we conducted SWOT analysis (Strengths,

Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and other participatory methods like “team

contracts and interactions” and “presentations and analysis”. This procedure enabled

the fine‐tuning of our MELPGIS protocol in a participatory fashion since 2005 and still

today.

To deploy our protocol, we gathered for the IEMT the following field equipment: rugged,

waterproof and hand‐held GPS units (Garmin eTrex Legend, Garmin GPSMap 76 and GPSMap

60), digital waterproof cameras (Olympus stylus 725 sw) and Pelican Cases for the cameras;

solar panels (Powerfilm r15‐1200), rechargeable batteries without self‐discharge (Eneloop AA)

and universal chargers for energy source (Digicharger Plus Universal Charger Ansmann). The

external assessors additionally used a PDA in order to arrive to the impacted sites by

visualizing satellite images in situ. We recommend PDAs that allow battery replacement (Acer

N50) and rugged cases for PDA protection (Otterbox). For data management and presentation

we used ArcGis, Expression Media, Dabble db and Microsoft Publisher.

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The pilot project’s budget totalled $16,500 including equipment and river travel costs.

However, this figure does not include FECONACO’s input by contributing staff time and

workshop and lodging facilities, nor external advisors’ time and travel costs (funded by a US

Fulbright Scholar and a Spanish PhD grant). With these costs added in, we estimate that the

real cost of the pilot project may have been some $40,000. When extended to all the

participant communities (thirty‐two), the cost of one year project was around $45,000 per

year during the first three years, and $33,000 per year afterwards, once the project could run

without the help of external advisors.

Results

Through the preparation, implementation, and evaluation processes we designed the

protocol presented in this section. This includes the necessary steps for the success of a

MELPGIS project. We illustrate the application of the protocol with some of our experiences

and our errors to reason out such steps. We hope altogether it will facilitate a systematic

discussion on how MELPGIS projects may be best designed and carried out elsewhere. The

protocol is presented here in its ideal form and the numerous pauses and detours we take

along the way with the examples from our experience should not cause readers to lose their

way through it. The protocol applied in the Peruvian Amazon is structured in four steps:

preliminary work, data gathering, data storage and outcomes and data usage

Step 1 / Preliminary work

• Design and planning. In the Río Corrientes, the project arose from local demands of the

indigenous organization (IO), since they wanted to map the impacts of the extractive

industries in the area. They made the demand in 2005 during previous trips of the

external advisors to the area. Indigenous leaders, traditional authorities and

communal assemblies participated in the design and planning of the project. Building

the project upon local demands guarantees local peoples’ participation and the

usefulness of the project results.

• We suggest that, prior to the start of the monitoring activities, a thorough evaluation

of IO strengths be carried out since too many economic interests are involved and

because of the importance of other stakeholders as driving forces for the project

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success. We therefore evaluated indigenous communities’ affiliation to the IO, IO’s

power structure, the existence or likelihood of corruption, IO’s legitimacy and state

recognition, existence of other IOs, and local and national reputation of other NGOs

and institutions involved in the project.

• As mention before, in the first stage we implemented a pilot project in only five

communities. To avoid conflicts, the selection of the indigenous communities for the

pilot project should be undertaken in an IO assembly or by the representative

organization. IEMT members’ selection should take into account indigenous

communities internal workings, apart from candidates’ skills (literacy). In the Río

Corrientes, IEMT selection was undertaken in a communal assembly.

• Available georeferenced information compilation. External advisors should gather as

much georeferenced information as possible regarding the region where the project is

to be executed. We obtained topographic maps, geographic information of extractive

industry infrastructure and installations (roads, pipelines, wells, base camps,

boundaries of concessions), position of the indigenous and non‐indigenous

communities settled in the area, as well as the limits of titled lands. We also gathered

a Digital Elevation Model (DEM), high resolution satellite images –Landsat, but SPOT

and CBERS‐2B‐ and aerial photographs covering the area. DEMs allow the extraction of

hydrological features such as river networks and basins, which are necessary to

calculate pollution diffusion patterns and to delimitate areas polluted, non‐polluted or

at risk of pollution.

• Familiarize the external team with the project area. Satellite images were visually

interpreted by the external team to recognize the area and to identify impacted sites

for future visits. We also studied the ethnographic material related to the indigenous

groups of the area.

• Definition of impact categories. We conducted focus groups to define oil impacts from

an indigenous perspective, taking into account natural and cultural resources

necessary for their survival. The categories identified through the focus groups are the

ones to be mapped and monitored apart from those identified according to the

bibliography (Table 4).

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• IEMT training. We trained the IEMT in cartography and GPS use. IEMT coordinators

were selected among the IEMT members after the training took place, based on better

performance. Then, the coordinators had extra training, as detailed below.

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a) The objective of the IEMT members’ training is to improve the quality of

information gathered and to increase the indigenous control over the monitoring

system. For both reasons, the training curriculum included:

* Oil industry exploration and production process. A wide knowledge and

understanding of upstream activities is useful for a good and detailed

description of impacts;

* Oil industry pollutants. The training also covers basic concepts in health,

bioaccumulation, biomagnification, heavy metals, maximum permissible

limits and other standards. These basic concepts would help IEMT to pay

more attention to the most hazardous waste;

* National legislation and Environmental Impact Assessment. IEMT are

taught the basics of state organs (state agencies related to indigenous

affairs, the extractive industry, health and environment), laws, decrees,

norms and regulations. This knowledge can help IEMT to know which

operational procedures are allowed by law and which are not and should

thereby be reported;

* Technical equipment management. IEMT is instructed in how to use GPS

devices, digital cameras, video cameras and voice recorders. This field

equipment allow them to gather the essential information for in situ

descriptions of the impacted sites;

* Forms and reports writing. This is the most important topic of the training

stage due to the low literacy rates of most indigenous peoples. Monitors

are not used to writing, and thus lack the habit of jotting down long

explanations. Overcoming this limitation is a big challenge as the better

they write the more complete and coherent would the reports be. A

possibility is to provide them with forms in their mother tongue whenever

their writing skills in such a language are substantially better.

* Communication skills are also important since one function of IEMT is to

film and commentate videos of the impacts, and to explain the problem to

mass media reporters should they visit the area.

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b) IEMT coordinators’ training broadens their curriculum in accordance with their

higher responsibilities, thus including computational skills, database management

and enhanced official report writing.

• Duties and action procedure for the IEMT. In Corrientes, the monitors had to visit

impacted sites, gather information and write reports, while informing communities, IO

and IEMT coordinators. The IEMT coordinators took the responsibility for receiving and

entering all the information gathered into the database. They also had to make formal

complaints and press‐releases, inform IO, and support and supervise the work of IEMT

monitors.

Indigenous maps of the indigenous territory. Territorial maps are required to begin the

monitoring activities. These maps will allow impact evaluation from the local culture’s

perspective by showing the overlaps between impacts and natural and social

resources. They will also help localize old impacts identified by means of interviews

when local toponymy has been georeferenced in the territorial map. Additionally, such

a map will also help planning in situ monitoring of impacts as detected by satellite

images or aerial photography, through the inclusion of hunting trails or other

indigenous tracks. Corrientes’ indigenous territory mapping was developed, as

mentioned earlier on, according to a technically oriented participatory mapping

methodology based on the protocol in Chapin and Threlkeld 2001.

Step 2 / Data gathering:

After the team has all the documentation mentioned above, it has produced the territorial

maps, and the IEMT has been trained, the second step in the protocol includes the gathering of

data related to impacts generated by the extractive industry. This second step takes place in

two stages: 1) generation of a baseline of past impacts and 2) monitoring of current impacts.

• Baseline of past impacts. The establishment of the baseline of past impacts is divided

in three sub‐steps:

a) A participatory communal workshop to draw the impacts of the oil industry over

the indigenous territorial maps. The IEMT monitors ask the community members

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to draw the impacts on the map, while the monitors jot down all complementary

information along with the witness’ name in order to be able to retrieve more

information at a later stage if needed.

It is worth noting that in the Achuar society both men and women have different

gender roles and responsibilities (Descola 1994) and, hence, they often have

different knowledge of their territory. For instance, women usually know better

fishing places like lakes or old river meadows ‐that are usually flooded in rainy

season, accumulating lots of pollutants‐. It is therefore important to organize

separated groups in the workshops so as to guarantee that women are listened to

and to ensure data collection covers the whole territory.

b) Individual open‐ended interviews to all community members. The IEMT asks

community members to report on the localization, timing and any other

information they may remember about any impact from the oil industry in their

territory. Subjects who participated in the workshop are specifically asked about

the impacts they have drawn on the maps.

Time lines and map biographies (Ferguson and Messier 1997; Freeman 1976)

methodologies are used in the interviews to help informants to report on the

location and date of impacts. In Peru, we used a generic time line from 1971 to

2008, which had an average of 1.5 local historic elements each 2.4 years all over

the period, and whose maximum period time without historical elements was five

years in the middle of the 1970’s.

In the study area, indigenous people frequently knew the occurrence of impacts

that were located far away from their community as they had been hired by the

company for manual remediation of impacts all over the oil concession. For this

reason, we used integral multi‐communal territorial maps instead of just

communal maps, to help localize these impacts during interviews.

c) Guided visits to all the impacted sites identified during workshops and interviews.

Each impacted site was visited by the interviewee who reported it together with

one IEMT member. During the visits, they gathered the GPS position of the site,

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described the current state of the impacted site, took pictures, recorded videos

and complemented the data collected during the workshop or the interviews.

As a result of these three sub‐steps, in Corrientes the IEMT collected a range of

data for each impacted site. Data for each impacted site included, for instance, an

impact identifier, location relative to known toponymy in the territorial map, GPS

readings, pictures and their identifiers, date of the impact, remediation state,

responsible company or subcontracted company. In addition, some metadata was

collected such as witness’ name, name of the monitor who collected the data,

guide’s name, visiting date or indigenous community. A full list of all the data that

was systematically collected is given in Table 4.

• Monitoring current impacts. It includes the monitoring of new impacts (oil spills,

hazardous treatment and disposal of waste) and the supervision of the remediation

activities of new and past environmental liabilities. In the study area, the remediation

of impacted sites undertaken by oil companies was usually very limited, ineffective and

sometimes non‐existent (see chapter 1). Oil spills were frequently burnt, buried or

moved to non‐visible sites. As a consequence, monitoring of old impacts was also

necessary in order to document new impacts created during such “remediation”

procedures.

The data collected for each current impacted site are the same as that for the baseline

impacts. In this instance, however, data are gathered through an alarm network that

works as follows:

a) Routine inspections. Each month, IEMT members visit installations and pipelines as

stipulated by a visit schedule. They walk along pipelines searching for oil spills and

inspect wells, pumping stations, batteries and other potentially polluting

installations looking for new impacts whilst monitoring the old ones (overseeing

their remediation if appropriate). In our project area, IEMT members worked in

pairs because of security concerns.

b) Community‐based alarm system. All community members are asked to notify the

IEMT monitors of any new impact detected during their daily activities (hunting,

fishing, collecting forest resources for the household…). The monitors urgently visit

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those newly emerged impacted sites by modifying their routine inspections. Since

oil companies tend to hide impacts, visits short after the impact happens are

necessary to gather all the data required and hence this community‐based alarm

system is critical to detect new oil impacts. After the first inspection, such impacts

are included in the monthly schedule.

c) Spreading and centralizing information. IEMT informs communal assemblies and

authorities of the new impacts discovered as such information is key to increasing

communal empowerment. Likewise, IEMT monitors monthly deliver to

coordinators and IO their reports on impacted sites and digital camera cards

(which are returned to the monitors once data have been downloaded). Finding an

operational delivery mechanism to avoid data losses is a big logistic challenge in

isolated areas like this and a crucial issue to ensure the success of the project.

Step 3 / Data storage

Once monitors have compiled the baseline of past impacts and the information on current

impacts, and while sending monthly reports to the coordinators, the IEMT coordinators begin

entering all the information into a database. This is initially done with the guidance of the

external advisors. We created two different databases to store and manage data:

• A geo‐database. A GIS was used for data storage, management and presentation.

Data architecture (database structure and attributes) depends on the classification

of impacts and the selection of information to be gathered in the impacted sites

reports. In Peru, data architecture was created by the external advisors due to the

technical specialization that is required for this purpose. We established the

database domains and coded values, data sets, data projection, fields and

attributes, field properties (geometry, data type, null values, default values, coded

values) and the like. Since data architecture cannot be changed at a later stage,

once the IEMT assumes full responsibility of the project and external advisors have

left, data architecture evaluation is a crucial point during the pilot project. In our

case study, coordinators were responsible for adding, deleting, changing, updating

and, in general, data maintenance. Critically, frequent back‐ups of the database

are needed in projects like this, where so many political and economic interests

are involved.

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Managing information with GIS implies an undesirable dependency on foreign

technicians, as well as an economic issue owing to the high cost of GIS software

licenses. These dependencies can be avoided by not using GIS. Obviously, not all

functionalities could be maintained in the absence of a GIS‐based approach but

some could possibly be implemented afterwards as long as data have been

methodically put into other databases. In this project, we tried to partially solve

the technical dependency created by using a GIS through a longer training of IEMT

coordinators in this regard. However, such training cannot guarantee total

independency due to the technological gap characteristic of rural and indigenous

people in South America, Africa, and Asia. Data can be maintained manually or

through an automated program. In Corrientes we used Dabbledb, a friendly

software that helped with data input through a simple form to those coordinators

with basic computer skills. Thanks to such software, coordinators could edit, store

and maintain the entire database in the long term without external help.

Economic dependency can partially be solved by using free open source GIS

software (e.g. Quantum GIS, gvSIG or Kosmo for Spanish‐speaking countries). We

selected ArcGIS to facilitate coordination with AIDESEP, which had been using this

software for a long period. If IO uses specific GIS software before MELPGIS

implementation, it should be taken into account when selecting a new one.

• A picture and video database. Graphic documents are stored, organized and

managed using a non‐georeferenced database. However, each picture has an

attribute (picture identifier) that links it with the corresponding impacted site of

the geo‐database and vice versa. We used a friendly picture and video manager,

Expression Media, which allowed its use by IO with a basic level of computer use.

This software allows the generation of specific attributes associated with each

picture and video (geographical coordinates, impact identifiers, description, author

and date taken). In Peru, we spent too long until the IEMT learn to collect the

picture identifier properly in order to be able to link the two databases, yet

another challenging issue for the success of the project.

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Step 4 / Outcomes and data usage

Once data have been acquired and entered into the database, they are ready to be used. It

is important to note that getting to this point is already a remarkable achievement. To us, the

generation of this information is in itself the main outcome of a MELPGIS project. But data can

also be used to inform other new local demands according to the political strategies of the IO

at the moment.

The database on oil impacts makes the previously disperse knowledge on oil impacts

available to the IO leaders, IEMT members and communal authorities in an integrated format.

Such information now managed by indigenous leaders and authorities can become an essential

tool in negotiations with state agencies and extractive industry companies. As the information

is compiled in a coherent format, it can be used to demand impacts remediation, change of

operational procedures (for instance, a higher rate of pipeline renovation), enhanced

remediation practices, and even change the company discourse, thus acknowledging impacts,

for instance. For example, in the project area burning of oil spills was a daily practice although

it was neither legal nor publicly acknowledged by the company. The graphic documentation of

the practice, nonetheless, made evident the extent to which it was done, hence forcing the

company to take adequate steps to eradicate such procedures. The databases were also

helpful for writing reports and for finding locations of impacted sites of special interest to film

documentaries. For example, data collected over the course of this project were used for the

BBC series Amazon (Robinson and Brandon 2008). These databases can also serve as the basis

for legal actions against companies or governments claiming compensation for environmental

liabilities. To a certain extent, making available this information to indigenous people may

trigger significant changes with regard to the existing asymmetry in power relations.

In Corrientes, to satisfy the original objectives, several products were built upon the

databases:

• Oil spills reports. Every time a monitor sent information regarding a new impact to

the IO office, the IEMT coordinator filled out a report form that was subsequently

sent to diverse state agencies23 by appropriate official channels24. Such report was

23 The Ministry of Health (MINSA) and related health sector agencies such as DIGESA (Environmental Health

Agency) and DESA‐Loreto (Regional Health Department of Loreto); the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) and

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similarly sent to indigenous communities so that they were aware of all oil impacts

that occurred in their territory. Without this notification system a community

would have never known about oil impacts occurring in nearby communities.

Notifications were also sent to mass media and human rights and environmental

justice NGOs to enforce national and international civil society awareness of the

problem and to enhance networking25. Target groups for impact reports can vary

according to the set of governing and supportive institutions in each state, and to

the political context and should be established by the IO.

