A Battle Brews Over Ecuador's New Drilling Plans | Amazon Watch
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A Battle Brews Over Ecuador’s New Drilling Plans

April 23, 2011 | Kevin Koenig | Eye on the Amazon

Indigenous opposition to 10th Round auction of their lands
Dozens of indigenous leaders and community representatives gathered in Rucullacta, Ecuador last week in the open-air coliseum of that Amazonian Kichwa community as part of a new grassroots effort called Campana Kaprik aimed at stopping what could be the largest wholesale auction of rainforest and indigenous lands in recent Ecuador history.

Dubbed the “10th Round”, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa intends to auction off drilling rights to twelve oil blocks in the country’s relatively untouched southeastern Amazon region. In total, the bidding round would open up some six million acres of intact, pristine Amazonian rainforest – a roadless stretch of titled ancestral territory of six indigenous nationalities that extends all the way to the remote Peruvian border.

The brazen move by President Correa is clearly courting controversy. According to out-going President of the powerful national indigenous confederation CONAIE Marlon Santi, who presided over the meeting, the 10th Round is a threat to all aspects of indigenous life.

“We’ve seen what’s happened to our northern neighbors at the hands of Chevron,” said Santi, “and we have modern day examples that show us the environmental and social impacts of oil drilling are impossible to control, and too detrimental to our lands and way of life to permit.”

“We will not let the government sell our lands to the highest bidder. Possible investors and companies need to know that this will be the battle of all battles.”

The bidding round is divided into two parts. Tender of marginal fields in Ecuador’s northern two provinces will begin June 1st. The auction of the twelve southeastern blocks is slated for October 1st. However, previous administrations have attempted to offer these same Amazonian blocks in several different licensing rounds, but were forced to scrap the bidding after the government and potential investors faced unrelenting indigenous opposition. Two adjacent blocks that overlap Shuar, Achuar, and Kichwa territory spent more than a decade under force majeure and the respective companies eventually abandoned drilling plans. Human rights abuses that occurred during one company’s botched seismic testing efforts and confrontations with the Kichwa community of Sarayaku are the subject of an on-going case at the Inter-American Human Rights Court (IAHRC) of the Organization of American States (OAS).

The Campana Kaprik, comprised of a network of indigenous nationalities and communities resisting new oil extraction, hopes to repeat history. At the inaugural meeting on March 5, the network issued a declaration denouncing the bidding round, and declaring their territories “no go zones” for any type of resource extraction – oil, mining, gas, or logging.

The Rucullacta meeting was the second in a series of planned meetings to mobilize a local, regional, national, and international effort to stop the 10th Round and to win permanent protection for their lands. For two days, leaders poured over maps, discussed their legal rights, analyzed 10th Round project details, and debated strategy to de-rail the government land grab and give-away, while also promoting their own indigenous vision and Plan de Vida (Life Plan) for sustainably managing their territory.

However, petroleum politics in Ecuador’s oil patch have changed dramatically over the years. There are now no major oil companies with downstream retail operations willing to risk operating in the environmental fragile and culturally sensitive areas of Ecuador’s Amazon. Combined with the area’s low grade, heavy crude which sells at a significant discount rate compared to a standard West Texas Intermediate (WTI) barrel, new oil contract terms that greatly favor the state, the rise of Asian energy needs, and neighborly state oil companies, this bidding round will most likely attract companies with little public profile, and even less accountability. The efforts of indigenous groups to challenge drilling plans and scare away investors will be that much harder.

But isn’t Ecuador the country that pioneered the concept that nature has rights and incorporated the indigenous concept of “living well” into its constitution?

Ecuador, under President Correa, has acquired a reputation as a small country with big ideas, and received accolades for Correa’s seemingly out-of-the box thinking and progressive ideas. The 2008 constitution includes “Rights of Nature” and Sumak Kawsay, and contains some of the best language around indigenous consultation rights. The government has also launched national “green” initiatives like the Yasuni-ITT proposal that would keep some 820 million barrels of crude beneath Yasuni National Park permanently underground in return for international compensation, and the Forest Partners program (SocioBosque) that pays landowners to keep their forests intact.

But, according to indigenous groups like CONAIE, these ideas have yet to make the meaningful transition from theory to practice – from the constitution to law, regulation, and compliance. National initiatives like Yasuni-ITT have been riddled with problems and setbacks attributed to Correa’s own ego and lack of commitment, contradictions, while the Forest Partners Program is raising serious rights concerns over land tenure, environmental services, and the government’s long term plan to convert the program into the controversial REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanism.

“Opening up our ancestral territories to oil drilling would be the beginning of the end for our people,” declared Santi. “And the world can’t afford to burn all that oil anyway. So why do it?”

If history is any lesson, Correa may not get the chance.

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