Indigenous People in Ecuador Stand up to the Oil Industry | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Indigenous People in Ecuador Stand up to the Oil Industry

December 20, 2004 | Celeste Mackenzie | Miami Herald

Sarayaku, Ecuador –

As the Amazon sun slowly heats up, Marlon Santi, president of the community of Sarayaku, addresses residents under the shade of a zinc roof, updating them on the international legal fight against oil exploration and extraction in their territory.

Though no road leads to this Kichwa-speaking community in the upper Amazon basin and transportation by motorized canoe has been temporarily shut down by oil industry supporters in the town where the road ends, it hasn’t stopped mining interests from discovering Sarayaku.

The Ecuadorean government has just declared a renewed commitment to oil extraction for the next 25 years, and Sarayaku residents are worried.

Their concern comes at a time when the courts, multilateral institutions, and private banks are raising questions about the rules extractive companies should follow when they set up shop in indigenous territory.

The government granted Sarayaku a property title in 1992, but the community doesn’t own its sub-soil rights, and now it is battling both the Ecuadorean government and Argentina’s Compañía General de Combustibles, the firm that has held a 772-square-mile concession in “Block 23” since 1996. Sixty-five percent of Sarayaku sits on Block 23.

CGC has wanted to fully explore the area ever since it won the concession.

Burlington Resources of Texas has a 50 percent working interest in the block.

But Sarayaku has forced an interruption of operations and a declaration of force majeure – or circumstances beyond the company’s control. Opposition from other indigenous peoples in neighboring Block 24 – run by Burlington – also prompted a suspension of operations there.

SEVERAL TACTICS

Protests, letter writing and a website have been part of Sarayaku’s strategy to keep CGC out. Workers and soldiers who have ventured in have been briefly detained by Sarayaku residents and equipment has been sabotaged and stolen.

Says CGC Ecuador manager Ricardo Nicolás: “In the information the government of Ecuador gave us prior to bidding, it did not indicate the high level of danger these people posed.”

Sarayaku, meanwhile, has lodged complaints of human right violations against the government with the Inter American Human Rights Commission, an independent body of the Organization of American States.

In October, the Commission admitted the petition, signaling what could be a lengthy battle that might end up in the Inter American Human Rights Court, another OAS body. Should a decision recognize the integrity of the territory, including sub-soil rights, it would set a precedent throughout the hemisphere.

UNACCEPTABLE IMPACT

Santi says the impact of the oil exploration on Sarayaku is unacceptable. And, he alleges, he has been offered bribes by CGC on four occasions.

The CGC’s Nicolás calls the bribery allegation ” a lie not worthy of a response.” What the company offered in Sarayaku were projects – as it had in other communities – that were to be agreed upon in public documents, he says.

“If other peoples want to welcome the oil companies, that’s fine for them, but for us, our land is not negotiable,” says Santi. “Without our territory, we would lose everything. It would be like selling our mother, and for us this concept doesn’t exist.”

Santi fears seismic testing, deforestation, waste from extraction, and pipeline spills, and notes how roads have brought squatters and prostitution to native lands further north where drilling has been going on since the 1970s.

Most of the almost 1,000 residents in the Sarayaku territory hunt, fish, farm, and collect fruits and fibers. Some are bilingual teachers. Potable water comes from springs.

There is contact with the more industrialized world, however. Bags of corn and rice occasionally arrive on five-seater planes, and clothing is factory-made, as are rain boots and shoes.

CLOSE OBSERVATION

The worldwide banking industry also is taking note of what goes on in places like Sarayaku.

In light of criticisms of many private banks for infrastructure and resource industry loans in a number of countries, more than 20 international banks have adopted the Equator Principles, a voluntary set of guidelines modeled on the International Finance Corporation’s 1998 Safeguard Policies that include a project’s impact on indigenous peoples.

The World Bank is also revising its policies on both indigenous peoples and extractive industries, and this year held meetings on the concept of “free and informed consent” from natives prior to going ahead with projects affecting them.

Both the UN and the OAS are drafting declarations on the rights of indigenous peoples.

ABORIGINAL RIGHTS

Meanwhile, governments are increasingly recognizing aboriginal property rights, and ratifying an International Labour Organization convention that recognizes rights of ownership and possession of traditionally occupied land, and calls for meaningful government consultation with indigenous peoples.

Ecuador ratified the pact in 1999 and was criticized by the UN this year for granting concessions without full consent of concerned communities.

According to Sarayaku’s lawyer, José Serrano, his client pins an important part of its argument on a precedent-setting Inter-American Court decision in 2001 against Nicaragua after that country granted a forestry concession on aboriginal territory. Upon exhaustion of legal remedies in Nicaragua, the case ended up in the Inter-American system where the court ruled that the government violated natives’ property rights and other rights inextricably linked to their land.

It was the first international court decision to link human rights to indigenous land rights.

Serrano argues there can be no division of rights above and below the land’s surface. “This is a legal division that for indigenous people makes no sense. We can not interpret territory as just from the surface upwards. This is about the integrity of the territory that for indigenous peoples includes water and rivers, sacred sites, animals and plants,” he says.

Jorge Burbaño, a sub-secretary with Ecuador’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, says he’s not worried about a sub-soil challenge, but acknowledges problems caused by an absence of consultation between the government and inhabitants.

He says Ecuador has just finalized a new policy for consultation with indigenous peoples to be applied to new concessions.

But Burbaño is clear that drilling will take place in Sarayaku, despite objections.

“Consultations will be undertaken with sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists who will act as a bridge so that they understand government policies, but in a way that respects their customs – settlers and native peoples in the area where drilling will take place – in order to develop a close relationship based on progress for these people, as well as the other 12 million Ecuadoreans,” Burbaño says.

FIRM RESOLVE

But Sarayaku’s resolve seems clear. At the community meeting attended by about 150 residents, people wanted to know about the Nicaraguan decision and other recent cases where aboriginal peoples have had success.

There is talk of mapping their land and its resources, and Santi has been firming up plans for an awareness-raising trip to Argentina.

“It is ludicrous to think that you can come in here and get the oil without destroying what is on top,” he says.

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