• Paper maps. The information gathered in the field was also employed to generate

maps of impacted sites and areas showing the overlap between them and

indigenous territories, affecting thus their natural and cultural resources and their

livelihoods. Those maps also demarcated basins and sub‐basins according to

pollution levels (polluted, at risk of pollution and non‐polluted basins). Since these

maps were prepared using a DEM and watershed analyst tools (watershed

delineation and point source pollution simulation), the contribution of external

advisors was paramount. All the maps created were delivered to the indigenous

communities. They provide a synaptic, comprehensive view of the indigenous

territories and their resources, which may constitute a useful tool for improved

resource management. Within the context of similar projects, we believe these

maps have the potential to provide indigenous peoples with insights for preparing

development plans or negotiating the development of new extractive activities

(e.g. not giving consent to activities in non‐polluted basins).

• Online maps. Maps servers for web applications such as GoogleMaps allow

visualizing the location of impacts and pictures linked to the geographical

related energy sector bodies such as OSINERG (Regulatory Body for Energy Investment) and DGAAE (General Direction for Environmental and Energy Affairs).

24 Some examples of report forms can be consulted in: http://www.feconaco.org/pdf/D‐JIBA‐07‐02%20para%20Defensoria.pdf; http://www.feconaco.org/pdf/D‐DORI‐07‐01%20para%20Defensoria.pdf; http://www.feconaco.org/pdf/Reporte%20D‐SHIV‐07‐01%20para%20Defensoria.pdf

25 Some examples of the echo in the Peruvian press and NGOs webs and internet blogs: http://www.larepublica.pe/regionales/29/10/2009/iquitos‐registran‐16‐derrames‐de‐petroleo‐de‐pluspetrol‐en‐rio‐corrientes; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4yxzs5WFw; http://www.cnr.org.pe/noticia.php?id=27870; http://www.cronicaviva.com.pe/content/view/100100/312/; http://www.peru.com/noticias/PORTADA20091030/63405/Culpan‐a‐Pluspetrol‐por‐16‐derrames‐de‐petroleo‐en‐Loreto‐en‐lo‐que‐va‐del‐ano (press) ; http://www.villageearth.org/pages/Projects/Peru/perublog/2008/02/oil‐spill‐in‐rio‐corrientes.html; http://www.servindi.org/actualidad/3416 (NGOs web); http://arellanos.blogspot.com/2009/07/contaminacion‐en‐el‐rio‐corrientes.html, http://lamula.pe/tag/loreto/ (blogs).

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http://www.feconaco.org/pdf/D-JIBA-07-02%20para%20Defensoria.pdf

http://www.feconaco.org/pdf/D-JIBA-07-02%20para%20Defensoria.pdf

http://www.feconaco.org/pdf/D-DORI-07-01%20para%20Defensoria.pdf

http://www.feconaco.org/pdf/Reporte%20D-SHIV-07-01%20para%20Defensoria.pdf

http://www.larepublica.pe/regionales/29/10/2009/iquitos-registran-16-derrames-de-petroleo-de-pluspetrol-en-rio-corrientes

http://www.larepublica.pe/regionales/29/10/2009/iquitos-registran-16-derrames-de-petroleo-de-pluspetrol-en-rio-corrientes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4yxzs5WFw

http://www.cnr.org.pe/noticia.php?id=27870

http://www.cronicaviva.com.pe/content/view/100100/312/

http://www.peru.com/noticias/PORTADA20091030/63405/Culpan-a-Pluspetrol-por-16-derrames-de-petroleo-en-Loreto-en-lo-que-va-del-ano

http://www.peru.com/noticias/PORTADA20091030/63405/Culpan-a-Pluspetrol-por-16-derrames-de-petroleo-en-Loreto-en-lo-que-va-del-ano

http://www.villageearth.org/pages/Projects/Peru/perublog/2008/02/oil-spill-in-rio-corrientes.html

http://www.villageearth.org/pages/Projects/Peru/perublog/2008/02/oil-spill-in-rio-corrientes.html

http://www.servindi.org/actualidad/3416

http://arellanos.blogspot.com/2009/07/contaminacion-en-el-rio-corrientes.html

http://lamula.pe/tag/loreto/

coordinates of the impacted sites. These new and friendly tools offer indigenous

peoples a unique opportunity to make available to the global civil society their

detailed knowledge about extractive industry impacts across their territories, thus

improving the growth of global awareness which has the potential of boosting

important societal reactions (behavioural changes, change of patterns of

consumption and production, the withdrawal of funds and company credit, etc.).

In the project area we are just developing such tools and they are currently in a

testing phase.

• Open databases. Databases on impacts of oil industries can be shared with the

worldwide scientific community using internet tools such as Dabble db. Synergies

with specific research groups can then appear. For instance, the field of remote

sensing can contribute to the detection and identification of oil impacts. In effect,

the analysis of multi‐ or single‐date satellite images can further support IEMT

reports and notifications as well as making indigenous claims even sounder (for

instance, carrying out temporal studies that employ change detection techniques

to monitor the evolution or appearance of oil impacts, and creating spectral

libraries containing specific spectral signatures that relate to different types of oil

impact will ease the identification of new impacts). Sharing the databases

demands the evaluation of risk and benefits associated with it. Such an evaluation

should take place within IOs and community assemblies. For example, certain data

should be considered confidential (e.g witnesses’ names) and it should be taken

into account that is not a process exempt of uncertainty due to unexpected uses

contrary to indigenous peoples’ interests. In our project, the databases are yet just

for internal use via intranet.

As mentioned earlier on in this chapter, we adhered to the code of ethics and good

practices of Rambaldi et al. (2006) at all stages of the protocol described here and we strongly

encourage other people willing to embark on a similar project to do so too.

Discussion

A MELPGIS project aims at documenting the generation and evolution of impacts derived

from extractive industry activities to empower people and improve their livelihoods. In that

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sense, the main issues to take into account when applying PGIS to extractive industry impacts

monitoring are related to the process of information acquisition, management and

governance. The methodology requires both sufficient high‐quality data (i.e., temporal and

spatial accuracy, data acquisition and validation, and data reliability) and secured control over

and accessibility to the data by indigenous peoples. In this section we review the achievements

and shortcomings of the protocol from these two perspectives. We also discuss some of the

benefits, risks and other unexpected results stumbled upon during MELPGIS implementation

as well as some weaknesses that could possibly be avoided.

Quality and quantity of information. Temporal and spatial accuracy, data acquisition and validation, data reliability and uncertainty

Spatial accuracy: There has been a hot debate around PGIS methodologies on whether

participation and technology are compatible or whether GIS actually works against

participation and empowerment and can in fact be seen as an elitist technology that enhances

or promotes existing power structures and epistemological assimilation since the technology,

complex, highly technical, and expensive, resides outside of the community and is controlled

by outsiders (Abbot J 1998; Chapin, Lamb, and Threlkeld 2005; Dunn, Atkins, and Townsend

1997). What is generally accepted is that the more technically oriented the PGIS method, the

more spatial accuracy it will render, and the more it will be useful to link villagers to

government policy makers and civil society organizations, and to lobby both government and

industry. In our case, as the objective was to provide indigenous communities with a

communication tool to help them show state agencies and national and international civil

societies the impacts of the oil industry on their territories, we sought the use of a widely

accepted tool in Western societies. Furthermore, spatial accuracy was critically needed so that

IOs were able to issue legal complaints to the Peruvian government regarding the impacts

found. Consequently, we deemed paramount that all impacted sites identified were visited by

IEMT members and accurately located by means of hand‐held GPS devices. Therefore,

because of the goals of the project, sketch maps alone were not a possibility and we opted for

a more technically oriented methodology.

Temporal accuracy. Temporal accuracy depends on the type of impacts (past or current).

Thus, that of old impacts depends on the effectiveness of the time line and biographies used in

the interviews (average period time without historical elements) and can have a maximum

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temporal window error of several years. Contrarily, the temporal accuracy of new impacts

depends on the frequency of IEMT monitors’ routine inspections and on the area covered by

indigenous people during their daily activities (the community‐based alarm system), and it will

usually have a maximum error of few months. Temporal information referring to old impacts

should be validated due to the uncertainty associated to the time lines methodology. In Peru,

we used cross‐validation between informants. We always asked the interviewee to list other

witnesses of each impact reported and interviewed all listed people to validate and

complement the information obtained in the first place.

Data acquisition. The most important advantages of this MELPGIS in relation to oil impacts

monitoring relate to the data acquisition process:

• Continuous information in time. Since the generation of information relies on the

community‐based alarm system and the indigenous technical team, the system

allows data‐gathering while maintaining the same lifestyle (subsistence activities

all across the territory). The method thus allows independence on the temporal

limitations of alternative approaches, such as foreign‐led sampling campaigns

(foreign experts’ calendars and time availability) or the low temporal resolution of

satellites.

• Continuous information in space. Thanks to community participation through the

community‐based alarm system, IEMT members can collect information all across

the indigenous territory. Aside from remote sensing (which poses a number of

difficulties including technical dependency), the system probably represents the

only way to effectively control such an extensive area. High resolution satellite

images or aerial photographs could be potentially used, but in practice this option

is not feasible owing to the budget limitations of any IO, the lack of cloud‐free data

availability, a high external dependency, etc.

• Autonomous generation of information. Data acquisition is independent from

external institutions or groups, and it only depends on people living in their

territory and carrying out their usual occupations. Thus, indigenous communities

can monitor their own territory when hunting or collecting forest resources at no

extra cost, almost daily and autonomously. It is independent from so‐called

experts and the typical big budgets involved in the use of remote sensing imagery

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or environmental chemistry analyses. MELPGIS needs only small funding for the

maintenance of equipment –hand‐held GPS units and digital cameras‐ and for

monitors’ incentives. Non‐local experts are only needed during the initial stages of

the project.

• Unique source of information. There are no other sources of information on oil

impacts, especially when referring to historical impacts than indigenous witnesses.

There are no chemical analyses or other environmental records (perhaps from oil

companies, but no publicly disclosed), no aerial photographs of the area and few

satellite images with enough radiometric, spatial and temporal resolution and

quality ‐due to low probability of cloud‐free images in the Amazon basin (Asner

2001)‐, all of which severely hampers the detection of oil impacts. Therefore,

frequently the only way to gather information on oil impacts is through witnesses’

accounts. And the only witnesses are indigenous people and oil company workers.

Regarding this alternative source of information, we should mention that usually

workers have the most detailed information of past and present impacts. They

may have been working in the places where the impacts happened, or be the ones

who are asked to deal with them. In addition, they usually have the technical

knowledge needed to understand what has occurred and so are well suited to

explain it to us now. Furthermore, oil workers usually want to contribute to repair

the damages caused by companies. It is to be noted that in our case study,

indigenous people have not been hired as part of the company workforce until

recently.

Data reliability. According to the MELPGIS protocol, all impacted places are visited and all

spatial data is validated. Nevertheless, sometimes an alleged impacted site is visited and the

impact is not visible. Indeed, the abundant rainfall and high productivity that characterize

rainforests can rapidly make any evidence of an oil impact invisible to the eye, especially old

impacts. In the study area, oil production and pollution began thirty‐five years before the

MELPGIS project started. Sometimes, the evidence of an impact was obvious (e.g. crude oil

could be seen on the ground), but on other occasions no evidence could be gathered, perhaps

concealed by the presence of natural fat in the soil, dense litter bed or lush vegetation.

MELPGIS collects data based on memories and validates it visually. This is not a methodological

weakness. Someone may argue that such data are neither reliable nor objective enough to

prove the existence of pollution. Why then (they may argue) is it not better to perform

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chemical analyses? In addition to the temporal, spatial and economic limitations mentioned

before, chemical analyses cannot be carried out by indigenous people because, even if trained

appropriately to do so, cold storage for sample preservation is not possible bearing in mind

these indigenous communities lack electricity. More crucially, indigenous peoples would have

to earn legal status to undertake them. This means that even if water and soil samples could

be chemically analyzed by indigenous peoples themselves, the results would not be official

data and thus they would not be accepted by governments or state agencies, oil companies or

a court as legally binding. For all these reasons, the main aims of the monitoring system are to

gather indigenous knowledge about oil impacts in the most accurate way and to give

indigenous people the chance to be heard.

Uncertainty. When facing and studying ecological distribution conflicts across the oil and

gas frontiers, the more information we have, the more we move from ignorance to

uncertainty. We talk about ignorance in reference to the lack of information that characterizes

the Amazonian oil and gas frontiers. There are no official reports, chemical analyses or records.

Thereby, in theses areas the difficulty it is not just posed as a result of the impossibility of

knowing how much a human life does actually cost or how should non‐catalogued biodiversity

losses due to oil activities be priced. Before addressing such legitimate concerns, we would like

to know how many people have died from cancer related to pollution generated by oil

companies. Further, to know how many people have died from cancer in a place where there

are no doctors and no mortality records. Such issues should also be taken into account when

applying PGIS to document unpaid local damages produced by oil exploration and extraction

(environmental liabilities). It is a worthwhile cause to diminish ignorance at the oil and gas

frontiers, but we should not forget that we are just getting closer to uncertainty. We should

keep in mind too, that economic valuation of remediation and compensation is a question of

ethics and value judgements. It is not a mere exercise of cartography or quantification of the

total area affected by oil spills and other oil impacts.

Geodatabase control and access. Information flows and uses: Where does information go? And what uses does it have?

Information is related to control and power. Cartography is not an exception. On the one

hand, “cartography has been, over the centuries, a tool used by the powerful to carve out

empires and maintain control over them [...] Nations and empires are not natural features of

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the landscape; they are human constructs that have been imposed over the centuries to

convert large tracts of the world’s surface into real estate”(Chapin, Lamb, and Threlkeld 2005).

As (Harley 1988) observed, “as much as guns and warships, maps have been the weapons of

imperialism”. On the other hand, PGIS can be associated with geo‐piracy (i.e. the use of local

geographical knowledge to the benefit of external control26). The unauthorized access and use

of geographic knowledge of indigenous communities has been employed with military

purposes. For instance, the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Organization inputs geographic

information into a global database that forms an integral part of the Human Terrain System, a

United States Army counterinsurgency strategy that has been applied within indigenous

communities27.

Thereby, the most impotant single questions that should be addressed prior to conducting

a MELPGIS project are: Who will have access to the information? What information is limited

to whom?

Who will have access to the information? The geo‐database is generated by the IEMT and

managed by the IO, so there is a big concentration of information amongst few people. Under

such circumstances and due to the existence of strong economic and political interests over

indigenous territories, the emergence of corruption, bribery, threats, and/or reprisals would

not be surprising. Over the course of our project, for instance, some members of the IEMT

were offered good jobs in the oil company, were threatened when monitoring impacts on at

least one occasion, and a rumour spread out about some IEMT members being allegedly

offered money in exchange of stop sending the alerts of new oil impacts to the IO. Good

communication between the IETM coordinators and IO leaders with the communities was

essential to support the work of the field team and minimize these risks. We recommend

planning an internal communication strategy beforehand. Back‐ups of the geodatabase in

other institutions are also recommended to minimise the risk of information disappearance

and loss.

What information is limited to whom? The MELPGIS protocol establishes several target

groups for sharing the geo‐database with, including state agencies, companies, courts, mass

media reporters, environmental justice and others NGOs, and lastly the scientific community.

26 Although the word geo‐piracy was first used in relation to the false attribution of location in the visual arts

(Vogel 2006, “Ecocriticism in Theory and Practice in Latin America and the Caribbean”, Proceedings of the 2006 Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Puerto Rico). 27 Can be consulted at the Human Terrain System website: http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/components.html.

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Although the geo‐database has to be shared with them in order to accomplish all of the

objectives of the project, the indigenous people have to rigorously select which information

(attributes) will be shared. Based on our experience, we recommend a major rule: don’t share

more than what is strictly necessary. Special attention should be paid to witnesses. In the even

of such sensitive information being disclosed, threats or reprisals to them or their families can

follow or else they may be force into bribery. Therefore, witnesses have to be protected and it

is vital that their names do not appear in any document or database that is shared. In the same

vein, and given that the indigenous communities have property rights and are the legitimate

owners of the geo‐database, they are to have a full copy of it. In that sense, workshops have to

be run specifically on the existing risks associated with the geo‐database and on how to use,

protect, dispose of or disclose the spatial data generated.

Benefits, risks, and other unexpected results

The main outcomes of a MELPGIS project are aspects related to the empowerment of

indigenous peoples. We want to stress some of these aspects:

• Indigenous perception of the impacts. In remote areas, such as tropical rainforests,

indigenous people have typically no other contact with the national society than

that brought by the company itself. Due to geographical isolation, economic

reasons, lack of western cultural skills, and/or familiarity with national institutions,

indigenous communities do not usually have the chance to access other actors

(state agencies, courts, universities, journalists or NGOs). Under this scenario,

when they want to complain about pollution and extractive industry impacts at

large, they can only complain to the company itself. This constraint does always

lead to the an answer along the same lines: there is no pollution; we (the oil

company) make our chemical analysis monthly and send them to the state agency

responsible for extractive industries (Goldstein 2003). The misleading information

provided by the oil companies might generate among indigenous peoples the

belief that, in spite of oils spills and hazardous dumping, there is no pollution in

their territories. The oil impact mapping and monitoring system not only helps

recognize the existence of impacts, but it also backs up the demands of indigenous

peoples thus forcing the company to take action far beyond its old standpoint: the

negation of the evidence. The presence of national and international reporters

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(BBC and La Republica reporters, among others, have visited the area after the

implementation of the impacts’ notification to mass media) plays a fundamental

role too in the change of the indigenous perception of impacts.

