TO: Inter-American Development Bank Executive Directors
Export-Import Bank Board of Directors
FROM: Amazon Watch, Bank Information Center, Environmental Defense, Friends of the Earth, Institute for Policy Studies, Rainforest Action Network
DATE: November 1, 2002
RE: NGO Statement on the Camisea Project, Peru
Following the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) hearing on the Camisea Gas Project on October 24, we write to convey our objection to the IDB and U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) continuing consideration of financing for the Camisea Project and to present positive alternatives to this project.
Financing for this project will inevitably exacerbate the irreparable and insurmountable negative impacts already affecting pristine globally renowned forest and river ecosystems, indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and local indigenous community development.
Instead of financing this unsustainable fossil fuel development project, our organizations call on the Inter-American Development Bank to invest in alternative financing mechanisms for local and indigenous development initiatives. A joint public and private forum of local stakeholders have put forward a program for sustainable development and natural resource management that has been developed at a community level over the last three years. We call on the IDB to invest in grants for community-based development and community-run natural resource management as articulated by local stakeholders, not outside actors.
In addition, IDB should provide grants to repair as best as possible the social, environmental and economic damage already done by the companies involved in the Camisea Gas Project. A community-based restoration initiative should include, for example, the restoration or replacement of damaged groves of trees used in local housing construction, restoration of fish resources reduced by erosion and water pollution from the project, and the control of migration and poaching along the pipeline right of way.
The Independent Environmental and Social Assessment of the Camisea Gas Project, published in April 2002, predicted that even with the strictest mitigation methods, a project of this magnitude carried out by companies with poor environmental records with little government oversight in an area of such ecological and cultural sensitivity would violate World Bank environmental and indigenous peoples policies and ILO Convention 169.
Since April, on-the-ground documentation by local communities and Peruvian and international NGOs of damaging project impacts, deficient company practices and indigenous rights abuses within the Nahua-Kugapakori Reserve has only confirmed the Independent Assessment’s prediction.
Documentation of impacts to date demonstrates that neither project sponsors nor the IDB can bring this project into line with international environmental and social standards. IDB has stated publicly that they would not even strive to comply with World Bank standards. Even the companies’ September monitoring report for pipeline construction called for a halt to construction due to serious inadequacies in impact mitigation. Project sponsors have neither the commitment nor the technical capacity to ‘improve’ this project.
In conclusion we suggest that IDB focus on fulfilling its mission by providing investments that benefit indigenous peoples and the environment while achieving true poverty alleviation in this part of Peru. The Camisea project should receive no IDB or Ex-Im financing and should be immediately halted. There is no better protection for the environment and social concerns than this positive course of action that avoids drilling and extraction and invests in locally-based sustainable development initiatives.
