Victory for Peru’s Nahua People as Oil Development is Removed from their Territories | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Victory for Peru’s Nahua People as Oil Development is Removed from their Territories

November 13, 2003 | For Immediate Release


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The Nahua, an indigenous people in initial contact with the outside world, have learnt that plans for oil exploration in their territories adjacent to the controversial Camisea Gas Project in Peru’s remote southeastern Amazon, have been abandoned in the face of strong local and international condemnation. The Nahua and their allies in Peru and the U.S. welcome and celebrate this positive news.

A Nahua delegation on a historic visit to Lima met with the Director of Perupetro, the Peruvian government oil company on November 12 and was informed that oil concession ‘Block 57’ has been removed from their lands within the Nahua Kugapakori State Reserve. The Nahua opposed Block 57 fearing that their lives would be jeopardized by the return of diseases that in the 1980s caused the deaths of over half their population after Shell Oil first contacted them:

“…In the past, Shell worked here and almost all of us died from the diseases… We know that if another company comes here, our rivers and land will be destroyed… Minister, we ask you, what will we eat when the rivers are dead and the animals have run away? …We do not want companies working here. We want clean water and a quiet and peaceful life.”

The Peruvian national indigenous organization AIDESEP (www.aidesep.org.pe) and indigenous advocacy group Shinai Serjali (www.serjali.org) have been supporting the Nahua in their defense of right to life, territories and culture. Although this news is a victory, we are concerned that the Nahua-Kugapakori reserve remains threatened. Jointly with these groups Amazon Watch has repeatedly voiced concerns about the adjacent block 88, known as the Camisea Project. The project includes three drilling platforms and pipelines which would serve as roads that open up the 457,000-hectare Nahua-Kugapakri Reserve as well triggering massive gas exploration in the Nahua lands. The reserve is also home to the Nanti and Kirineri people, two other indigenous groups with little or no contact with the outside world.

Amazon Watch is encouraged by the Peruvian Government’s decision to remove block 57 from the Nahua people’s land and take this opportunity to once again call for the permanent removal of ALL petroleum activities currently planned inside the Nahua Kugapakori reserve.

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