• Arguments and evidence of impacts. Pictures, videos, voice recordings or GPS

readings are new tools that can be used in new negotiation processes or court

cases. These evidences, although not as scientifically sound as chemical analyses,

turn into proofs that cannot be rejected, which irreversibly changes the direction

of the negotiation between indigenous peoples and oil companies and/or state

agencies.

• IETM empowerment. MELPGIS is not politically neutral; as any PGIS “is always a

political process and will, therefore, most likely have unintended consequences for

the communities you work with regarding the complex issues of who is

empowered and who might actually be disempowered” (Rambaldi et al. 2006).

Further, it may have unpredictable consequences on the internal workings of the

communities. In our case, the members of the IEMT were more empowered than

others members of the indigenous communities. Moreover, they are all men. After

the training and because they have more skills than others –superior

communications skills, the capacity of placing new locations onto the map, the

ability to use digital cameras and videos, etc.‐, they will feel more confident to take

the plunge and participate in negotiations, community assemblies or other

political events. What is more, in our project, the oil company recognized the role

of the indigenous environmental monitors and nowadays, when new oil impacts

occur, the IEMT is sometimes alerted by the oil company itself. In fact, the oil

company created its own IEMT with more economic resources, which presumably

have consequences on the autonomy and independence of this IEMT

(ProNaturaleza 2009). Consequently, special care should be taken during the

selection process of IEMT members. The political aspects and the consequences

for the internal workings of the communities, and not just the candidates’ skills,

should be considered prior to their selection. If the MELPGIS project is not applied

to all the communities it is likewise necessary to be careful when selecting them.

In fact, the selection of IEMT members and participant communities should be

considered as a political process. Additionally, it should be mentioned that an

equitable gender selection may diminish the existing gender gap, although

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illiteracy differences between genders (larger among women) unfortunately

pushes for male selection.

• Epistemological assimilation. Along with the discussion around the compatibility of

participation and GIS, mentioned earlier, it has been stated that “the Western or

European‐derived system for gathering and using geographic information is in

numerous ways incompatible with corresponding systems developed by

indigenous peoples of the Americas […] GIS technology, when applied cross‐

culturally, is essentially a tool for epistemological assimilation, and as such, is the

newest link in a long chain of attempts by western societies to subsume or destroy

indigenous cultures” (Rundstrom 1995). Although we acknowledge such a fact, we

also know that today several stronger driving factors are pushing indigenous

people integration into the market economy. Oil and gas companies, loggers, gold,

copper, bauxite miners, agrofuel companies and many others are encroaching

systematically upon indigenous lands worldwide. Focusing on the rapid

proliferation of oil and gas exploration zones, several recent studies have

demonstrated that there is a regional pattern of oil expansion in the Peruvian

Amazon that will deepen in the future (see chapter 3). As the global demand for

non‐renewable resources increases while their reserves decrease, some of the

world’s most remote and ecologically pristine regions, such as the Peruvian

Amazon, are increasingly vulnerable to industrial activity. Thus, we argue that

epismological assimilation is already a tangible consequence of the industrial

system advancement into commodity frontiers as it seeks the extraction of the

remaining oil, gas and other resources. The unintended effects of a MELPGIS

project should be framed in such a context before deployment. In any case, we

firmly believe that the benefits of a MELPGIS project far exceed those of not

monitoring hydrocarbon activities.

• New questions. In the framework of PRA and PAR and due to empowerment it

brings about, a MELPGIS project can raise new research questions and

applications. In Corrientes, during the MELPGIS project, indigenous people

increased their attention on other sources of pollution, like the dioxins caused by

repeatedly burning household waste in indigenous communities or the

inappropriate disposal of toxic hazardous materials used by themselves (e.g. boat

batteries and other batteries). As a result, more appropriate mechanisms for

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hazards disposal were implemented. Oddly enough, the oil company took

advantage of this situation to argue that pollution came from such common

practices instead of from oil activities.

Weaknesses and issues that require special attention

Finally, we want to stress the main problematic aspects that have to be addressed when

adopting this methodology. All of them should be tackled to ensure the success of the project:

• Training dependency. The project highly relies on few individuals who can do the

job after they have been trained (i.e. IEMT members). This poses a serious risk as

the entire project may collapse in the event of resignations. Moreover, the

extensive use of technology requires a long training period.

• Economic dependency. Maintenance and equipment renovation is expensive.

Therefore the project depends on external financial sources. Nevertheless,

although expensive for an IO, the maintenance cost of the project is not a

significant budget for small organizations (e.g. NGOs).

• External technical support dependency. The use of so much technology implies

that the resolution of critical technical problems will be beyond the indigenous’

skills and so they will have to be assisted by external advisors in such events.

• Centralization. Information concentration on IEMT increases the risk of corruption

and IO inaction.

• Logistics. Communication between the IEMT, the IO office, and the community

assembly are essential throughout the project to guarantee cohesion and avoid

the rumours and conflicts sometimes promoted from the company.

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Conclusion

MELPGIS far exceeds the objectives of linking indigenous peoples with state and civil

society or those extending and completing impacts databases. From the empowerment point

of view, MELPGIS enables communication amidst indigenous communities, which lays the

ground to acquiring a common and integrated perception of impacts. It also promotes a social

recognition of impacts and, as a consequence, reinforces the indigenous perception of these

impacts. MELPGIS also provides indigenous peoples with a wide range of western tools to

demand the mitigation of environmental and health impacts generated by extractive industries

or to claim compensation for socio‐environmental liabilities. It favours the real application of

the conditions of prior and informed consent to future extractive projects.

Regarding data acquisition, the two most important aspects of this protocol are 1) the high

level of indigenous control, from the economic, institutional (political) and, to a certain degree,

once they have been trained, technical point of view, and, therefore, 2) the long term

feasibility of the project since the protocol enables indigenous people’s continuous action all

along the extractive industry operation (from years to decades), ultimately ensuring the

achievement of political goals.

In the same vein, when recognizing the impacts, MELPGIS shifts the controversial conflicts

between indigenous peoples and extractive industry companies, from the scientific arena

(chemists from the oil company implausibly assuring there is no pollution) to the political

arena. Mitigation of environmental and health liabilities, remediation and compensation or the

concession of new oil blocks become more a question of ethics and value judgements than

scientific and economic risk valuations. Nevertheless, MELPGIS provides reliable information

now known before to the state and the public, and in this sense it dispels ignorance and

advances knowledge without any claims to complete certainty. MELPGIS in this sense is a

contribution to the environmental science of oil spills and other impacts from extractive

industries.

However, there are some limits to MELPGIS which cannot be entirely solved, such as

aspects regarding information reliability, which can discredit indigenous institutions; or aspects

regarding the access to and control of the impacts geo‐database (concentration of

information), which expose indigenous institutions to corruption, bribery, threats and

reprisals. MELPGIS projects are typically needed in commodity frontiers, where too many

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political and economic interests are involved, lack of governance is a serious problem and the

major driving forces underlying impacts are beyond the scope of the project. In our project

area, for instance, a staggering increase in indigenous alcoholism promoted in recent times

(2008‐2009) by alcohol gifts from the oil company (Pluspetrol) wreaked havoc in Achuar

communities, thus considerably weakening the whole MELPGIS project.

Acknowledging such constraints and given the urgency to implement policies at national

and international levels to face the impacts of extractive industries , we believe MELPGIS is an

appropriate methodology to locally face the great challenge of controlling or at least

describing the effects of the advancement of commodity frontiers due to increasing world

consumption and demand for fossil fuels, metals and biomass which threatens cultural

diversity and biodiversity conservation and blurs the illusion of sustainability in the Amazon.

Chapter 3

A second hydrocarbon boom threatens the Peruvian Amazon: trends, projections, and policy implications28

28 Matt Finer and Martí Orta‐Martínez. The authors contributed equally to this study. Published 16 February

2010. Environmental Research Letters. Online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/5/014012 Cite as: Finer, M., Orta‐Martínez, M., 2010. A second hydrocarbon boom threatens the Peruvian Amazon:

trends, projections, and policy implications. Environmental Research Letters 5, 014012. Acknowledgments: We thank Carla Soria and Pedro Tipula of the Instituto del Bien Común in Lima for creating

Figure 9. Thoughtful comments from three anonymous reviewers greatly improved the manuscript. We also thank Carol Burga, María Lucía Santa María and Cristina O’Callaghan for compiling secondary data and Cesar Gamboa, José Luis de la Bastida, and Joan Martínez‐Alier for reviewing the manuscript. The Blue Moon Fund and Conservation, Food & Health Foundation funded the work of M Finer. M Orta‐Martínez work was funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Innovación y Ciencia through a FPU grant AP‐2004‐7103.

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Introduction

The Amazon rainforest is the largest expanse of tropical rainforest in the world, with an

area of 7,165,281 km ², 13.37% of which correspond to Peru, the fourth largest country in

tropical forest extension on Earth (FAO 2006) and the second largest land area of the Amazon

Basin after Brazil. The Peruvian Amazon is a region of extraordinary biological and cultural

diversity, and vast swaths of this mega‐diverse region remain largely intact. It is one of the

most biodiverse regions on Earth for a wide range of taxa, including birds, primates,

amphibians, and trees (Doan and Arriaga 2002; Pitman et al. 2008; Puertas and Bodmer 1993;

ter Steege and et al. 2003; Terborgh et al. 1990), and still contains large, relatively contiguous

areas of primary rainforest (Nepstad et al. 2008; Oliveira et al. 2007).

The Peruvian Amazon is also home to around 60 distinct groups of indigenous peoples

(INDEPA 2009; INEI 2008b), including an estimated 14 or 15 groups still living in voluntary

isolation with no regular contact with the outside world (Defensoría del Pueblo 2006; Survival

International 2008). Those groups avoid and resist direct encounters with outsiders because of

violent and deadly experiences in earlier encounters with national society, and they are

extremely vulnerable to diseases when contacted today (Napolitano and Ryan 2007). As

mentioned earlier, Peru is the second largest South American country in number of ethnic

groups in voluntary isolation after Brazil.

This remarkable biological and cultural diversity is the basis of a relatively extensive system

of 35 protected areas across the Peruvian Amazon. In addition, the Peruvian government has

issued 1232 land titles to Amazonian indigenous communities and created five territorial

reserves for the protection of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation (Benavides 2009b;

Defensoría del Pueblo 2006). Territorial reserves for the protection of indigenous peoples in

voluntary isolation cover 3.6 % of the Peruvian Amazon, whereas indigenous communities with

land titles cover 13.5 % (Benavides 2009b). Such categories, together with natural protected

areas, account for 35.2 % of the Peruvian Amazon (Benavides 2009b).

However, much of the Peruvian Amazon, including lower level protected areas and titled

indigenous lands, is now covered by active or proposed oil and gas concessions (Finer et al.

2008). In the Peruvian Amazon, there are three of the four petroleum sedimentary basins of

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Peru: the Marañon, the Ucayali and the Madre de Dios basins. Of all the land designations

noted above, only the 13 national parks and sanctuaries (10% of the Peruvian Amazon) are

strictly off‐limits to oil and gas exploration and exploitation. On the contrary, logging activities

are excluded in territorial reserves to guarantee the survival of indigenous people in voluntary

isolation. Finer et al (2008) concluded that the current overlay of oil and gas concessions

across much of the Peruvian Amazon threatens biodiversity, indigenous peoples, and some of

the largest remaining wilderness areas in the Amazon Basin.

One consequence of this situation has been escalating social conflict in the Peruvian

Amazon region (see chapter 4). Indigenous leaders often cite the environmental and health

impacts associated with Amazonian hydrocarbon activities as one of the predominant factors

behind their opposition. As we have seen, oil extraction projects begun in the 1970s has

caused extensive contamination of the Río Corrientes watershed in the northern Peruvian

Amazon (Quarles 2009). Around 99% of the Achuar population that inhabits this area has

unsafe blood levels of cadmium, a highly toxic and carcinogenic heavy metal associated with

oil exploitation (see chapter 1). Even the much newer Camisea natural gas pipeline in the

southern Peruvian Amazon, which began operations in the fall of 2004 with higher operating

standards, has already experienced six major spills and numerous leaks (Napolitano and Ryan

2007). Another issue of particular concern for indigenous peoples regards the growing number

of hydrocarbon concessions overlapping proposed reserves for groups still living in voluntary

isolation, whose lack of resistance or immunity make them extremely vulnerable to illnesses

brought by outsiders (Defensoría del Pueblo 2006; Napolitano and Ryan 2007).

To date, there has been no comprehensive review of the history of hydrocarbon activities

in the region or any projections of likely levels of activity in the near future and potential

impacts to biodiversity, protected areas, and indigenous groups. This chapter provides the first

in‐depth examination of the past, present, and future of hydrocarbon activities in the Peruvian

Amazon. Our specific objectives are: (1) to present a quantitative review of hydrocarbon

activities across the region over the past 40 years, (2) to examine the status of all current

concessions, particularly in terms of how they overlap protected areas and indigenous

territories, (3) to make quantitative projections regarding the wave of hydrocarbon activity set

to hit the region over the next 5 years, and (4) to discuss the potential environmental and

social impacts that may accompany the projected levels of activity. We end with a brief set of

recommendations on how the negative hydrocarbon‐related environmental and social impacts

may be avoided or minimized.

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Methods

Secondary data collection

Our work is based on analysis of official government data collected by the Peruvian

Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Peruvian state energy companies Petroperú and

Perúpetro. Specifically, we extracted information dealing with contracts, seismic testing, well

construction, oil development, and natural gas development for Amazonian oil and gas

concessions for each of the past 39 years, allowing us to provide a complete picture of

hydrocarbon activities in the Peruvian Amazon from 1970 to 2009. Information for activities

prior to 1970 was pieced together as much as possible from these documents as well.

For the period 1970–89, all data come from annual Petroperú reports referred to as

“Informe Estadístico Anual” (Petroperú 1970‐89) or “Memoria Anual” (Petroperú 1970‐95).

Annual reports from the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM 1970‐1971) along with

summary reports from both Petroperú and MEM for this period (MEM 1986; Petroperú 1982,

1991) have allowed cross‐validation of data. Petroperú, founded in 1969 as part of the

nationalization process of the oil industry, was the state agency that controlled oil exploration,

exploitation, refining, transport, distribution and marketing in the domestic market. In 1991,

some major components of Petroperú were privatized and as a result it stopped centralizing

information as of 1990. In 1996, the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines started serving as

the centralized information source and is the source of data from 1990 to 2009. Data for this

period were obtained from Ministry of Energy and Mines annual reports (MEM 1996–2009,

1996). Reports that cover the transition period between Petroperú and Ministry of Energy and

Mines reporting has allowed us to cross‐check seismic testing, well construction, and

production data consistency among sources (MEM 1996; Petroperú 1992, 1994a, 1994b). For

contract data, however, there is a reporting gap between 1990 and 1995. Contract data for

this period comes from a number of different sources, including annual Petroperú reports

(Memoria Annual), Petroperú statistics reports (Petroperú 1994a, 1992, 1994b), and annual

reports referred to as “Perú en números” (Webb and Fernández‐Baca 1990‐2009). We

consider that contract data for the years 1990, 1991 and 1993 may be an underestimate.

Cross‐checking has not been possible for this data series. The historical data described here

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accounts for much of the total activity as there were only two producing oil concessions in the

Peruvian Amazon prior to 1970.

For the subsequent analysis, we selected several descriptive statistics to quantitatively

summarize the detailed and novel database on historical oil and gas activities in the Peruvian

Amazon presented here. We used frequencies of hectares under hydrocarbon concessions to

describe the advance of the oil and gas frontier; frequencies of number of wells drilled and

kilometers of seismic lines cut to describe the intensity of hydrocarbon activities undertaken;

and frequencies on miles of barrel oil equivalents to give an overall sense of the requirement

of further hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation to reverse depletion.

Projections

We generated a detailed database of every active and proposed concession in the

Peruvian Amazon in order to produce the future projections. The projected area covered by

concessions was calculated as the current concessions, plus the total area of all the proposed

concession (areas in negotiation plus Block 157, suspended since October 2008 due to a

corruption scandal) plus Technical Evaluation Agreements (TEA or areas termed “convenios”

by Perúpetro). For the projected level of future seismic testing and exploratory well

construction, we summed the (1) stated amount of planned activities in the environmental

impact studies (EIS) of the concessions with a completed EIS, (2) likely minimal amount of

activity for the concessions that do not yet have an available environmental impact study, and

(3) likely minimal amount of activity for the proposed concessions. The likely minimal amount

of activity was defined as 300 km 2D seismic testing and three exploratory wells since that is

the stated work minimum in most hydrocarbon contracts for the Peruvian Amazon.

