Quito – On June 6, 2001, the Second Court of the Constitutional Tribunal in Quito ruled against the Constitutional Injunction that Acción Ecológica and CONAIE had filed in order to avoid the environmental, social and human damages that construction of the OCP pipeline will bring.
On June 7, the Ecuadorian government awarded the environmental license to the OCP consortium and gave the green light to the pipeline’s construction, to be completed by consortium-member Techint. Additionally, the government declared the project a national interest so as to impede all opposition, whether by social justice groups or affected communities.
Since the morning of June 7, here at Acción Ecológica we have been bombarded with calls asking what our position is, given these recent occurrences, and we are letting everyone know that Acción Ecológica has not given up this fight and that we will continue working from different angles to prevent the construction of the OCP.
With respect to the injunction we filed which was denied in a court of first instance, we would like to communicate that we appealed the decision the morning of June 7 before the Constitutional Court and we have not thrown out the idea of taking it before the International Courts in our desire to protect the human rights recognized by the Ecuadorian Constitution and international agreements. We are also supporting the injunction that was filed in Los Bancos by the area’s inhabitants, in an effort to judicially stop the construction of the OCP.
With respect to the Ministries of the Environment and Energy and Mines granting the environmental license, the act only confirms what we already knew: that the decisions regarding the OCP and its route definition are not the result of technical studies or objective analysis, but rather obey political decisions and corporate calculations that have nothing to do with the best interest of the Ecuadorian people. As the president and his ministers said from the start, “The OCP is going in like it or not,” and now they have shown this to be true through their actions.
But, just as the initial signs of prepotency (that later were supposedly regulated by apparent coordination mechanisms) have not been sufficient to convince us of their intentions, the intentions of the OCP companies closely tied to those of the national government, neither does the announcement that the green light has been given to the OCP make us give up on our purpose.
Acción Ecológica will continue to support the inhabitants of Esmeraldas (on the coast) that have said NO to the pipeline because of the perpetual oil spills (for example, the spill on February 27, 1998) that have left many dead and left irreversible impacts on the environment. We will continue backing the inhabitants of the Amazon who have faced the negative impacts of more than 30 years of petroleum exploitation – -loss of ancestral territories, traditional practices and even the extinction of entire cultures like those of the Tetetes and the Sansahuari – -and that today face the possibility that the OCP consortium will build storage tanks for crude oil in the populated center of Lago Agrio as barriers against potential terrorist attacks. We will continue alerting the inhabitants of Quito that the OCP will cross approximately 80 km of the Metropolitan District of Quito (Calderón, Pomasqui, Quinche, Checa, Yaruquí) and put in grave danger 40% of the city’s water supply, as the pipeline will affect Papallacta, the water’s source. And we will continue fighting together with inhabitants of the northwest of the Pichincha province, where more than 50,000 people have also said NO to the OCP.
In the face of these occurrences, Acción Ecológica will continue constant and strong in our claims, supporting the resistance of local populations, both those affected by the pipeline’s route, as well as those that will suffer the impact of further opening up the petroleum frontier. We also invite a vision of a post-petroleum Ecuador, sustainable and respectful of the collective and environmental rights of its citizens.
