Mindo, Ecuador — Approximately one hundred Mindo residents, students, and members of the Italian Green Party peacefully occupied a construction site of Ecuador’s new OCP pipeline inside the Mindo Nambillo Cloudforest Reserve today to protest ongoing construction through the ecologically sensitive region. Citizens blocked construction workers and machinery from entering into the site throughout the day and were sprayed with tear gas in skirmishes with military police.
Meanwhile, members of Acción por la Vida ascended to the cloudforest ridgeline known as “Guarumos” to re-occupy their private property where OCP construction continues illegally. After spending roughly ten hours on the ridgeline, three representatives—Mindo residents Cesar Fiallo and Cesar Patiño, and Italian Green Party representative Giuseppe De Marzo—were arrested and are being transported to a central detention center in Quito.
The Mindo Nambillo Cloudforest Reserve, through which the OCP is being built, is an unparalleled epicenter of biodiversity and home to more than 450 species of birds—46 threatened by extinction. The Mindo community, opposed to the pipeline’s passage through this rare ecosystem and inspired by forest defense tactics used in North America, staged a three month tree sit earlier this year at Guarumos to physically block construction. Dozens of peaceful residents and international observers have been arrested over the last several months supporting efforts to stop pipeline construction, including US environmentalist Julia Butterfly Hill, best known for her 738 day tree-sit atop a 1000-year old threatened California redwood tree.
Construction in the area has intensified in recent weeks, and, according to local residents, so has environmental damage. Heavy machinery is now being used on the steep and narrow slopes of the fragile ridgeline despite being prohibited by the original environmental impact statement. “We will not stop fighting the construction of the OCP pipeline through Mindo because the fate of our forests, our drinking water, and our economic livelihood is at stake. The project is having irreversible environmental impacts. OCP is the criminal, not us,” said Jennifer Patiño of Acción por la Vida.
The controversial pipeline would transport heavy crude from the country’s eastern rainforest region to the Pacific Coast, placing fragile ecosystems – including 11 protected areas – and dozens of communities along the 300-mile route in jeopardy. In order to fill the new pipeline, Ecuador would have to double its current oil production, setting off an unprecedented boom in new oil exploration that could lead to the irreversible loss and destruction of some the country’s last remaining old growth rainforest and territories of isolated indigenous peoples.
A recent report by the former Chief of the Environmental Department of the World Bank provides conclusive evidence that the German Bank Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB) violated its own policies in loaning $900 million to the OCP project which fails to comply with World Bank environmental and social guidelines. The independent report found, “substantial non-compliance with all four applicable WBG’s [World Bank Group] Social and Environmental Safeguard Policies.” Specifically, the report found violations of World Bank Operational Policies on Environmental Assessment, Natural Habitats, Involuntary Resettlement, and Indigenous Peoples. The loan has sparked public outrage in the German state of North Rhine Westphalia (NWR), which holds a 43 percent stake in WestLB.
According to government sources, the majority of Amazon crude that will flow through the OCP pipeline is destined for markets on the West Coast of the United States. The OCP Consortium includes: Alberta Energy – Encana (Canada), Occidental Petroleum (OXY- USA), AGIP (Italy), Repsol-YPF (Spain), Perez Compaanc (Argentina), and Techint (Argentina). Citibank and JP Morgan Chase have also come under fire for their financial role in the project.