To better understand our results, it is helpful to review the typical minimum work program

for new oil and gas concessions in the Peruvian Amazon. Perúpetro is the state company

responsible for promoting the investment of hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation

activities in the country. Perúpetro negotiates, signs and supervises all hydrocarbon contracts.

When an oil or gas company signs a contract with Perúpetro, it commits to a minimal work

program for that particular concession. The initial exploratory phase is for 7 years, during

which time the company typically must complete at least 300 km of seismic testing and drill at

least three exploratory wells. Many contract work programs exceed these minimums,

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particularly for the amount of seismic testing. Since 1993, an environmental impact study

approved by the Peruvian government has been required before the start of any new

exploratory or development activity (Glasson, Therivel, and Chadwick 2005). If oil or gas

reserves are found during the exploratory phase, the company may then transition the

concession into exploitation phase, which lasts another 23 years for oil production or 33 years

for gas production (i.e. 30 or 40 year total contracts, respectively, although the concessions

can be extended if necessary).

Spatial analysis

Spatial analyses were conducted using Geographic Information Systems to calculate

overlaps among different land‐use categories as proxies of the impact of hydrocarbon

concessions on biodiversity and indigenous people. Biodiversity impacts were gauged via

hydrocarbon concession overlaps of areas in the official protected area system, and impacts on

indigenous people were gauged via hydrocarbon concession overlaps of titled indigenous lands

and Territorial Reserves created for the protection of indigenous people in voluntary isolation.

GIS data used in the spatial analysis include: oil and gas concessions from (Perúpetro 2009);

titled indigenous lands and proposed and approved territorial reserves for the protection of

indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation from the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture and the

Instituto del Bien Común’s System on Native Communities in the Peruvian Amazon (IBC

2009b); Peruvian natural protected areas from the National Service of Natural Protected Areas

(SERNANP 2009); and Peruvian Amazon according to ecological criteria from the Institute for

Investigation of the Peruvian Amazon (IIAP 1998). This information was used to create Figure

9. The map of all current oil and gas concessions, proposed concessions, and technical

evaluation agreement lots in the Peruvian Amazon was created by the Instituto del Bien

Común in Lima, Peru. We only represented those elements that were completely or partially

within the Peruvian Amazon.

To calculate the percentage of the Peruvian Amazon covered by hydrocarbon concessions,

we used the size of the Peruvian Amazon as reported by the IIAP (1998) and modified in 2005

by the IIAP (Lizardo Fachín and Roger Escobedo, personal communication 2009)— 782 820.60

km2. This figure includes the deforested area, so that it corresponds to the original Peruvian

Amazon surface. Oil and gas concessions from 2002 to 2009 were available in geo‐referenced

files, and those from 1970 to 2001 have been geo‐referenced and digitized from maps

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provided in annual Petroperú reports (Petroperú 1970‐89, 1970‐95) and annual Ministerio de

Energía y Minas de Perú reports (MEM 1986, 1996, 1996–2009).

To calculate the area of the Peruvian Amazon directly impacted by seismic lines, we

created a 2 km buffer around the seismic lines from the period 1970–2002 (previous to the

second oil boom) and aggregated them into a unique polygon that resulted in an area of 207

623 km2. There is only georeferenced information for seismic lines cut before 2002, and for

these years there is only information for 81 000 km of the 100 100 km seismic lines.

Consequently, the total extension of the Peruvian Amazon impacted by seismic testing is an

underestimate. The 2 km buffer criterion was selected as a compromise between small radius

impacts (such as direct forest disturbance or deforestation) and long radius impacts

(displacement of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation).

Results

We found that more of the Peruvian Amazon has been leased to oil and gas companies

over the past four years than at any other time on record (see Figure 6(a)). Records show 322

092 km2, or 41.2% of the Peruvian Amazon, under concession as of 31, December 2009. This is

up from just 7.1% in 2003. The total area under concession peaked in 2007, with 48.6% of the

Peruvian Amazon. Other lesser peaks of concessioned area occurred in the late 1990s and the

early 1970s (Figure 6(a)). A total of 69.1% of the Peruvian Amazon has been under oil or gas

concession at some point between 1970 and 2009.

There were more active concessions in early 2009 then at any other time on record (Figure

6(b)). As of 31, December 2009, there were 52 active Amazonian hydrocarbon concessions.

Forty‐two (81%) of these concessions are new, with the contracts signed between 2005 and

2009. Perúpetro set single year contract signing records in both 2005 and 2006, with 13 new

Amazonian contracts each year. Across years, the vast majority of concessioned area has been

in exploration phase (see Figure 6(a)). For example, of the 52 current oil and gas concessions in

the Peruvian Amazon, only seven are in exploitation phase while the remaining 45 are in

exploration phase. Ten additional areas are currently under technical evaluation agreements

bringing the total area under concession or technical contract up to 444 432 km2, or 56.8% of

the Peruvian Amazon. Eighteen additional Amazonian lots are now being offered as part of

Perúpetro’s 2010 bidding round, and one temporarily suspended concession is expected back

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in 2010 as well. All together, these 81 active and proposed oil and gas zones cover around 70%

of the Peruvian Amazon. Among years where data is available (1999–2009), the peak area

zoned for oil and gas activity (concessions plus technical evaluation agreements and proposed

concessions) was 72% in 2008 (Benavides 2009b; Finer et al. 2008). Slightly over 84% of the

Peruvian Amazon has been zoned for hydrocarbon activities at some point in time over the

past 40 years.

Figure 6. Oil and gas concessions in the Peruvian Amazon. (a) Area and per cent of the Peruvian Amazon under

concession. (b) Number of new and terminated concessions.

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Nearly 104 000 km of 2D seismic lines have been cut through the Peruvian Amazon over

the past 40 years, plus over 3400 km2 have been affected by 3D seismic testing. These seismic

lines have directly impacted well over one‐quarter of the Peruvian Amazon. There was an

extraordinary period of seismic testing activity between 1972 and 1975, accounting for over

half of all known seismic lines (Figure 7(a)). 3D seismic testing—which forms tight grids,

typically measured in square kilometers—has been utilized with greater frequency in recent

years (Figure 7(b)).

A total of 679 exploratory and production wells have been built in the Peruvian Amazon.

The number of new exploratory wells peaked between 1974 and 1977 (Figure 7(c)), directly

following the peak in seismic testing. The peak of development well construction was between

1974 and 1984, with over 200 new wells (Figure 7(c)). There are currently 266 oil‐producing

wells. All production wells have resulted in the extraction of around 996.3 million barrels of

crude oil from the Peruvian Amazon since 1939. Oil production rose dramatically in 1978 with

the start of major operations in concessions 1AB and 8, and quickly peaked between 1979 and

1986. There has been a steady decline in oil production ever since peak production between

1979 and 1985 (Figure 8(a)). In summary, oil exploration activities peaked during the early to

mid‐ 1970s, while production peaked early the following decade. In contrast, natural gas

production has been steadily increasing since first tapped for commercial use in 1998 (Figure

8(b)). A major spike in natural gas production occurred in 2004 due to the start of production

at Camisea.

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Figure 7. Oil and gas exploration and exploitation activities in the Peruvian Amazon. Level of (a) 2D seismic

activity and (b) 3D seismic activity. (c) Number of exploration and development wells drilled.

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Figure 8. Oil and gas extraction and reserves in the Peruvian Amazon. Production of (a) oil and (b) natural gas.

(c) Proven and probable oil reserves. BOE, Barrel Oil Equivalent; BLS, barrels.

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Based on an analysis of the typical minimum work program for new concessions, we

generated projections for the amount of exploratory activity expected in the near future. We

forecast that there will be a continued rise of both seismic testing and exploratory well

construction over the next several years, likely reaching levels not seen since the mid‐1970s

(see Figure 7 parts (a) and (c), respectively). We project that ~21 000 km of seismic lines will be

cut through the Peruvian Amazon over the next 5 years. In addition, we project that ~182

exploratory wells may be drilled during this time period as well.

Oil reserves (proven plus probable) of the Peruvian Amazon jumped in 2006, to nearly 674

million barrels (Figure 8(c)). This jump was due to the addition of probable reserves first

discovered in the late 1990s in a concession known as Block 67. Natural gas reserves (proven

and probable) are substantial, with around 15.4 trillion cubic feet, plus an additional 928.4

million barrels of liquid natural gas.

The vast majority of the concessions overlap sensitive areas (Figure 9). Of the 52 active

concessions, 46 (88%) overlap titled indigenous lands and 17 overlap proposed or created

territorial reserves for indigenous people living in voluntary isolation. The result is that 55.1%

of the 100 367 km2 titled indigenous lands29, 17.1% of the 29 282 km2 created territorial

reserves (down from 41.9% earlier in the year), and 60.9% of the 42 151 km2 proposed

territorial reserves are covered by hydrocarbon concessions. Twenty‐one concessions overlap

nature reserves within the Peruvian protected area system and an additional eight concessions

overlap the Abanico del río Pastaza, a large wetland complex considered by the Ramsar

Convention as a wetland of international importance. Thus, 17.1% of the 153 539 km2

Peruvian Amazon protected area system, plus 81.5% of the 24 049 km2 Abanico wetlands, are

covered by hydrocarbon concessions. In addition, at least eight of the new 2010 bidding round

proposed concessions overlap titled indigenous lands, and one overlaps part of a territorial

reserve.

29 Our results differ a little bit from those of Benavides (2009), who states that the titled indigenous land covers

102 634 km2 of the Peruvian Amazon. In calculating this percentage we have not taken into account the 277 indigenous communities awaiting titles. 53.5% of their territory is also covered by oil and gas concessions.

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Figure 9. Map of all current oil and gas concessions, proposed concessions, and technical evaluation agreement

lots in the Peruvian Amazon. These hydrocarbon zones overlap both protected areas and indigenous peoples’

territories.

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Discussion

We found that the Peruvian Amazon is now in the early stages of a second hydrocarbon

exploration boom. The first exploration boom occurred in the early to mid‐1970s and was

characterized by an extraordinary burst of seismic activity. Nearly 63 000 km of seismic lines

were cut during the four years between 1972 and 1975, over half of all historic activity. We

project that the second boom will consist of around 21 000 km of seismic lines over the next 5

years. This should be considered a conservative estimate, however, given that many modern

seismic campaigns greatly exceed what is called for in the minimum work program that formed

the basis of our projections. Our projections also show that the number of exploratory wells to

be drilled in the Peruvian Amazon over the next several years—around 182— may exceed that

of the mid‐1970s peak.

The number of new exploration contracts spiked between 2005 and 2009, resulting in

more active concessions and more Amazonian land area covered by concessions than at any

other time in Peru’s history. The jump in the percentage of the Peruvian Amazon covered in

hydrocarbon concessions between 2005 and 2007—7%–49%—exceeds that of the concession

expansion leading to the first exploration boom of the 1970s. During the peak of the 1970s

exploration boom, only 34% of the Peruvian Amazon was under concession. When proposed

concessions are included in the analysis, we found that nearly two‐thirds of the Peruvian

Amazon is now zoned to hydrocarbon activities. This number could continue to rise as only

10% of the Peruvian Amazon is currently offlimits to oil concessions. Indeed, 18 new proposed

concessions were unveiled in early 2010.

The region may be on the verge of a second exploitation boom as well. Although oil

production in the Peruvian Amazon has been steadily falling since its peak in 1979 and 2009

marked the lowest output in over 20 years (see Figure 8(a)), it may soon increase if production

starts in the extremely controversial Block 67 (see below). Natural gas production still has not

peaked, and annual gas production is expected to keep rising due to the large Camisea

reserves. Indeed, 2009 marked the sixth consecutive year of rapidly increasing annual gas

production (see Figure 8(b)). With this skyrocketing natural gas production, total hydrocarbon

production (combining both oil and gas) actually reached its historical maximum in 2009.

Increasing global oil demand and consumption, combined with the high oil prices from

2003–2008, spurred energy company commitments to relatively high‐cost exploration and

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exploitation projects (EIA 2009c). Indeed, one of the more troubling aspects of the new

exploration boom is that areas previously protected by their remoteness are now covered by

proposed or active oil concessions. Many areas untouched by the seismic testing wave of the

1970s are now in active or proposed concessions. In other words, there has been a rapid

expansion of the oil frontier in the Peruvian Amazon. This expansion includes the

unprecedented coverage of protected areas and indigenous territories, particularly areas

utilized by vulnerable indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. Nearly one‐fifth of the

Peruvian Amazon protected area system is covered by hydrocarbon concessions, while that

figure rises to over 60% for proposed territorial reserve area for uncontacted indigenous

peoples.

Our finding that over 84% of the Peruvian Amazon has been or is currently zoned for

hydrocarbon activities raises many questions. For example, what has been the cumulative

impact of well over 100 000 km of seismic lines cut through primary Amazonian forest? Little is

known about the environmental impacts from exploratory seismic testing, particularly the

much more work‐intensive 3D form that is now being used with greater frequency. During the

exploration phase, there is deforestation related to the construction of the base camp, sub‐

bases, and the numerous heliports. Most modern seismic projects require at least 50 heliports,

and larger seismic projects may call for hundreds of heliports. There are also potential

environmental impacts from helicopter noise, the influx of a large amount of seismic crew

workers into remote areas, the cutting of hundreds of kilometers of seismic lines through the

understory—which may act as new hunting or logging trails deep into remote forest—and the

detonation of thousands of seismic explosives (Thomsen et al. 2001). A recent study on the

impacts of 2D seismic testing in a remote, intact section of the Peruvian Amazon (Block 39)

found a significant decrease in the group sizes of the Endangered White‐bellied Spider Monkey

(Ateles belzebuth) during the seismic testing phase (Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

2009). Although no negative impacts were detected in the study’s focal species, the Ocelot

(Leopardus pardalis), it is clear more research is needed on the impacts of seismic testing in

mega‐diverse environments.

During the production phase, the environmental impacts are potentially much more

severe and extensive. Therefore, what has been the cumulative impact from the drilling of

nearly 700 wells and the exploitation of nearly a billion barrels of oil from the Peruvian

Amazon? The contamination of the Corrientes region is now well‐documented (Quarles 2009);

see also chapter 1). And although direct contamination and pollution per unit of production

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will presumably never again be as bad as the 1970s era projects due to much improved

regulations and standards, modern production sites and pipelines are still prone to accidents,

leaks, and spills (Napolitano and Ryan 2007). And since pipelines often extend over hundreds

of kilometers, impacts are not isolated exclusively to the extraction site. The indirect impacts

associated with new hydrocarbon‐related access routes are also especially severe. Roads and

pipeline routes connecting to the drilling platforms can open up previously remote areas,

triggering an array of indirect impacts such as colonization, illegal logging, and unsustainable

hunting (Greenberg et al. 2005; Rosenfeld, Gordon, and Guerin‐McManus 2001; Suarez et al.

2009). Indeed, the expanding oil frontier has the unique potential of advancing the

agricultural, cattle and logging frontiers as well (Viña, Echavarria, and Rundquist 2004; Wunder

2003).

As demonstrated by the deadly confrontations between indigenous protesters and

Peruvian police in June 2009 (see chapter 4), there are major hydrocarbon‐related social

impacts as well. Our finding that over half of all legally titled indigenous territories in the

Peruvian Amazon are covered by hydrocarbon concessions may help explain the intense

frustration of the indigenous peoples of the region, many of whom have struggled for decades

to get legal title for at least a portion of their ancestral territories. According to monthly

reports from the Peruvian ombudsman, hydrocarbon‐related socio‐environmental conflicts are

increasing in the Peruvian Amazon (see chapter 4). Furthermore, our finding that 42% of the

territorial reserves, and over 60% of the proposed territorial reserves, were covered by

hydrocarbon concessions in 2009 point to the grave threat posed to uncontacted indigenous

peoples. Concession creation and subsequent project development without the previous

consent of local peoples and potential health‐related impacts (Hurtig and San Sebastián 2002;

San Sebastián et al. 2001); see also chapter 1) —particularly for indigenous peoples living in

voluntary isolation, whose lack of resistance or immunity make them extremely vulnerable to

illnesses brought by outsiders (Defensoría del Pueblo 2006; Napolitano and Ryan 2007)— are

two of the most volatile hydrocarbon‐related social issues. Subsequent acculturation of

indigenous peoples and their integration into the market economy (Godoy et al. 2005) can

lead to another major threat to biodiversity conservation since biological and cultural diversity

are often mutually dependent and geographically conterminous (Toledo 2001).

