Isolated Indigenous Peoples Under Threat of Oil Expansion | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Isolated Indigenous Peoples Under Threat of Oil Expansion

New access road under construction intends to go deep into Yasuní National Park's "No Go" Zone

November 2, 2021 | Carlos Mazabanda | Eye on the Amazon

Photo Credit: Iván Castaneira / Tegantai Ecological News Agency

In late October, Ecuador’s right-wing president Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency, citing rising violent crime. But the surprise move also conveniently suspended civil liberties just as civil society was gearing up to protest his economic and policy proposals seeking to implement neoliberal reforms and a business-friendly environment for the oil and mining industry. 

In an unprecedented event, Indigenous organizations, supported by environmental and rights organizations filed a constitutional challenge to the decrees for failing to have conducted pre-legislative consultation which is required for any policy that affects Indigenous rights and autonomy.

Once again, it is in the hands of the Constitutional Court to guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples, especially Free, Prior and Informed Consent, and that of the rights of nature. The Constitutional Court has the responsibility to guarantee these rights that have been systematically violated by the Ecuadorian government.

With the implementation of these new reforms, Lasso hopes it will encourage investment in order to double oil production. Much of this extraction would come from the Ishpingo, Tambococha, Tiputini (ITT)  fields, the country’s largest oil field, which is located underneath Yasuní National Park. Oil exploitation in the National Park presents a flagrant scenario of rights violations against both nature and the lives of Indigenous peoples in isolation.

Yasuní, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve widely considered one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet, is the traditional territory of the Waorani Indigenous peoples, and home of the last two Indigenous peoples living in isolation – the Tagaeri and Taromenane. Oil drilling, roads, and illegal logging have pushed these nomadic groups to the brink. And now, wells are planned inside of the buffer zone surrounding a designated “no go” zone created to protect the Tagaeri and Taromenane (ZITT).

Internal Petroecuador documents show that there are plans to sink two new wells inside the protected “no go” area. The new access road being constructed to open up the wells is now only 400 meters away from the buffer zone. Drilling here is genocide for the Tagaeri-Taromenane, imperils a world-renowned biodiversity hotspot, and is a carbon bomb for the planet as companies drill for new fossil fuels underneath standing forests essential for climate change mitigation. It must be stopped. 

In 2008, in the new constitution of Ecuador, the rights of Indigenous peoples in isolation were recognized, defining their territories as intangible, where all types of extractive activity would be prohibited. And it is established that the violation of these rights constitutes a crime of ethnocide. This advance in guarantees of rights for peoples in isolation would undoubtedly be a great step for their protection, of course, if these rights were fully complied with by the Ecuadorian government.

This existential threat to Indigenous peoples and the park has led to demands for immediate action by the Ecuadorian justice system. “Precautionary Measures” were filed before Ecuador’s courts, which seek to prevent the violation of the Tagaeri and Taromenane’s constitutional rights – which specifically state that their territory is, “an irreducible and intangible ancestral possession and all forms of extractive activities shall be forbidden there. The government shall adopt measures to guarantee their lives, enforce respect for self-determination and the right to remain in isolation, and ensure observance of their rights. The violation of these rights shall constitute a crime of ethnocide, which shall be classified as such by law.”

This legal injunction was filed on September 23 by the Alliance of Human Rights Organizations in Ecuador, Yasunidos, Amazon Watch, and several other environmental and human rights organizations. On October 12, which commemorates the Day of Cultural Diversity in Ecuador, the petition was denied. The court stated that technically, there is no infrastructure or extraction work happening in the buffer area of the “no go” zone yet, and refused to rule in a pre-emptive, precautionary way, to prevent genocide in the making. The Court has decided to wait until it’s too late for the fate of the Tagaeri-Taromenane. 

The current situation was spurred by Executive Decree 751, issued by former President Lenin Moreno in 2019. The decree, based on a popular yet disingenuous question in a national referendum, promised an expansion of the “no go” zone area inside Yasuní. But, the decree, while shrinking the acreage available for drilling, allows new drilling inside the buffer zone. In sum, the government pulled a bait and switch. It was a ruse, allowing the green lighting of drilling in the most sensitive area where it was previously prohibited, under the cover of expanding the protected area where there was no oil, and no Tagaeri-Taromenane.

