In 1999, when Enron and partner Shell were seeking loan guarantees from the U.S. government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for their Cuiabá natural gas pipeline here, they answered environmental opposition with conservation pledges. First, the companies offered $1.5 million.
Then they upped the amount to $15 million. As a vote by OPIC drew near, they reached an agreement with five green groups to donate $20 million and create the Chiquitano Forest Conservation Foundation (FCBC).The environmental NGOs promised they would try to raise an additional $10 million.
The loan guarantees were approved. Intended as a compromise,the foundation instead has sparked debate that has become as intense as the continuing controversy over the pipeline. It has underscored how issues of representation and local control can test even the most well-meaning conservation initiatives.
The conservation foundation was meant to mitigate the impacts of Enron and Shell’s $600 million, 390-mile (630-km) pipeline, which runs from Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia to a power plant in Cuiabá, Matto Grosso, Brazil. Finished last July, the line traverses the 15-million-acre (six-million-hectare) Chiquitano forest, which scientists call the world’s last large and relatively intact tropical dry forest.
Impacts feared
Environmental groups had argued that by providing loan guarantees for the project, the OPIC would violate one of its regulations, adopted in 1997, which prohibits the agency from backing “infrastructure projects in primary tropical forests.” They also warned the pipeline path and access roads would open the region to loggers, miners, settlers and more.
But then the foundation was created with the cooperation of five pipeline critics the World Wildlife Fund, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Bolivian-based Friends of Nature and Noel Kempff Museum.The foundation supports projects ranging from rural medical assistance to mapping protected areas. Its first controversy came soon after its creation, when the World Wildlife Fund pulled out of the initiative.
One reason for the actionand the core criticism of the foundation nowis that the new entity didn’t include local residents and Bolivian officials on its governing board. The board, now six members, comprises one representative from each of the two energy companies and from each of the participating environmental organizations.
Citing concerns about representation, the Bolivia’s ombudsman office, Defensor del Pueblo, has asked the national Sustainable Development Ministry to intervene on behalf of the Chiquitano and Ayoreo peoples. Sonia Soto Rios, director of the ombudsman’s office in Santa Cruz, says the foundation contravenes international labor commitments Bolivia has made to ensure indigenous communities take part in development plans that might affect them. “Bolivia is a multicultural, multiethnic country,” she says.“The companies and conservation groups have violated the rights of these indigenous groups, who have lived in the area since time immemorial.”
Agreements ignored
Bolivian environmental officials refuse to recognize foundation-brokered agreements, which already include park and land-use plans negotiated with municipalities in the region. “We should have been the first member they asked to be a part of the foundation because the natural resources of that area are our responsibility to protect,” says Vice-Minister of Environment, Natural Resources and Forest Development Hernán Cabrera. “Their plans might be a good thing, but they first must meet their obligations under the law.” Foundation Executive Director Hermes Justiniano responds that indigenous and other stakeholders serve on the foundation planning committee, which he insists is largely responsible for setting the project agenda.
And foundation supporters say there are good reasons to keep the governing board as is. “The reason indigenous [representatives] are not on the board is to first ensure for those of us who put funds into the program that the conservation framework will be respected, and because we don’t want any self dealing,” says board member Michael Painter, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s program director for Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru.“Those who receive funds should not have the final say.” But critics such as Derrick Hindery of the California-based organization Amazon Watch point out that the conservation groups themselves have been paid foundation funds for doing technical work. Hindery also warns that loggers and others already are following project access roads into the region.The foundation, he argues, must make changes to ensure it gets the local cooperation it will need to stop them.
Says Hindery:“Unfortunately, unless [the board] is restructured to include local indigenous directors, it will continue to be widely viewed as illegitimate and thus will have little chance to curtail the destruction that is starting to take place along the pipeline route.”