The proposed oil exploitation project in Block 67 is a prime example of the potential

environmental and social impacts associated with a modern hydrocarbon boom in the

Peruvian Amazon. Located in a remote region near the border with Ecuador, this concession is

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slated to be the first major new oil production project in the Peruvian Amazon in over 35 years

and would likely bring total oil production in the Peruvian Amazon near the production records

set in the late‐1970s and early‐1980s. Development in Block 67, however, is extremely

controversial. This concession lies within a megadiverse and largely intact section of the

Amazon, sparking intense environmental concerns. Moreover, there is strong anthropological

evidence that uncontacted indigenous peoples have traditionally utilized the area (Rogalski

and Wolodzko 2005). Indigenous groups have launched both domestic lawsuits and a petition

to the Inter‐American Commission on Human Rights (an organ of the Organization of American

States) with the aim of blocking development of Block 67.

Conclusion

We argue that a rigorous policy debate, including a greater analysis of potential

environmental and social impacts, is urgently needed as the Peruvian Amazon is set to face a

dramatic increase in hydrocarbon‐related activity. The first Amazonian oil exploration and

exploitation boom occurred in the 1970s and resulted in major environmental and social

impacts. Therefore, one of the critical questions arising from our findings is what type of

environmental and social impacts are likely during a modern hydrocarbon boom, and what can

be done to eliminate or minimize these impacts. For example, Peru’s neighbor Ecuador is

currently pursuing an innovative new initiative to permanently leave known oil reserves locked

under the ground in order to avoid the environmental and social impacts of Amazonian oil

development (Finer, Moncel, and Jenkins 2009; Larrea 2009). Ecuador seeks alternative

sources of revenue from the international community to offset the financial loss of not

extracting the oil in three fields, known collectively as ITT. Given that the controversial Block

67 is just across the border from ITT, perhaps Peru could employ a similar strategy to avoid

impacts in this bi‐national region of extraordinary biodiversity and uncontacted indigenous

peoples. As global demand for oil increases while conventional oil reserves decrease, some of

the world’s most remote and ecologically intact regions, such as the Peruvian Amazon, are

increasingly vulnerable to industrial activity without markedly improved policy measures.

Chapter 4

Oil frontiers and indigenous resistance in the Peruvian Amazon 30

30 Authors: Martí Orta‐Martínez (ICTA, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and Matt Finer (Save America’s

Forests). Accepted for publication 26 April 2010. Ecological Economics. Acknowledgements: The field data for this chapter were collected with the essential participation of the

Achuar communities of the Corrientes River area and the environmental monitors. We are grateful for the support of leaders of FECONACO, the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River, and members of the environmental monitoring team. We thank Gregor MacLennan, Wendy Pineda and Cristina O’Callaghan for compiling secondary data, and Joan Martinez‐Alier, Giorgos Kallis and three anonymous reviewers for good advice. Work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science through grant AP‐2004‐7103, and project SEJ2006‐15219.

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Introduction

The first oil well in South America was drilled in the northern pacific coast of Peru in 1863

in Zorritos, Tumbes department (Mogollón 2008). Peru was the first oil producing country in

South America until 1924, and in 1930 Peru still ranked 9th as oil producer around the world.

Nevertheless, it was not until 1939 that oil exploitation started in the Peruvian Amazon. In

1939 the Ganso Azul Oil Company started oil exploitation of the Aguas Calientes oil field and in

1959 the El Oriente Peruvian Oil Company started exploitation of the Maquia oil field (MEM

1986).

In addition to historical grievances, oil development may have been an important factor in

the Ecuadorian‐Peruvian war of 1941. This was called the “Oil War” by Rumazo González

(Rumazo‐González 1946), since it occurred after Ecuador leased an oil block to Anglo‐Saxon

Petroleum (Royal Dutch) and after Peruvian oil exploration started in the region. The new

border established by the Rio de Janeiro Protocol of 1942, implied a cut of 20% in the area of

the Ecuadorian oil block.

The 1970s was a most intensive period in oil exploration in the history of the Peruvian

Amazon (a first oil exploration boom), which led to the most productive period between 1979

and 1985 (see chapter 3). The 1970s oil exploration boom in the Peruvian Amazon corresponds

to the first extensive wave of oil exploration in the Amazon. It coincided with the discovery of

major commercial deposits in the northern part of Ecuador close to Colombia’s border, by the

Texaco‐Gulf consortium in 1967 (Sabin 1998) and, in the northern Peruvian Amazon close to

the Ecuadorian border by Occidental Petroleum Corporation and Petroperú in 1971.

As mention in chapter 3, the Peruvian Amazon is currently experiencing a new oil

exploration boom. Even the most remote, intact and sensitive reaches of the Peruvian Amazon

were covered by proposed or active oil and gas concessions that overlap with 55.2% of the

titled indigenous lands (see Table 5), 17.1% of the created reserves for indigenous people in

voluntary isolation (see Table 6), 60.9% of the proposed territorial reserves (see Table 6).

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In this chapter, from a world‐system perspective (Hornborg, McNeill, and Martinez‐Alier

2007), we analyze the oil frontier in a context of peak oil and growing global demand for oil,

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and use concepts stemming from Ecological Economics and Political Ecology to understand the

impacts, conflicts, and resistance methods related to oil exploration and exploitation in the

Peruvian Amazon. In section two, we analyse the Peruvian oil reserves as a non‐renewable

resource. In section three, we discuss oil exploration and exploitation impacts in the Peruvian

Amazon. In section four, we summarize oil impacts in the Achuar territory as a springboard for

discussing, in section five, forms of resistance from this indigenous people to deal with such

impacts. Finally, we discuss the regional and global patterns of oil expansion, and offer policy

alternatives against increasing oil extraction impacts and conflicts.

Peak oil and the second exploration boom

Oil is the main energy source of modern societies, an essential input for the exosomatic

energy metabolism of contemporary rich economies. World economic growth reliance on

fossil fuels has been continuous over the last century and, consequently, oil world demand and

consumption has been increasing steadily along the 20th century, but there has been a

decrease in new discoveries of conventional oil reservoirs since 1960s (Tsoskounoglou,

Ayerides, and Tritopoulou 2008). The recent Brazilian pre‐salt discovery in the Atlantic Ocean

of about 50 billion barrels (EIA 2009a), though certainly important for the Brazilian economy,

would cover less than two years of world consumption. At the same time, as with Alberta’s oil

sands, new oil extraction often shows a decreasing EROI. There are increasing energy costs of

oil exploration, extraction and export, which depend on oil quality (API density) and location of

oil fields (Cleveland et al. 1984; Hall and Cleveland 1981). These factors —increasing world

demand, decreasing reservoirs and EROI— generate a scissor effect, which will lead to an

inevitable peaking of conventional oil production, which in turn, can lead to an oil world supply

shortage and to an increasing oil price (Figure 10).

Peak‐oil was described as early as 1949 by Hubbert (Hubbert 1949). The theory is based on

the fact that oil, as any other non‐renewable resource, is finite. Oil is not produced but

extracted. It is burnt and the energy produced is dissipated and cannot be used again. This

energyy does not come from current photosynthesis but it was accumulated in remote times.

Hence, the bell‐shaped nature of oil discoveries and extraction. Consequently, an increasing

exploration effort and cost per unit of oil discovered are expected at first, followed by

decreasing new discoveries and, finally, by decreasing oil extraction. The time lags between

the peaks of exploration, discovery and extraction can be predicted.

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Figure 10. World Nominal Oil Price: 1970‐2010 (source: U.S. Energy Information Administration).

uch of the world's conventional oil has already been extracted; new discoveries tend to

be s

scenario of sustained high world oil prices will allow the economic development of

unc

M

maller than in the past, take more time and more expensive technology to develop, and

they run dry faster. Until 2007 oil demand was growing in the world, and it is still growing in

the vast emerging markets in the developing world, such as China and India. From about 87

million barrels per day in 2007 has gone down to about 85 million barrels per day in 2009. The

main factors behind the record‐breaking increase in 2008 of oil prices remain in place and, if

the world economic recession comes to an end, oil prices will break records again. To prevent

this scenario, the oil industry agrees that major investment in the exploration and

development of new reserves, and easier access to new and promising territories for

exploration, are needed. They complain, for instance, that USA sanctions continue to impede

investment in Iran; or that in the USA, most coastal waters and much of Alaska have been off‐

limits to oil exploration (The Economist 2009).

A

onventional resources (oil sands, oil shale, extra heavy oil, gas‐to‐liquids, coal‐to‐liquids)

and the use of enhanced oil recovery technologies to increase production of conventional

resources. High oil prices will also permit the development of additional conventional

resources through technically difficult, high‐risk, and very expensive projects, including those

located in ultra‐deep water and the Arctic (EIA 2009c). In other words, a scenario of high world

107

oil prices increases the profit margin and forces oil exploration into new “commodity frontiers”

in new territories, such as the Amazon.

The Peruvian Amazon oil peak was reached in 1979 at about 129,000 barrels per day.

The

ontrary to what happened after the first oil exploration boom in the Peruvian Amazon,

eve

his analysis should also take into account that gas exploitation has very different

pro

re has been a steady decline in oil extraction ever since (see chapter 3). The high oil prices

from 2003‐2008 were one of the causes of the second oil exploration boom (EIA, 2008). The

first oil blocks for unconventional oil (Technical Evaluation Agreements I‐IV) were leased in

Peru in February 2008, with four contracts that cover 66,001 km2 of the Peruvian Amazon.

Rising oil prices are also one of the causes that probable oil reserves (oil reserves are classified

into proved reserves, probable reserves and possible reserves; from less to more uncertainty)

in the Peruvian Amazon jumped in 2006 by 255 to nearly 465 million barrels. This increase is

due to the addition of reserves from Block 67 (see chapter 3). Exploration at Block 67 first

discovered commercial quantities of crude oil in the late 1990s. At the time, there was no

decision to proceed but rising world oil prices caused a re‐evaluation of the area turning it into

a financially feasible project (EIA 2008b).

C

n in a scenario of sustained high world oil prices, a second conventional oil extraction boom

may not take place. Proved oil reserves in the Peruvian Amazon were 246.2 million barrels in

2007, have only increased by 60 million barrels in the last 10 years, and are considerably lower

than in the early 1980s (see chapter 3). The Peruvian Amazon cumulative oil production

accounts for 996 million barrels until end 2008 which is more than the proved and probable oil

reserves all together. Conventional oil extraction will remain steady or experience an increase

for a while, but it will likely not surpass the annual oil production records set in the late‐1970s

and early‐1980s. Nevertheless, as oil price rise, even more of the Peruvian Amazon is likely to

be under exploration and exploitation in the near future.

T

spects. Although major discoveries of natural gas date from 1984, natural gas and natural

gas liquids extraction began to increase markedly since 2005 and has certainly not peaked yet

(see chapter 3). Its impacts in the Amazon are not dissimilar to those of oil.

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Oil impacts in the Peruvian Amazon

Oil related activities threaten environmental sustainability. They have also been identified as

the cause of severe health impacts to local people due to oil pollution (Hurtig and San

Sebastián 2002, 2004; San Sebastián et al. 2001; San Sebastián, Armstrong, and Stephens

2002), sexual abuses by the workforce, and prostitution (Beristain, Páez, and Fernández 2009;

Jobin 2003). The court case against Chevron‐Texaco in Ecuador had done much to document

such practices. However, the impact of oil activities on indigenous people of the Peruvian

Amazon has been poorly described. The combination of endemic hepatitis B with acute

intoxication due to oil industry byproducts was found to be the likely cause of death in 21

children in a Kichwa community in Block 1AB (Álvarez‐Alonso, personal communication;

Álvarez‐Alonso 2008). Also in the northern Peruvian Amazon, a virulent hepatitis D epidemic

among the Candoshi was caused likely by the exploration activities conducted by Oxy during

1994‐1995 in Block 4; activities conducted despite the opposition of the local indigenous

people (Surrallés 2007). The oil industry often fails to respect the right to free, prior and

informed consent (the FPIC) as established by Convention 169 of ILO and now required by the

UN Indigenous People Declaration (ILO 1989; UN 2007; UNPFII 2009).

Impacts of oil extraction are usually considered long‐term and chronic, while potential

impacts of exploration (from seismic lines and exploration drilling) are considered low‐level,

short‐term and transient (UNEP‐IE/E&P‐Forum 1997). However, the extraction affects small

areas, while exploration affects vast expanses. Besides, oil exploration activities have

contributed to several cases of contact with indigenous people in voluntary isolation and the

ensuing outbreaks of new diseases with high rates of mortality. The firsts documented case

was in 1965 when Shell contacted non identified groups in Río Amigo (Madre de Dios). Also in

Madre de Dios, International Petroleum Company (IPC) contacted Amahuaca in 1967 and, in

1973, Andes Petroleum Company contacted Toyeri (Harakmbut). In the 1970’s, Total contacted

Yaminahua in Block 39, in the central Peruvian Amazon. Also in the 1980’s Shell, working in

Blocks 38 and 42 (also in the central Peruvian Amazon) contacted Nahua and Kirineri ‐ these

contacts, jointly with those caused by illegal logging, resulted in 40‐60% mortality among them

(Defensoría del Pueblo 2006; Napolitano 2007; Napolitano and Ryan 2007). In 1996, a number

of contacts with the Mashco‐piro were recorded in Block 77 (Mobil) in the southern Peruvian

Amazon. I also heard from Achuar informers that they witnessed new contacts during seismic

testing by Pluspetrol in Block 1AB in the late 1990s. A recent suspected case is due to

Petrolifera, a Canadian oil company, working in Block 107 that contacted Cacataibo peoples

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inside the Cacataibo Territorial Reserve (IBC 2009c). Also the risk in Blocks 39 and 67 (next to

Yasuni ITT in Ecuador) is nowadays of major concern (Álvarez‐Alonso 2004; Casafranca 2008).

Numerous concessions currently overlap with a substantial number of Territorial Reserves and

proposed Territorial Reserves (Table 6).

Oil exploration puts health of those living in voluntary isolation at risk due to “novel”

diseases introduced by outsiders. Isolated indigenous peoples also suffer migration into their

territory since oil opens access to human settlement (agriculture, cattle and hunting) and

illegal logging, which also prevent them from coming back after forcing their migration. Their

land is almost “empty” and therefore appears available to anyone. Ecological economics

emphasizes that open access resources ‐not the community property (commons) which is

under rules to avoid overexploitation‐, are increasingly exploited since there is no incentive for

conservation because the costs of overexploitation would be suffered by everybody, whereas

the revenue would be appropriated by the users (Berkes et al. 1989; Ciriacy‐Wantrup and

Bishop 1975; Hardin 1968; Martínez‐Alier and Roca Jusmet 2001). This view supports the

conservationist thesis that secure and enforceable tenure by indigenous communities might

help prevent resource degradation by excluding outsider users (Hames 2007).

To sum up, oil exploration can no longer be considered a transient activity, with impacts

that can be corrected. In the Amazon, oil exploration is an irreversible process not only

because of (often unknown) loss of biodiversity but no less importantly because of impacts on

human life and cultural diversity. Illegal logging has been considered the main factor

jeopardizing the survival of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation during the last decades

(Defensoría del Pueblo 2006). However, increasing hydrocarbon concessions are also a main

threat to indigenous people in voluntary isolation, by opening up the frontiers through seismic

lines.

110

One of the major effects of oil activities on biodiversity conservation is likely to be an

indirect effect due to indigenous people’s loss of traditional ecological knowledge,

epistemological assimilation, and especially, integration to the market economy (Suarez et al.

2009). Cultural diversity seems to be closely related to biodiversity conservation. Several

studies have shown the association between high biodiversity and the distribution of native

peoples and therefore, cultural degradation has been posited to be a source of biodiversity

loss (Toledo 2001). Skipping the debate around indigenous people being intentionally

conservationists or not, what is generally accepted is that due to their simple technology and

lack of access to external markets, indigenous people prevent over‐exploitation in comparison

to western societies. Among conservationists, there is concern on how cultural transformation

or Westernization, and integration into the market economy affect biodiversity (Hames 2007).

It is argued that improved regulations and standards of environmental management in oil

and gas exploration and extraction (land use, waste disposal, water use, waste‐water

management, greenhouse‐gas emissions, gas flaring and air pollution) have diminished direct

impacts per unit of production compared to old oil projects. Eco‐efficiency improvements

disguise the fact that oil impacts are often irreversible and that the total impact can increase

while decreasing per unit of production if the number of oil projects increases in socially and

environmentally fragile areas. The impacts should be analyzed in historical perspective,

counting cumulative impacts. In other words, what is relevant for rainforest conservation and

indigenous people health and survival is not only pollution per unit of oil production but the

total and cumulative effect of oil activities. This perspective strengthens the thesis that

Environmental Impact Assessments should not be conducted for each individualized oil

project, but in a regional and historical context (Finer et al. 2008).

