President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20005
Dear President Bush:
We, the undersigned artists, are writing to urge you to take immediate steps to ensure that our tax dollars not contribute to the wholesale destruction of one of the planet’s most biodiverse and remote rainforests and to the demise of vulnerable indigenous populations in the Lower Urubamba Valley of Peru.
We are concerned that the Camisea Gas Project as currently planned violates many of the U.S. Government’s environmental standards and runs contrary to our global commitments to protect biodiversity and indigenous peoples’ rights. We urge you to work with the Peruvian Government and the U.S. oil companies involved to make sure the project is substantially modified to reduce its devastating impacts on indigenous populations and the primary rainforest.
Before allocating any public financing to the Camisea Project, the U.S. Government needs to ensure that the demands of civil society groups in Peru are met. In particular:
1) That there is no drilling or exploration inside the Nahua Kugapakori Indigenous Reserve, which was established by the Peruvian Government to protect isolated indigenous populations. The reserve’s inhabitants have already contracted diseases from outsiders to which they have no immunity.
2) That access to the primary rainforests of the Lower Urubamba is restricted. This rainforest up to now has been completely untouched by human activity. The pipelines that are now under construction are likely to serve as roads opening up this area to illegal loggers, settlers, and hunters.
3) That the industrial facility planned in the buffer zone of the Paracas Marine Reserve needs to be relocated to another area as Paracas is Peru’s only marine reserve and it is considered as a “Wetland of International Significance” under the Ramsar Convention.
We understand that much of the gas extracted from Camisea is destined for electricity markets in California. We feel sure that if the consumers in California knew about the high social and ecological costs of natural gas from the Peruvian Amazon they would be highly opposed to it.
Your leadership on this issue will go a long way in sending a message to U.S. oil companies such as Hunt Oil and Halliburton as well as to the international financial institutions involved in this project that your administration is concerned about safeguarding the global environment and human rights.
Sincerely,
Kevin Bacon
Ed Begley, Jr.
Ruben Blades
Hart Bochner
Chevy Chase
Alan Cumming
Cary Elwes
Jessica Lange
Esai Morales
Susan Sarandon
Roy Schreider
Kyra Sedgwick
Sting
Peta Wilson
