From Local to Global: Peruvian Earth Defenders Confront Deutsche Bank in Germany | Amazon Watch
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From Local to Global: Peruvian Earth Defenders Confront Deutsche Bank in Germany

Delegation of Indigenous leaders from the Amazon built networks of support and solidarity in the movement against oil expansion in the Amazon

August 1, 2022 | Ricardo Pérez | Eye on the Amazon

As we shared with you a few weeks ago, an unexpected announcement jolted news outlets in several Latin American cities.  The major accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) announced it has decided not to audit the financial statements of its former client, Petroperú. The oil company’s toxic reputation led Indigenous leaders to travel to Germany on a delegation to call out the financial actors complicit in the destruction wrought by oil extraction in the Amazon. 

In July, we accompanied the delegation of advocacy coordinators from the Wampis and Achuar Nations. Together with several other allied organizations in Peru, we helped put them in touch with European civil society organizations so that they could help us secure a meeting with Deutsche Bank, the entity responsible for taking the lead on the recent syndicated loans given to Petroperú and serving as the administrative liaison with the nine other banks involved.

We arrived in Frankfurt, Germany to launch a campaign asking Deutsche Bank how it could possibly place its trust in a company with Petroperú’s background. Did the bank utilize any type of filter prior to making the decision to finance the construction of oil infrastructure? Did the bank even consider its own commitments to sustainability or human rights? What Peru’s economic policy needs is a just transition beyond fossil fuels, and instead Deutsche Bank financed exactly the opposite.  The Wampis and Achuar traveled for days to give the bank this direct message and make sure that it was heard. Petroperú cannot escape its financial scandals, even in Europe. 

According to the multinational company PwC, known for supporting its clients in dubious situations with minimal objections, one of the clauses proposed by the state oil company was too much for PwC to take on. Petroperú asked PwC to safeguard the confidentiality of the audit results forever, despite the fact that the standard practice for these types of contracts is a period of only two years of confidentiality.

The conflict between Petroperú and PricewaterhouseCoopers appeared to be too large of an obstacle for the oil company – immersed in a profound crisis resulting from decades of poor management and environmental irresponsibility. Petroperú has now found itself unable to find new investors, hindering its ability to achieve one of its two long-term goals: obtaining the $4.7 billion it needs to complete the construction of the gigantic Talara Refinery and being able to extract its own oil from the oil blocks on the Peruvian coast and in the country’s northern Amazon, including Block 64.

As it turns out, being responsible for hundreds of spills, dozens of corruption scandals, and attempting to hide its financial statements forever is still not enough for the world’s largest banks to cease providing the company with financing. Through research with Stand.earth in 2021, we found that some of Petroperú’s core financiers include Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, Citi, and BNP Paribas. In order to make financing Petroperú socially unacceptable for former and proposed bank partners, Amazon Watch supported the Wampis and Achuar peoples in evaluating the process of resisting extraction in Block 64 and built a solidarity campaign including this European delegation. 

In the particular case of Petroperú, the fact that some of the most important global banks headquartered in Europe and the United States – as Peru’s news media likes to emphasize – decided to invest billions of dollars in completing Talara, one of the largest refineries in the region, represents much more than money for Petroperú. So now Peru has a gigantic refinery that requires a significant amount of oil in order to be economically viable and not become a huge deficit. The execution of the Talara project grants the oil company the endorsement needed to seek partners in the international market to execute the second part of its strategy to survive its institutional crisis: extraction on Blocks 192, 1, and of course, 64.

Many oil market analysts, and even the president of Petroperú himself, have said that the majority of the petroleum that will be refined in Talara will be imported (some from the Ecuadorian Amazon) and that “it will not become a mega driver of oil operation expansion throughout the Amazon.” The unfortunate truth is that regardless of where it comes from or its impact, Petroperú emphasizes that the oil must arrive quickly, otherwise, it risks impacting the country’s economy.

Large banks invest vast sums in deceitful public relations campaigns to convince the world that they are “essential” actors in the fight against climate change while generating scenarios contributing to climate chaos. In bankrolling oil company projects in the Amazon, financial institutions are violating and sabotaging their own commitments, safeguards, standards, and guidelines.

The Wampis and Achuar nations will not permit oil production on Block 64, and they have launched an international campaign to make it clear to anyone who still thinks it might be a good investment to attempt to extract oil from their territories. To further this strategy, these communities in resistance call for your solidarity. It is up to all of us to call on the climate movement to embrace their struggle and mobilize various collaboration networks throughout the world.

The delegation’s time in Frankfurt was successful in building out mutual collaboration and partnerships with support from Urgewald, BankTrack, and several other organizations. Together, we reached out to young activists, artist collectives, and European civil society, connecting the dots necessary to prevent financial colonizers from continuing to come to the Amazon with their false promises of sustainable development.

We will continue accompanying the Achuar and Wampis peoples and helping them get their message out resoundingly to the most strategic places, so as to bring about real transformation that benefits everyone.

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