Also, power asymmetries, uncertainties and ignorance in the remote oil frontier must be

taken into account. Local impact monitoring and assessment capacities are limited by the

presence of oil firms and the absence of the State. The role of Christian missionaries either

abetting oil exploration (Finer et al. 2009), or reproving its effects, is a symptom of the absence

of the State. The new needs of the communities (health assistance, zinc roofs) are often

provided for by the oil companies, not the State, which is handicapped by lack of resources

and technical incompetence and corruption (Transparency International 2009). Cutting edge

technologies and improved regulations and standards are not implemented in those remote

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areas (La Torre López and Napolitano 2007). Therefore, empowerment of local people

becomes a key factor to ensure improved regulations and standards implementation.

Oil Conflicts in the northern Peruvian Amazon

Oil impacts in the Río Corrientes indigenous territory have been thoroughly described in

chapter 1. Despite the strong evidence of severe impacts in official reports since 1984, the

Peruvian government has from 2004 to 2007 leased six new oil concessions which overlap with

the whole Achuar ancestral territory ‐Blocks 101 (Talisman), 102 (Ramshorn), 104 (Burlington),

106 (Petrolífera Petroleum), 127 (Cepsa) and 143 (Hunt Oil)‐, and approved their

Environmental Impact Assessments which allowed operations to start.

By themselves, the impacts detailed in chapter 1 do not explain the course of events.

Conflicts about oil extraction in remote areas are highly complex, due to extreme cultural

disparity between actors, asymmetries in decision power and negotiation skills. Furthermore,

indigenous people are divided in terms of interests and opinions. All of these factors are

modulated by recent and past history of indigenous peoples, evangelization, military service,

dependence of communities on oil companies and absence of state agencies and other

external institutions; lack of audit capacity of state agencies, degree of democratic freedoms in

the country, environmental legislation and laws regarding indigenous peoples, isolation of the

area, economic resources of indigenous organizations and external support by NGOS, and so

on. Such factors, in turn, influence the internal strength of indigenous communities, the role of

traditional authorities and the clash between generations.

We list below some of the most important factors to understand the different dimensions

of conflict around hydrocarbon activities:

• Land Titling and decision power. Hydrocarbon Law 26221, enacted in 1993 during

the Fujimori government, clearly establishes the right of the State over subsurface

resources to facilitate mining and hydrocarbon concessions. Thus, the state

concentrates the power to allow companies to establish oil facilities, roads, drill

sites and pipelines on indigenous lands, even when they are titled. Peru ratified

ILO Convention 169 (ILO 1989) in 1993 (Legislative Resolution 26253‐1993), by

which indigenous communities, whether or not they have land title, have the right

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to FPIC of the activities to be carried out in their territory. However, until recently

even some titled communities were not consulted. Despite this situation,

indigenous peoples know well that their territorial rights are the bridge to

guarantee their basic rights to health, livelihood, a healthy environment and use of

their resources, as well as their cultural rights. For these reasons, titling their

territories is a daily palpable need for the communities.

Indigenous territories are usually defined as an area that covers all ancestral

territories of each ethnic group. However, the Peruvian government only

recognizes collective ownership areas to communities, dividing ethnic groups and

even confronting communities due to infighting among them over the limits of

such properties. Moreover, company‐indigenous agreements are reached

separately per each titled community, dividing even more, the indigenous peoples’

movement.

The nomadism of indigenous groups, their diffuse use of the territory invisible to

Western eyes, (family groups started to settle in communities not until the 1960s

and in some cases subsequent to the arrival of the oil company) and government

centralism led to the absence of mechanisms to take into account indigenous

peoples in the decision making process for new oil facilities.

• Typology of impacts. The oil industry generates cultural, social and environmental

damages. Such damages interact and depend on other factors, and it is not always

easy to establish the causal relationships between the factors involved. Cultural

damage, on which there are very few judicial decisions requiring compensation,

comes with a long history of racism that often led indigenous people to the denial

of their own indigenous roots. The loss of institutions, rituals, knowledge and

practices resulting from oil activity in the area, not only has not been reported, but

has been favored by the members of communities. Only recently, a timid purpose

to recover indigenous dignity has arisen, and FECONACO began to undertake

activities to reinforce cultural identity.

Social and environmental damage has been the cause of most of the conflicts

between the Achuar and the oil companies. Social and environmental damages are

closely related since Achuar communities rely on the environment as a source of

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livelihood and of any marketable good. Thus, the decline in fishing and hunting

were considered by the Achuar as a direct result of oil pollution. However, other

factors such as population growth, introduction of firearms that replace blowguns

or the loss of traditional institutions and regulatory practices for hunting, might

also play a role. Some of these factors might also be an indirect effect of

petroleum activities.

Conflict dynamics are also conditioned by the long‐term emergence of diseases

linked to oil pollution. The highest degree of social mobilization coincided with the

emergence of new diseases, such as suspected cases of cancer. There are no

official records of causes of death in the communities, there are no

epidemiological studies to establish a causal relationship between cancer and oil

activities. But health is one of the indigenous peoples’ major concerns. Oil‐related

health problems are largely long‐term and given that indigenous people were

unaware of the toxicity of crude oil because there were no natural outcrops of oil

in the area, the conflict was postponed, allowing a conflict‐free operation to Oxy

between 1971 and 2000, and even after the concession was transferred to

Pluspetrol. By then, damages became very visible. Pluspetrol Corporation linked

this pollution to past Oxy activities, denying any relation with its own activities.

• Isolation. In remote areas indigenous people have no other contacts with the

national society than the company itself; or perhaps missionaries or the military.

Due to geographical isolation, and lack of Western cultural skills and familiarity

with national institutions, indigenous communities do not usually have the chance

to access alternative external actors (state agencies, courts, universities or NGOs)

and when they want to complain about pollution, they only can complain to the

company itself. Thus, the conflict is often silenced at international, national,

regional or even local level until protest becomes visible in the forms of roadblocks

or occupations of oil installations.

• Organizational Strength. Increasing State presence after the war with Ecuador in

1941 and the arrival of missionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL),

determined to a large extent the collapse of Achuar institutions and the blurring of

the traditional authority, the Apu. The presence of state authorities in Villa

Trompeteros (district capital, 4000 inhabitants in 1993), determined the

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appearance of two new authorities in the communities, the lieutenant governor

and the municipal agent, but the major agent of change was Achuar evangelization

by the SIL. As a result, the community bilingual teacher came to transform the

Achuar public sphere and the institutions, practices and knowledge of Achuar

culture were discredited.

Today FECONACO leaders, as their representatives, have a key role among the

Achuar. Given their power, there are often rumours of leaders being involved in

corruption. In 2002, FECONACO leaders were replaced over allegations of taking

bribes from Pluspetrol. The outgoing leaders came to form another federation

(FEPIBAC) which attended meetings with state agencies claiming to be legal

representatives of the Achuar. Such rumours of corruption undermine confidence

of the communities in the leaders, which in turn, diminishes their strength as

representatives of the Achuar people, and also their capacity to claim their rights.

Thus, while (false) rumours were spread about houses in the U.S. being bought in

2006 to FECONACO’s leaders by the oil company, FECONACO lacked the economic

resources to undertake visits to communities (by expensive boat trips) to

strengthen the confidence of the Achuar people.

• Dependence on oil companies. Achuar communities’ dependence on Pluspetrol

has been called “extreme” (OSINERG 2004). Both Oxy and Pluspetrol have been

the largest source of wage employment and the most important source of cash

into communities. Currently the majority of adult men engage in wage

employment (perhaps two or three months per year) working on remediation,

road maintenance or vegetation clearing in seismic lines and drilling sites.

Dependence on Pluspetrol is also due to the annual agreements between

Pluspetrol and FECONACO. The company pays for the construction of wells for

drinking water, health posts, training programs for health promoters, care in

health centers of the oil company, donation and maintenance of electric

generators, transport of indigenous people along the oil company road

(hitchhiking), air transport for indigenous authorities to attend meetings in Iquitos

or Lima or for health emergencies (Pluspetrol Norte SA and Pampa Hermosa 2003).

The oil company replaces the State.

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This dependence means, on the one hand, a long‐term risk of extreme poverty

when oil runs out, and on the other hand, the possibility for the company to

pressure the communities by reducing these services as happened in the early

1990s when the Achuar began to organize themselves.

Achuar resistance methods 31

In the Río Corrientes, the conflicts are mainly expressed in a language of indigenous

identity and territorial rights, and also in the language of risks to health. Such languages are

intertwined and are used together. Health has been used for direct actions, as well as for a

court case. Resistance focused on land titling was based on territorial rights while monitoring

of oil impacts used indigenous environmental language.

Land Titling

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the

General Assembly on 13 September 2007. It starts by recognizing the link between territory

and rights: “control by indigenous peoples over developments affecting them and their lands,

territories and resources will enable them to maintain and strengthen their institutions,

cultures and traditions[…].” This Declaration was not only signed by Peru but also sponsored

by its government at the time (UN 2007). The Declaration was born from debates on land

titling that go back many decades. Indigenous peoples have repeatedly stated that their

cultural security is synonymous with, and entirely contingent upon, security of tenure. The

control of their ancestral territory is recognized as a key right from which depend their social

structure, organization, institutions, cultural heritage, practices and beliefs, and sustainable

use of natural resources. Under the indigenous worldview their territory is their source of

livelihood, water, food, medicines, wood and any other daily resource; but also the source for

their knowledge, culture and spiritual traditions which are indispensable for their existence,

well‐being and integral development as peoples (Surrallés and Garcia‐Hierro 2004). The politics

of the indigenous peoples’ movement has focused long ago on the recognition of their

territory through collective land titles.

31 We do not include here a discussion about MELPGIS, since it has been deeply analysed in chapter

2.

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In Peru, the legal figure of the native community in the Amazon was created in 1974

(Stocks 2005). However, the law does not directly permit several communities to claim a single

territory for each ethnic group (as for instance, the original community lands ‐tierras

comunitarias de origen‐, in Bolivia). So that titled native communities leave large gaps of

territory in between that are filled in by settlers. According to the law, the native communities

do not own the forest rights and the state has the right to give logging concessions. They also

do not own the subsurface resource rights and have to provide right‐of‐way for all state‐

constructed roads and free passage to oil or gas pipelines, among others infrastructures

(Stocks 2005). Under Fujimori (1990–2000), the 1993 constitution revoked the inalienability of

indigenous lands (indigenous property may now be subject to mortgage) (Stocks 2005). In

1991, a land titling program of the Agriculture Department was funded by the World Bank ‐the

Special Project on Land Titling. In 2008 its responsibilities were transferred to COFOPRI

(attached to the housing authority). Currently the Peruvian government has issued over 1,200

land titles to Amazonian indigenous communities (in only 13.5% of the Peruvian Amazon) and

created five territorial reserves for the protection of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation

(3.6% of the Peruvian Amazon) (IBC 2009a). Moreover, this plan only gave title to areas smaller

than the ones in actual use, under a concept of sedentary life and without recognizing the

territorial needs of hunter‐gatherer societies. It did not solve the problem on native

community titling.

In 1978 three Achuar traditional leaders travelled to Iquitos in order to get a land title and

stop the oil activities in their territories. They even managed to have a meeting on 12 August

1983 with the Peruvian President, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, to whom they asked for territorial

rights (Uriarte 2007). Three decades later and after long bureaucratic procedures the Achuar

people have only got a few small land titles which do not solve their problems or guarantee

their territorial rights. Indigenous peoples have often alleged that the Peruvian government

uses a strategy of “rocking and boring” them by not paying attention to their claims while

inviting them from time to time to go to distant Lima to have talks. Indigenous peoples believe

that government has little respect for their rights when establishing Amazonian policies.

Occupation of oil wells because of claims to health

Until 2006, the Achuar held meetings in Iquitos and Lima with the Congressional National

Commission for Andean, Amazonian and Afroperuvian Peoples (CONAPA, which later became

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INDEPA), the Commission for the Amazon, Ecology and Environment from the Peruvian

Congress, the General Direction for Environmental and Energy Affairs (DGAAE) from the

Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Minister of Health, the Environmental Health Agency

(DIGESA), the Regional Health Department of Loreto (DESA Loreto), the Epidemiology Division

(DGE), and other state agencies; they also met the Ombudsman, Congressmen and the First

Lady (Orta‐Martínez 2007).

Historically, the Achuar have mobilized socially only in relation to the non‐fulfillment of oil

company‐indigenous agreements. But in 2006, after publication of the official report on the

alarming cadmium levels in their blood by the Ministry of Health, the patterns of Achuar

mobilization changed. The traditional leaders of the Achuar communities went to new

meetings in Lima whose objective was to set an emergency health plan. After elections held in

June 2006, they met with the new Alan García’s administration, but the government did

nothing to prevent new oil pollution. A meeting was arranged for the 26 September 2006, but

representatives of the administration did not attend. Annoyed with this cancellation, the

Achuar people decided to demonstrate in Iquitos, and to take action.

In October 2006, more than 800 Achuar from the Río Corrientes occupied most of the oil

facilities in Blocks 1AB and 8 to stop oil wells. They did not want to lift the occupation until the

Minister of Health and the Minister of Energy and Mines undertook to end the discharge of

formation waters into their rivers, one main pollution source. The Achuar stopped oil

extraction for two weeks until the government and Pluspetrol agreed to the reinjection of all

formation waters by July 2008 in Block 1AB, and by December 2008 in Block 8. They also

agreed to undertake remediation activities and to implement a health care plan along the Río

Corrientes basin, which included provisional emergency food and water supplies to avoid the

polluted Achuar’s normal sources (La Torre López and Napolitano 2007).

The oil company fulfilled their commitments to reinject formation water in the Río

Corrientes on time. Nevertheless, the formation waters in other river basins in Blocks 1AB and

8,‐the territory of the Kichwa indigenous people who did not join the Achuar’s strike, did not

start to be reinjected until one year later. At the end of 2009, the government still had not

fulfilled its commitments to build a hospital and truly implement the health care plan. In

March 2010 FECONACO demonstrated again in Iquitos to demand that the government fulfil

the 2006 agreements (Aidesep 2010). Meanwhile, Antonio Brack, the Environment Minister,

presented the Achuar case as a proof that today oil activities are healthy and that pollution is

119

an old problem (Felipe‐Gamarra 2009). The Achuar case could rather be interpreted as an

environmental justice movement claiming equal rights to health. Resorting to peaceful direct

action, they had a measure of success.

Court case

Extraterritorial legislations give the legal forum for plaintiffs from countries that extract

and export raw materials to bring their claims for damages in the importing countries which

are also home to the transnational corporations which (together with national companies) are

liable or should be liable for such damages. In their home countries the defendant

transnational corporations have assets available for paying damages and there is no

institutionalized corruption of the judicial system. The Alien Tort Claim Act (ATCA) of the

United States has been of particular interest. Thus, Freeport‐McMoRan, a mining company,

was accused, under the ATCA, of human rights and environmental violations in Indonesia

(Black 2004). Referring only to oil and gas, a group of Burmese villagers brought a case against

Unocal due to alleged human rights abuses committed during the construction of the Yadana

pipeline; cases have been brought against Shell and Chevron for damage to environmental and

human rights in Nigeria, against Texaco (now Chevron) for environmental abuse in the

Ecuadorian Amazon, against ExxonMobil for alleged complicity in human rights violations by

Indonesian military units, and against Talisman for alleged abuse of human rights in Sudan

(Bekele Woldemelekot 2008; Utting and Clapp 2008).

In May 2007, twenty‐five indigenous Achuar plaintiffs brought suit in the Superior Court of

the State of California against Los Angeles‐based Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy), alleging

harm caused by Oxy over a thirty‐year period in the Río Corrientes basin. This was a class

action, where plaintiffs brought these claims on behalf of themselves and of all residents of

five Achuar communities (estimated to be approximately 2,500) that sustained the same type

of injuries and damages arising out of Oxy’s conduct. In April 2008, the judge of the U.S.

District Court for the Central District of California granted Oxy’s motion to dismiss and ruled

that the case was more appropriately heard in Peru under the legal doctrine so often applied

in such cases of forum non conveniens. The case is currently in the appeal process. The

plaintiffs are also considering taking legal action in a Peruvian court.

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Oil conflicts: increasingly commonplace

Policy makers in Peru have begun to realize the actual number of hectares and resources

involved in phrases such as “rights to lands traditionally occupied”. They are not keen in

recognising the hard‐won advances in indigenous rights. The assertion “too much land and

resources for too few indigenous peoples” is another way of saying that there are political and

economic interests that want the land (Stocks 2005).

In October 2007, President Alan Garcia published a newspaper article titled The Dog in the

Manger syndrome (García Pérez 2007), which compared Amazonian indigenous people to a

dog growling over food that it will not eat but will not let others have. Alan Garcia wrote that

huge indigenous lands were idle and only a small portion were agricultural land. According to

him, “sacred and ancestral land rights” were excuses to prevent turning the Amazon into

productive lands by national and foreign investment in resource extraction, plantation forests

and agrofuels production. The indigenous population of the Peruvian Amazon was only

332,975 inhabitants (INEI 2008b), only 1.18% of total 28,220,764 Peruvian population (INEI

2008a), and owned 10.41% of Peru (Benavides 2009a).