On July 2, 2019, civil society organizations and lawyers working on behalf of the rights of peoples living in isolation challenged Executive Decree 751 before the Constitutional Court. A hearing was finally held on October 15, 2021, and a decision is pending. It is the last legal opportunity to stop the advance of oil extraction and to protect the lives of Tagaeri-Taromenane.

It’s important to note that we did not get to this point where 600 new oil wells are planned in one of the most culturally critical and biologically diverse places on the planet overnight. 

Yasuní National Park and the Tagaeri Taromenane “No Go” Zone (ZITT)

Yasuní National Park is located in the northeast Ecuadorian Amazon and is part of the National System of Protected Areas of Ecuador. It is famous worldwide as “the most diverse area in South America, and possibly in the world.” Officially, Yasuní National Park is home to more than 2,000 species of trees and shrubs, 204 species of mammals, 610 species of birds, 121 species of reptiles, 150 species of amphibians, and more than 250 species of fish. 

To gauge what this great biodiversity means, more than 650 species of trees are recorded in one hectare of Yasuní, more than all the tree species found throughout the North American subcontinent. Yasuní was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989. This Biosphere Reserve includes the Yasuní National Park; the territory of the Waorani nationality and the ITT encompassing the buffer and “no-go” zones (ZITT) and covers an area of 2.7 million hectares. 

Plan A: Yasuní drilling

The Yasuní National Park was created in 1979 and since then it has had to coexist with oil exploitation. Until 2013, there were 6 oil blocks in operation, and the only block in which there was no oil activity was Block 43, where ITT oil fields are located bordering Tagaeri-Taromenane territory. The non-exploitation of this block was a hopeful “guarantee” that in Yasuní there are significant areas without oil activity that allows the park to fulfill its role of protecting biodiversity and the life of isolated peoples. However, this block has been highly coveted by the government due to significant crude reserves.

Despite this, due to national and international pressure and the importance of Yasuní, the government of former President Rafael Correa in April 2007 officially launched the “Yasuní Initiative – ITT”. An innovative proposal in which the Ecuadorian government promised to leave the ITT reserves permanently underground, and thus avoid the emission of 407 million metric tons of CO2 that would be produced by burning that fossil fuel. In exchange for this, Ecuador asked the international community for an economic collaboration of 50% of the forgone revenue that could be received if the ITT was exploited, with this, the goal was to obtain $ 3.6 billion over 13 years.

The Initiative was doomed to fail since the international community was given conflicting messages. While seeking economic compensation from the world, Correa undermined his own proposal by working on a “Plan B” that contemplated the exploitation of the Tambocha and Tiputini fields and carried out studies called “Ishpingo Fields Development Project, Tambococha, Tiputini (ITT),” between 2008 and 2009. Internal communications also revealed advanced talks promising the blocks to Chinese oil companies. Plan B was always Plan A.

Thus, on August 13, 2013, President Correa announced that the “Yasuní Initiative – ITT ” was dead, with the declaration that the “international community has failed us.” With a majority in congress, he was able to get the oil extraction of blocks 31 and 43 declared in the national interest, providing a legal pathway for oil extraction in Yasuní to begin.

By September 2016, all the infrastructure to start the exploitation of Block 43 was ready, with production beginning at 12 wells inside the Tiputini field. This field is the only one of the ITT that is largely outside of Yasuní National Park.

Another hoax for the protection of Indigenous peoples in isolation

Like the Correa government, his successor Lenin Moreno (2017-2021) professed environmental commitments and respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples during the campaign season, since politicians know that these issues, and especially Yasuní, mobilize voters. For this reason, President Moreno in the “Popular Consultation” he convened in February 2018, decided to include a question on Yasuní in the referendum, in his desire to obtain a down-the-ballot “yes” vote to all the other questions posed that advanced his agenda. His real objective in the referendum was to prohibit Correa from running for office again and avoid indefinite re-election.

The question about Yasuní was encouraging: “Do you agree to increase the intangible “no go” zone by at least 50,000 hectares and reduce the oil exploitation area authorized by the National Assembly in the Yasuní National Park from 1,030 hectares to 300 hectares?” The answer was a resounding “yes” which reached 67.31% of the vote.