In 2008, Alan García approved 104 decree‐laws under executive powers he had from the

Peruvian congress to facilitate implementation of the new US‐Peru Free Trade Agreement.

Indigenous people’s organizations argued that the government wanted to open up the

Amazon to private investment (agrofuel plantations, oil drilling, mining in the Cordillera del

Condor and elsewhere, plantation forestry), basically taking away land from indigenous

people, and allowing companies to operate in or take over community lands much more easily.

They also argued that the government did not observe the right of indigenous peoples to free,

prior and informed consent (ILO 1989; UN 2007), and that there were severe environmental

and health impacts associated with Amazonian hydrocarbon activities.

In mid‐2008 indigenous people’s organizations began a protest campaign and, in April

2009, after allegations of lack of proper dialogue, they started roadblocks at different points in

the Amazon and also in the highlands. Just one day after a new postponement of a debate in

Congress about repealing some of the decree‐laws in question, the police effort to clear the

blockade at Bagua in Northern Peru culminated in bloodshed on June 5th, when 24 police and

not less than 10 civilians were killed. Five leaders of the national indigenous organization ‐

AIDESEP‐ were ordered to be arrested on charges of sedition and for allegedly inciting

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indigenous rebellion and violence. Three of them took refuge in the embassy of Nicaragua and

AIDESEP’s leader A. Pizango is still now in exile. Alan García blamed “foreign forces” for the

violence and spoke of a “conspiracy” to stop his government from exploiting natural resources

(Collyns 2009).

As the world economy uses more energy and oil, gas, coal, copper, bauxite, palm oil, paper

pulp and other raw materials, the commodity frontiers advance into the Peruvian Amazon as

in other territories undermining the conditions of livelihood and the very existence of

peripheral peoples, who complain accordingly (Martínez‐Alier 2002). Ecological distribution

conflicts have been increasing across the Peruvian Amazon (Figure 11). Fifteen open conflicts

related to hydrocarbon activities were reported in Januray 2010 (Defensoría del Pueblo 2005‐

2009). Similarly, our records indicate that indigenous peoples have organized major protests in

at least 19 blocks (see Table 5).

Figure 11. Evolution of socio‐environmental conflicts in Peru according to the Peruvian ombudsman (Source: Own

Policy recommendations

design based on data provided by Defensoría del Pueblo, Reporte de Conflictos Sociales, Jan 2005‐March 2010).

Finer et al. (2008) presented several policy recommendations aimed at reducing or

eliminating hydrocarbon‐related impacts. These recommendations include: 1) banning new oil

122

acce

s to avoid hydrocarbon‐related

impacts, stemming from and proposed by the ecological economics and political ecology

com

n international legal framework to get compensation for social and

environmental liabilities of oil companies, and prior to this, the obligation to count

r 2007). In the context of the

limate change debate, a new eco‐tax on oil exports by OPEC countries of about

ss roads through wilderness areas; 2) the implementation in national regulations of the

indigenous peoples’ right to reject a project planned on their territory after being properly

consulted (the FPIC); 3) the requirement of Strategic Environmental Assessment that analyse

the long‐term, cumulative, and synergistic impacts of multiple oil and gas projects across a

region; 4) the creation of Intangible zones for voluntary isolated indigenous peoples where any

commercial extractive activity is forbidden, as the Zona Intangible created by the Ecuadorian

government in 1999, whose boundaries were not set until 2007 after the Inter‐American

Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued “Precautionary Measures” in order to protect the

lives of the Tagaeri and Taromenane voluntary isolated (Finer et al. 2009); 5) emulating the

Ecuadorian government proposal of leaving 850 million barrels of heavy oil untapped in the ITT

field Yasuní National Park in exchange for compensation from the international community

(Finer, Moncel, and Jenkins 2009; Larrea and Warnars 2009).

Here, we gather several additional policy alternative

munity:

• A

such liabilities. It can help to internalize the negative externalities of the oil

industry that arise as cost‐shifting successes, and it could be achieved thanks to

current court cases, such as the case against Chevron‐Texaco in Ecuador and the

Oxy case in Peru (Black 2004), which can set a law of precedent; but also thanks to

a World Court with jurisdiction over transnational corporations. Two parallel

versions of a statute for this Court have been proposed by the U.N. Special

Rapporteur on Promoting Human Rights while Countering Terrorism (Scheinin

2009), and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or

Degrading Treatment (Nowak and Kozma 2009);

• The Daly‐Correa tax (Martínez‐Alier and Tempe

c

3% has been proposed, with the explicit aim of lowering a little the demand for oil

in order to diminish carbon dioxide emissions and oil extraction, but also recycling

the revenue towards poverty‐reduction, oil extraction impacts mitigation and

energy transition;

123

• Degrowth. Spurred by the first report to the Club of Rome in 1972, "The Limits to

rowth" (Meadows et al. 1972), economic degrowth leading to a steady state

the opening up of the oil frontier in socially

and environmentally sensitive areas would be necessary before such policies are implemented.

Suc

logical advances, such as air transportation services via helicopter to avoid road

access or directional drilling to reduce the number of drilling sites are also important to

min

Conclusions

G

economy in rich countries is now a topic for discussion due to the world economic

recession (Rijnhout and Schauer 2009). In a limited system, unlimited growth is

impossible. Economic growth increases the flows of energy and materials.

Degrowth, when substituting GDP by social and environmental indicators to trace

society’s success towards sustainability, will reduce oil demand, avoiding the

increase in the socio‐environmental liabilities of transnational oil companies and

the destruction of nature and human livelihoods at the oil frontiers, reinforcing

Environmental Justice worldwide.

The authors consider that a moratorium on

h moratorium was already been proposed by environmental groups (Oilwatch) and

indigenous organizations in Ecuador and Nigeria in 1997, to enable states and civil society to

assess the social, economic and environmental advantages and disadvantages of oil

exploration and extraction in comparison with the other alternatives in a multi‐criteria

paradigm.

Techno

imize impacts. However, technical improvements that minimize impacts are not enough on

their own since most oil impacts are long term, irreversible and accumulative.

he world economy from the point of view of its metabolism, we see that more

and materials and energy are used by the economy over time, thus requiring an advance

of t

Looking at t

more

he commodity frontiers. Apart from this worldwide trend, there are regional factors (not

discussed here) that are relevant to understand why there has recently been an expansion of

the oil frontier in the Peruvian Amazon: the style of political economy that shaped Peru’s

economic development in the last decades; the kind of political architecture, regionalism, and

racism found in Peru; the measures adopted by Alan García in 2008 to facilitate the

124

implementation of the US‐Peru Free Trade Agreement; the multi‐million oil investment inflows

and royalties, and the political relations between Lima elites and foreign companies. The

ultimate cause of the conflicts is nevertheless the increasing exosomatic energy metabolism of

the importing economies and also of Peru.

Even though this territory is a very minor source of world fossil fuels, an unprecedented

amount of the Peruvian Amazon is now covered by oil and gas concessions, spreading over the

mos

ude that there is a regional pattern of oil expansion in the Peruvian Amazon

that will deepen in the future and, therefore increasing oil impacts and conflicts are to be

exp

t intact parts of the territory, pushing on the agriculture, cattle and logging frontier;

overlapping with indigenous lands and also with the often unmapped territories of indigenous

people in voluntary isolation, threatening their life and livelihood, and their cultural patrimony.

Patterns of production and consumption in an oil‐based world economy are leading to a peak

in oil extraction. Even when energy use falls down a little, as in 2008‐09, there is a need for

fresh supplies of fossil fuels because energy cannot be recycled. Contrary to the intuitive but

erroneous idea of understanding peak oil as the end of the pollution problem and climate

change and the starting point for new renewable energy development, peak oil (along with

increasing oil prices) is spurring oil exploration all over the world and determining the re‐

evaluation and development of additional conventional resources and of unconventional

resources previously without commercial interest. In other words, peak oil implies for the time

being larger impacts of oil exploration and extraction at the commodity frontiers for the

remaining oil, for gas and for coal. The term commodity frontiers was coined by Jason W.

Moore (Moore 2000) to refer to environmental transformations, degradation and relative

exhaustion in one region after another due to natural resources production and extraction;

environmental transformations that were conditions as well as consequences of the expansion

of a world‐economy predicated on the endless accumulation of capital. Hence, the use and

abuse of nature by capital in the modern world undermines not only its own conditions of

production but the conditions of livelihood and existence of peripheral peoples, so that

ecological distribution conflicts keep increasing across the world (Martínez‐Alier 2002;

O'Connor 1988).

We can concl

ected. This pattern also applies in Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador (Finer et al.

2008), and also in other areas around the world.

125

Some authors have seen these environmental justice conflicts (the defense of indigenous

grou

or sociologist and social historians, the birth of new forms of resistance such as the

occ

nthropologists, conservation biologists, environmental sociologists and political scientists

sho

digenous peoples’ integration to the market due to the expansion pattern of

hyd

ps against oil extraction, but also against mining, large dams or logging) as manifestations

of identity politics, understanding conflicts mainly as a reaffirmation of identity. Identity is

however one language in which the fights against the unequal distribution of pollution burdens

and access to natural resources due to unequal property rights, and inequalities of power and

income among humans are expressed (Martínez‐Alier 2007). When some actors deploy, in

resource extraction or in pollution conflicts, the language of territorial rights and ethnic

resistance against external exploitation or pollution, this could be understood as a powerful

idiom in which structural conflicts are expressed. Other languages could be the value of local

livelihood, the sacredness of some places, the right to life, the supremacy of local democracy,

or the demand for monetary compensation for damages in a court case, the value of

biodiversity conservation.

F

upation of oil wells, and participatory monitoring using GIS, should certainly be of interest.

In the Peruvian Amazon, and particularly in the Corrientes case, indigenous resistance has

moved from land titling to institutional lobbying, and finally, to other forms of activism such a

roadblocks. Initially, indigenous peoples were confident that titling would provide them with

the tools for the effective exercise of their rights, but they soon realized that land titles were

not enough for preventing impacts from oil activities. Then they tried diverse tactics (from

institutional meetings to GIS monitoring looking for international awareness and solidarity).

Other tactics they have resort to are court cases. Roadblocks is a resistance method that

depends totally on themselves. Knowledge of their deteriorating health has been an important

factor determining changes in the resistance methods employed in the Río Corrientes.

Publication of health reports triggered the abandonment of ineffective past methods.

A

uld take into account the insights of the social metabolism approach. Indigenous peoples’

loss of livelihood with huge environmental consequences in the western Amazon region

cannot be understood unless we take into account the dependence of the world economy on

oil and gas.

In

rocarbon concessions should definitively be considered as one of the main environmental

impacts for the Amazon. This, together with the risk of contact (and elimination) of indigenous

126

127

he Peruvian Amazon annual oil production fuels less than 4 hours of world oil

consump

peoples in voluntary isolation, allows us to conclude that oil activities can not be considered

transient, neither when referring to oil extraction nor to oil exploration.

T

tion, and only 996 million barrels have been extracted from the Peruvian Amazon

until today. World oil consumption per day is in 2009 around 85 million barrels (EIA 2009b). At

the present rate, all the oil extracted in the Peruvian Amazon until today would fuel the world

economy for 12 days. Assuming major discoveries thanks to the new oil exploration boom in

the Peruvian Amazon (proved and unproved (probable and possible) reserves account for

3,900 million barrels), they will last only for a while. Are the social, environmental, economic

costs of oil exploration worthwhile? Are they commensurable with the benefits? Other

alternatives should be considered when defining the development strategy such as securing

human rights, stability and peace in the whole region, helping to avoid climate change, and

preserving unparalleled biodiversity at world level. In which units of account shall profits and

losses be counted? Which is the real “price” of oil?

Summary and main conclusions

The four chapters of this thesis, together with the Introduction, converge on the idea that oil

impacts are increasingly becoming a major environmental and human rights issue in the

Peruvian Amazon. Severe impacts in the areas affected by oil exploration and exploitation,

jointly with the advance of the oil frontier all over the Peruvian Amazon, make of oil activities

one major threat to indigenous peoples survival or well being, and to biodiversity conservation in

the region. Gas extraction, logging and tree plantations are other threats not analysed in this

thesis.

The four chapters (written between late 2007 and early 2010 on different aspects of the

same topic, and emphasizing different methodologies) point to the need for a rigorous policy

debate on current oil activities in the Peruvian Amazon to secure human rights, stability, peace,

cultural diversity, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable development in the whole region.

They urge the reader to realize that avoiding biodiversity loss and enforcing human and

indigenous peoples’ rights are not specialized topics of conservation biology, economic

geography and international law but are at the very centre of today’s main decisions on

economic and energy policies, environmental management, public policies on land rights, and in

general on governance at different scales.

This thesis is, therefore, not so much a monograph on a remote corner of the world (the

Achuar territory in Río Corrientes) but a study of central issues in international economics and

politics. Energy, environment, corporate liabilities and the human rights of indigenous people

are at the centre of today’s debates on the path that humanity should take in future.

Impacts and existing evidence

The thesis compiles evidence of the impacts of historical and contemporary oil activities

over indigenous people living in voluntary isolation in the Peruvian Amazon. Furthermore, we

have listed some of the most well documented impacts of oil activities on health of already

contacted indigenous people. Both, together with the comprehensive description of impacts

for the Achuar case study through a review of diverse official data sources, lead us to conclude

that there is enough evidence of impact to affirm that oil activities have negative effects on

human rights. Damage to human health and livelihood arises from the impact on nature where

129

people live, that is, pollution of water, soil and atmosphere (because of oil spills, gas flaring

and discharge of “formation” water) by oil companies.

Further, the identification of negative impacts on the environment by government

agencies since 1984, together with our field work evidence (2006‐2009) and other

documentation through interviews and physical inspection of oil operation procedures and

obsolete technology, lead us to the idea that the most important factors behind the oil impacts

are the deliberate violation of industry standards to reduce costs and the government

negligence and vulnerability to private pressure. There are other factors involved, for instance,

other government’s weaknesses, such as underfunding (lack of infrastructure and personnel),

the lack of expertise, and the lax national legislation. In our case study, these environmentally

and socially irresponsible behaviors are still more grave since they take place in areas of

sensitive biological and cultural diversity, where the industry standards should be stricter than

the state‐of‐the‐art regulations and technology in the home countries.

Oil exploration is an activity different from oil extraction. The impact from oil exploration

(seismic lines, drilling of preliminary well) is by itself very widespread, even when oil is not

found in quantities that warrant exploitation. One important finding of this thesis is that oil

exploration activities can not be considered short‐term and transient as argued by the oil

industry, since they put health of those living in voluntary isolation at risk due to outbreaks of

new diseases with high rates of mortality. Furthermore, oil exploration introduces de jure or de

facto changes in property rights in the jungle. Oil exploration is done under the protection of

legal concessions, it forces migration of the isolated indigenous people, usually small

populations with low demographic pressure who have been managing the natural resources

under rules that prevent overexploitation of forests. These populations often defend their

resources and livelihoods even with their own lives. Hence, oil exploration changes property

regimes in the tropical rainforest from the “commons” managed by isolated indigenous people

to (initially) free access to resources for loggers, miners, cattle ranchers, or small‐scale settlers

who come in the wake of the oil companies and who later claim their own rights to land.

This thesis also calls attention to the process of indigenous peoples’ integration into the

market economy, as a consequence of oil infrastructure and oil employment, as one of the

main potential changes in livelihood systems, and indirectly on biodiversity since market

demand increases the destruction of forests or of some species.

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Oil frontiers advance in the Peruvian Amazon

The results presented reveal that there has been a huge advance of the oil frontier in the

Peruvian Amazon during the last six years (2004‐10), resulting in what we call here “the second

hydrocarbon boom” in the region. As shown through different indicators, an unprecedented

proportion of the Peruvian Amazon is currently under oil and gas exploration. There are more

active concessions now than at any other time in the Peru’s history, overlapping areas

untouched by the seismic testing wave of the 1970s. Today’s active concessions overlap

proposed territorial reserves (60.9%) and actual territorial reserves (17%) for the protection of

indigenous people in voluntary isolation, they also overlap titled indigenous territories (55%)

and natural protected areas (17%).

Why is the oil frontier advancing? Peru has probably witnessed already its Hubbert peak.

Oil extraction in the Peruvian Amazon steadily fell since 1979. It is still going down (although

gas extraction is sharply increasing). However, the high oil prices from 2003 at least until 2008

and beyond led to the granting of new concessions in the Amazon and other regions of Peru

for exploration of oil, including unconventional oil (tar sands). So, as Hubbert’s peaks are

reached in other countries also, there is a search for new supplies of oil. This is in accordance

with Jason Moore’s notion of “commodity frontiers” based on the endless increasing world

demand and the exhaustion of non‐renewable resources. However, there also are regional

factors that are relevant to understand why there has been such an expansion of the oil

frontier in the Peruvian Amazon.

An increase on oil exploration activities is to be expected as a response to the decline on

oil extraction. We anticipate also an increase on oil exploitation activities (extraction wells,

installations, roads and pipelines) as a consequence of rising world oil prices which turn small

oilfields and high‐cost exploitation projects into feasible ones while perhaps an increase on

conventional oil extraction in the Peruvian Amazon may not take place. Gas is however a

different story.

Accordingly, from the increase in oil activities and the impacts related to them, we expect:

• An increase in the vulnerability of the Peruvian Amazon, which would change its

global biodiversity conservation priorization. An increase in vulnerability will

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change the classification of this region from a priority area of low threat but high

irreplaceability to a priority area of high threat and high irreplaceability.

• An increase of the total amount of impacts, despite technological improvements,

and a raise in environmental distribution conflicts claiming environmental justice

and respect for human and indigenous rights.

• An increase of the relevance of oil activities compared to illegal logging, as the

main factor jeopardizing the survival of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.

• Possibly, the birth of new forms of resistance, as Amazon indigenous groups

increase their organization and obtain international and national support (or

alternatively, increased repression, as shown in the events of June 2009).

New resistance methods: MELPGIS

The fields of ecological economics, and business economics and management, have

discussed which instruments –regulations, taxes, voluntary agreements, certification, tradable

permits, or the “triple bottom line” reports to shareholders and the public under the practices

of Corporate Social Responsability‐ are more effective in order to take into account the natural

environment and ecosystems in business practice. How to internalize the socio‐enviromental

costs in the companies’ accounts? In this thesis we touch on these issues at several moments.

We listed several instruments that have been proposed for the specific case of oil business.

The Daly‐Correa tax has been mentioned, aiming at lowering the demand for oil in order to

mitigate a little the impacts due to the advancement of the oil frontier caused by peak oil.

There is no international movement of “fair trade” in oil, as there is for coffee, for instance,

but there is increasing awareness in oil‐importing countries of the damage being done in

(some) exporting countries, like Nigeria, Ecuador and Peru. Also, an international legal

framework has been suggested to deal with the processes of transnationalization that

characterize globalization. Such international legal framework would allow the internalization

of the socio‐environmental liabilities of transnational coorporations. Such international

regulations can also help in the creation of intangible zones for indigenous peoples in

voluntary isolation. The Yasuni ITT proposal in Ecuador could be a model (if successful) for

neighbouring blocks in Peru (after the elections of 2011). Also the proposals of mandatory

132

Strategic Environmental Assessment can help to take into account in the decision‐making

process the long‐term, cumulative, irreversible and synergistic impacts of multiple oil and gas

projects across a wider region and along history.

But, which are the most effective instruments today for the peripheral peoples to

denounce and to deal with impacts of oil exploration and exploitation? This thesis makes a

major contribution to this question. We conclude that land titling is useful but not effective

enough as a way to ensure indigenous rights, since titling do not provide them with the tools

for the exercise of their rights in practice and land titles are not enough for preventing impacts

from oil activities. Therefore, new resistance methods have appeared. They fit with the

widespread idea –with which the author of this thesis concurs‐ that conflicts can be seen as

engines that drive institutional transformations.

Why is the demand for territorial rights and land titling not enough? To face the impacts,

indigenous people movements have focused long ago on the recognition of their territories

through collective land titles, giving continuity to a process that go back many decades in all

the countries of the Amazon basin and, around which the indigenous movement appeared and

gained strength. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that indigenous people have achieved

some success thanks to land titling, today, when indigenous territories are (as during the

rubber boom) no any more marginal lands but lands with potential exploitation of wood,

agrofuels, mining or oil and gas, it is clear that titled indigenous lands are not synonymous with

secure property rights and control of ancestral territories.

As a consequence, new resistance methods are spreading among indigenous

organizations. In the Achuar case study we document (in chapter 4) the raise of activism in the

form of institutional lobbying, roadblocks, court cases and participatory monitoring. Parallel to

that, languages used by indigenous people have shifted from territorial rights and identity to

claims to health (and soon perhaps, to environmental justice). Such changes have been

promoted by the belated appearance of severe health problems.

In this thesis we present (in chapter 2) the implementation of a relatively new form of both

monitoring and resistance (by a team of which the author of this thesis was a member), that is,

participatory monitoring of oil spill and other damage using GIS (or Monitoring Environmental

Liabilities through Participatory GIS, MELPGIS), which has achieved a measure of success and

133

certaintly arisen many expectations. This methodology allows the documentation of impacts,

the compilation of evidences of these impacts, and their use by and for indigenous people.

Firstly, MELPGIS provides indigenous people with a mechanism to register impacts of oil

activities continuosly in time and space at no extra‐cost and autonomously in locations without

the regular presence of official environmental inspectors. It dispels ignorance and advances

knowledge in the remote oil frontier, where, despite its biological and cultural significance, no

records were kept before. The poor daily practice in waste management, quality and security

of installations and infrastructure, and the non‐implementation of contingency plans due to

negligence, cost‐cutting and corruption are to be exposed by the indigenous peoples

themselves. Secondly, these strong and irrefutable photographs and videos of oil impacts,

although not as scientifically sound as chemical analyses, turn into proofs that cannot be easily

rejected. Finally, these photographs, videos, voice recordings or GPS readings are new tools

that can be used, allowing the indigenous population and supporting NGOs to lobby for more

eco‐friendly operations, irreversibly changing the direction of the negotiation between

indigenous people and oil companies and/or state agencies, and hopefully leading oil

companies to improve their modus operandi and the government to better supervise oil

activities. It also links the indigenous people with the mass media and might also have

contributed already or contribute in the long run to raise oil consumers’ awareness. There is

also information sharing among indigenous groups inside Peru or in other neighbouring

countries, that will influence the conditions under which free, prior and informed consent

(under Convention 169 of ILO or other legislation) may or not be given to oil exploration or

exploitation in other territories.

Summing up, MELPGIS can help to obtain new data and to democratise both the processes

of conducting research for environmental impact assessments and of taking decisions. It shifts

the controversies between indigenous peoples and extractive industry companies from the

scientific arena (chemists from the oil company implausibly assuring there is no pollution) to

another arena where other types of evidence are relevant. The method obtains, and in fact

relies on community involvement and pressure, which are along with government involvement

among the most important factors behind progress towards fulfilment of the promises of

corporate social responsability.

Despite such improvements in knowledge and awareness, in the last two years we have

directly observed increasing alcoholism (promoted by alcohol gifts from the oil companies),

134

bribery of indigenous leaders, and the sponsored birth of new indigenous organizations under

oil companies’ control. All these events are major negative forces for the future of the Achuar

people of the Río Corrientes.

This methodology (MELPGIS) could also be applied to impacts from tree plantations or

agrofuels, and in general to ecological conflicts on resource extraction, transport and waste

disposal.

***

The thesis, therefore, traces the expansion of the oil frontier in the Peruvian Amazon

providing data not known systematically before. This is done in the context of an analysis of

world demand and supply of oil, taking into account the approaching “peak oil”. It focuses on

the Northern region of the Amazon of Peru, particularly the Achuar territory (where Oxy,

Petroperú and Pluspetrol have operated), and describes the main impacts on human welfare

and ecosystems. It follows the recent history of different forms of resistance against socio‐

environmental impacts from oil activities by the Achuar people, with a chapter that describes

in detail the deployment of novel GIS‐based monitoring by some of their groups.

New questions and further research / Research gaps

To face the urgency and great challenge of avoiding the severe impacts of oil and gas

activities and the advance of the hydrocarbon frontier in the tropical rain forests, we have

identifyed several questions that deserve further research.

Colonization (settlement of small farmers) and illegal logging due to the opening up of

remote areas and indigenous peoples’ integration into the market economy seem to be the

major factors driving biodiversity loss. Comprehensive studies should be conducted on

quantifying the effect of oil and gas exploration and explotation on indigenous peoples

integration into the market economy. Among other factors, research should be conducted on

sources of cash into communities, access to technology (speedboats, outboard motors, power

saws, fuel) thanks to company‐indigenous agreements, new access roads (seismic lines and

later pipelines). Oil companies favour increase of the access to external markets, migration and

settlements but detailed research is lacking.

135

136

As regards indigenous and human rights, there is increasing need for research worldwide

on the links to extractive industries (mining, fossil fuels, and biomass). One of the gravest

violations of human rights in the Peruvian Amazon is the new contact of indigenous people in

voluntary isolation, due to the risk of new diseases. However, there is neither an official

agency nor a NGO dealing specifically with this issue. A more thorough compilation of past

contacts would help to gauge the liabilities of oil and gas activities in this respect, while a

register of current cases is also needed.

Impacts on health have been a key factor triggering community pressure for

improvements on social and environmental corporate behaviour. However, although pollution

has been quite clearly proved, there are substantial gaps in our understanding of the health

impacts generated by the activities of Occidental Petroleum, Petroperu and Pluspetrol in

Achuar territory and by oil exploitation in indigenous peoples in general. A study in

environmental epidemiology including ecotoxicology is urgently needed to better establish the

relations between petroleum contamination detected in surface water, sediments and soils,

the presence of these substances in the human population and in plants and animals, and

possible long term effects on the health of the Achuar and other indigenous peoples whose

territories have been overlapped by oil activities. Such research will surely have great impact

on civil society (as we have seen in this thesis) and might, therefore, change the course of

events.

Oil activities have severely affected human rights and the environment in the Peruvian

Amazon. Heavy pollution is still present in the area so government remediation plans or court

cases claiming payment for environmental liabilities (under the ATCA or other legislation) are

to be expected in the coming years. Both require a detailed cartography and quantification of

impacts to establish the monetary compensation for damages and to design and implement

the remediation plans (as in the case of the Chevron‐Texaco in Ecuador, and in the Oxy court

case from the Achuar in Peru). Remote sensing can contribute to the detection and

identification of oil impacts. In effect, carrying out temporal studies that employ change

detection techniques to monitor the evolution or appearance of oil impacts, and creating

spectral libraries containing specific spectral signatures that relate to different types of oil

impact will ease the identification of impacts and the quantification of hectares affected.

Whether such monitoring can be done by or with the help of the indigenous populations

themselves remains an open question.

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Wunder, S. 2003. Oil Wealth and the Fate of the Forest. New York: Routledge.

Acronyms and abbreviations ACGIH American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists

ACT Amazon Conservation Team

AIDESEP Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana

API American Petroleum Institute

ATCA Alien Tort Claim Act

ATI Achuarti Iruntramu

BH Biodiversity Hot Spots

BLL Blood Lead Levels

BLS Barrels

BOE Barrel Oil Equivalent

BP British Petroleum

BTL Biological Tolerance Limits

CAAIA Comisión de Amazonía, Asuntos Indígenas y Afroperuanos

CBERS China‐Brazil Earth‐Resources Satellite

CCPAE Consell Català de la Producció Agrària Ecològica

CDC Center for Disease Control

CE Crisis Ecoregions

CIDOB Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia

COBNAEP Coordinadora Binacional de Nacionalidad Achuar del Ecuador y Perú

COFOPRI Organismo de Formalización de la Propiedad Informal

COICA Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca

Amazónica

CONAPA Comisión Nacional de Pueblos Andinos y Amazónicos

CONFENIAE Confederación de las Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonia

Ecuatoriana

CPD Centers of Plant Diversity

DEM Digital Elevation Model

DESA Dirección Regional de Salud

DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

DGAAE Dirección General de Asuntos Ambientales Energéticos

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DGE Dirección General de Epidemiología (Ministerio de Salud del Perú)

DIGESA Dirección General de Salud Ambiental (Ministerio de Salud del Perú)

E&P‐Forum oil industry international Exploration and Production Forum

EBA Endemic Bird Areas

EIA United States Energy Information Administration

EIS Environmental Impact Studies

EKC Environmental Kuznets Curve

EPA United States Environmental Protection Agency

EROI Energy Return On energy Investment

FAO United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

FECONACO Federación de Comunidades Nativas del río Corrientes

FF Frontier Forests

FORMABIAP Programa de Formación de Maestros Bilingües de la Amazonía

Peruana

FPIC Free, Prior and Informed Consent

G200 Global 200 ecoregions

GDP Gross Domestic Product

GIS Geographic Information Systems

GPS Global Positioning System

HBWA High‐Biodiversity Wilderness Areas

IACHR Inter‐American Commission on Human Rights

IBC Instituto del Bien Común

ICTA Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals

IEMT Indigenous Environmental Monitoring Team

IIAP Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana

ILO International Labour Organisation

ILV Insituto Lingüístico de Verano

IM Indigenous mapping

INDEPA Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo de los Pueblos Andinos, Amazónicos

y Afroperuano

INEI Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática

INRENA Instituto Nacional de Recursos Naturales

IO Indigenous Organization

IO Indigenous Organization

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IPC International Petroleum Company

ITT Ishpingo, Tambococha, Tiputini oil block

LPG Liquefied Petroleum Gas

LW Last of the Wild

MAB UNESCO’s programme Man and the Biosphere

MC Megadiversity Countries

MELPGIS Monitoring Environmental Liabilities of extractive industry through

Participatory GIS

MINEM Ministerio de Energía y Minas del Perú

MoH Ministry of Health

NAE Nación Achuar del Ecuador

NGO Non‐Governmental Organization

NIMBY Not In My Backyard

ONERN Oficina Nacional de Evaluación de Recursos Naturales

ONIC Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia

OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries

ORACH Organización Achuar Chayat

OSINERG Organismo Supervisor de la Inversión en Energía

OXY Occidental Petroleum Corporation

PAMA Programa de Adecuación y Manejo Ambiental

PAR Participatory Action Research

PDA Personal Digital Assistant

Petroperú Petróleos del Perú

PGIS Participatory Geographic Information Systems

PRA Participatory Rural Appraisal

SERNANP Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas

SICNA Sistema de Información sobre Comunidades Nativas del Perú

SIG Sistemes d’Informació Geogràfica

SIL Summer Institute of Linguistics

SPOT Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre

SWOT Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis

TEA Technical Evaluation Agreements

TEEB UNEP Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project

UAB Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

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http://www.onic.org.co/

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UN United Nations

UNEP United Nations Environment Programme

UNEP‐IE UNEP Industry and Environment office

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UNI União das Nações Indígenas (Brazil)

UNPFII UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

UPC Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

USAID United States Agency for International Development

WHO World Health Organization

WWF World Wide Fund for Nature

YPF Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales

http://www.unep.org/

http://www.unesco.org/

http://www.usaid.gov/

Agraïments

Als Achuar del Río Corrientes, que ens van obrir les portes de casa seva, malgrat la llarga

història d’abusos.

A la FECONACO, a l’equip de monitors ambientals, Racimos de Ungurahui i Shinai, per la

seva voluntad de canvi i el treball a favors dels pobles indígenes.

Al Joan Martínez Alier, per la llibertat i la confiança que ofereix als seus estudiants, com a

principal guia d’aprenentatge.

I, especialment, a totes aquelles dones i aquells homes que busquen i indaguen

insaciablement, per construir un món més just i més sostenible. A tots i totes aquelles que es

dediquen a despertar inquietuds i somnis col∙lectius, entre altres, aquest.

Gràcies aleshores, a la Cristina O’Callaghan, Lily La Torre, Gregor MacLennan, Tomás

Maynas, Domingo Hualinga, Henderson Rengifo i Petronila Nakaim, al Sharian; al Segundo

Walter Hualinga, Andrés Sandi Mucushua, Gonzalo Payma, Óscar Gutiérrez, Aurelien Stoll,

Sylvia Cyborowski, Wendy Pineda, Dora Napolitano, Aliya Ryan, Conrad Feather i Pepe Álvarez;

a José Chimboras, Gil Dahua, Ramón Salas, Guevara Sandi, Miguel Carijano, José Tamani,

Patricio Piñola, Wilson Sandi i Niver Peraza; al Mikel Zabala i Victoria Reyes, Jaime Paneque i a

l’Agustí Lobo; al David Llistar, Mónica Vargas, Marc Gavaldà, Salvador Pueyo; al Miquel Far i al

Toni Verger; al Xavier Fàbregas, Raül Ramos, Sara de la Cal, Tura Puntí, Mireia Bartrons, Eulàlia

Martí, Amèlia i Aaron; a la Judit Quintana, Marc, Laura, Enric Batllori i Roger Canal; a l’Àlex

Bota, al Gorka, Christian, Pepe Bonet, Montse Bobés, Mireia Gasol, Pili i les Martes; al Joan

Manuel, Mercè, Anna i Gemma; a Betesa, la Gleva i a Cal Cases; a tots aquells fueguitos de

colores, que s’encenen i encenen per contagi, il∙luminant la nit.

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