But the government’s implementation of this democratic decision has been a huge disappointment.

On May 21, 2019, 15 months after the “yes” in favor of Yasuní, President Moreno issued Decree 751, which established the expansion of the ZITT by 60,451 hectares, thereby reaching a total area of 818,502 hectares. However, this expansion does not respond precisely to areas where conflict has been evidenced between the peoples in isolation, the oil industry, the Indigenous, and campesino population. In fact, the new area of the ZITT does not affect any of the oil blocks that are on the Yasuní National Park.

But the most serious thing about Decree 751 is that the “untouchable” nature of the ZITT´s buffer area was scrapped. The construction of “drilling and hydrocarbon production platforms” is now allowed (Decree 751, article 3). Once again, the deception won the day and the threat of oil exploitation in the territories of the Tagaeri-Taromenane became a reality.

But the changing administrations of the Ecuadorian government aren’t the sole owners of the blame for this threat to Yasuni and its peoples. A report produced by Amazon Watch and Stand.earth in July 2021 exposed the role of major U.S. and EU banks in financing oil exploitation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, and UBS. They have hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds issued to Petroamazonas EP, and have financed billions in trade of Amazon crude, thus violating their own sustainability and risk management policies, by financing an oil company and supply from a project in a highly biodiverse area and where isolated peoples are living.

Oil road advances toward the “No Go” Zone

By December 2017, extraction was already underway in Yasuní National Park, with the construction of the oil road and the “Tambococha D” platform. In June 2018, road construction continued to move south and the “Tambococha A” platform was built. As of September 30, 2021, a total of 18 kilometers of road and a total of 5 platforms have been built. With this latest advance, the road is just 400 meters from the limit of the ZITT´s buffer area.

In the “COVID-19 Sanitary Emergency Situation Report, Block 43 ITT”, dated July 27, 2020, made by the Head of Safety, Health and Environmental Control of Petroamazonas EP (part of government-run Petroecuador), the map “Facilities Blocks 43 – 31” was presented, where the infrastructure and facilities that have been implemented and are projected to be built in Block 43 are mapped. This map clearly shows that the company Petroamazonas EP, has planned to advance with the oil highway, through the buffer area and to reach the ZITT, and at the edge, the construction of the “Ishpingo D” and “Ishping” oil platform inside the ZITT is planned.

The oil threat to the lives of the Indigenous peoples in isolation is further exacerbated by the  COVID-19 pandemic that shows no signs of abating. As the oil infrastructure advances towards the territories of the isolated peoples, the risk of COVID-19 contagion increases, which would be fatal for their survival, as is any Western disease for which they have no biological immunity. And of course, oil extraction itself brings its own devastating impacts on the quality of air, soil, water, and noise pollution, which leads to the degradation of a pristine environment necessary so that isolated peoples continue to live in the traditional ways that have helped them survive for generations.

Time is of the essence. Since carrying out the analysis of the progress of the road, if Petroamazonas EP works without breaks, in nine days it will be crossing the limit of the buffer area and in 45 days they would be entering into the ZITT.

“New Oil and Mining Policy” is just more of the same

Moving forward with the exploitation of the Yasuní is the tip of the iceberg of what the current government of President Guillermo Lasso is planning for. He issued Executive Decree 95, which lays out policy reforms that seek to double oil production to 1 million barrels per day. This involves intensifying production in fields already in operation and expanding oil development to the center and south of the Amazon, a huge roadless region of intact tropical forests and the traditional territory of seven Indigenous nationalities. With Executive Decree 151, the development of large-scale mining projects is being advanced in the Cordillera del Cóndor in Ecuador’s southern Amazon, an area that is on the list of the 35 biodiversity hotspots recognized worldwide, and home of the Shuar nationality.

Alongside environmental and human rights organizations, we took immediate action. Now, we anxiously await that justice will be served with the two pending decisions from the Constitutional Court on the advance of ITT oil drilling and road construction, as well as the executive decrees expanding oil and mining. Time is of the essence. Join us in solidarity with Indigenous peoples working to stop oil expansion in Ecuador’s Amazon!

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