Department of Propaganda: Energy Project Saves Rainforest

Earlier this month, the Latin Business Chronicle published an article titled, Peru Energy Project Saves Rainforest, which credits the Camisea Project with saving 1.5 million hectares of Peruvian rainforest. The article, written by the InterAmerican Development Bank's Roger Hamilton, is reprinted from the IDB's own IDBAmerica magazine. In the article, a wide-eyed development-bureaucrat-turned-rainforest-explorer, IDB's Joseph Milewski, points to a map made by CEDIA (Center for Development of Indigenous Amazonians) showing the extensive network of reserves, protected areas, and indigenous territories that CEDIA, the local communities, and other non-governmental organizations fought for years to establish - and takes credit for it all.

The inaccuracies of this article could be written off as lousy journalism if they were not so offensive to the many dedicated people who have literally protested the IDB and the Camisea companies in order to get any protection whatsoever for the Amazon.

Hamilton writes:

Today, largely as the result of Camisea, vast areas have been designated as parks and reserves, giving the indigenous peoples of the Lower Urubamba an unprecedented guarantee that they will be able to make their own decisions on how to safeguard their environment and protect their cultural identity in the years to come.

...a large number of indigenous communities occupy land that has been demarcated and titled, most of which lies along the Urubamba River and its tributaries. Along the river’s main stem, patches of land belong to settlers who also have been granted titles.

In fact, the project has titled a whopping total of zero indigenous territories along the Urubamba River and its tributaries. All of the titling of indigenous communities was done long before the presence of the Camisea consortia and the IDB and was carried out by groups like CEDIA and Comaru with support from Oxfam America and others.

The closest the project has gotten to titling indigenous communities in the region was commissioning a diagnostic study (in which CEDIA participated) of the land tenure along the pipeline route. This was in part because some 150 former TGP workers had invaded the territory of indigenous peoples in the Mantalo River watershed. That study identified at least seven indigenous communities in the Upper Urubamba that needed titling as well as thousands of individual campesino titles that needed to be formalized. So far, 80% of the campesino lands have been addressed, while not a single indigenous community has been titled.

All of the protected areas that the article credits the project with creating: Otishi National Park, the Machiguegna and Ashaninka Communal Reserves, and the Machiguenga Sanctuary, were planned and delineated long before the project. The IDB did give a $5 million institutional strengthening loan to the Peruvian government prior to project financing, but the agency created with this money, the GTCI (Grupo Técnico de Coordinación Interinstitucional), only paid for two consultation workshops during the process of declaring the protected areas. All of the technical work of georeferencing, scientific research, and biological inventories were carried out by NGO's including CEDIA and the Chicago Field Musuem, which together invested 30 times the amount that the IDB contributed to the process.

Hamilton also mentions the Nahua Kugapakori Nanti Reserve for indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and claims that the IDB gave it a "solid legal standing and a real measure of protection." In fact, indigenous organizations and activities have long criticized the IDB for financing a project working in this reserve (created in 1990) because of the risk it poses to the lives of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. To assuage critics, the IDB and the Toledo administration quietly passed new legislation in 2005, changing jurisdiction of the reserve (which already existed) and declaring the indigenous residents as wards of the state. Today, the project is in the process of drilling dozens of wells in the Reserve, illegal logging continues unabated, and most of the recently contacted residents are concentrated in settlements along the Camisea River, confined by the project to hunt, gather, and fish in a much reduced territory.

Sadly, the IDB's $5 million investment in the Peruvian government has left virtually nothing to show for itself except for a handful of workshops, weighty "diagnostic" documents, and a shiny, well-outfitted GTCI office in the basement of the Ministry of Energy and Mines. It is no wonder then that their publicists have to instead take credit for the years of struggle and hard work of local communities and organizations. Meanwhile, the project continues to cause damage to the Amazon, its protected areas, and indigenous communities.

Thanks to Lelis Rivera for his comments.
Photo: Ian Gary

Cusco Plans New Roads into the Lower Urubamba, Manu National Park

One of the more frightening side-effects of Camisea is the incursion of new roads into the Lower Urubamba. With the Department of Cusco flush with cash from gas royalties, restricted to investment only in infrastructure, planners are doing what they know best - build roads. And some of those roads will soon open up extremely remote parts of the Amazon, threatening indigenous territories and protected areas with encroachment from settlers and illegal logging.

Until now, the lower Urubamba River watershed has remained relatively protected from these threats because there are no roads into the region and the difficult rapids of the Pongo de Mainique discourage most river traffic. However, this is all changing as roads on both margins of the Urubamba River upstream of the Pongo are pushing closer and closer to the Machiguenga Sanctuary, a protected area established to preserve an area of immense cultural and biological value.

Peru's Ministry of Transportation and Communication recently published a map on its website that shows projects planned in for 2007 in the Department of Cusco. Included in this map is are roads labeled as "en proyecto" (in project) that cut into the Amazon (shown as dashed gray lines on the map). One road passes through the Machiguenga Sanctuary, bypassing the Pongo de Mainique, and then follows the Urubamba River downstream through Machiguenga communities, before turning west through the community of Nuevo Mundo and off through the Machiguenga Communal Reserve and Otishi National Park. Another planned road heads up along the Camisea River where it leaves Machiguenga communities and enters the Nahua-Kugapakori Territorial Reserve for Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation and then proceeds on to Manú National Park.

These roads pose a tremendous risk to the lives of the Machiguenga as well as the Nahua, Nanti, and Kirineri peoples who live without contact with outsiders. They will also give loggers and ranchers access to some of the most important natural heritage in the Peruvian Amazon.
(Thanks to LB for this information.)

Using Google Earth to See Pipeline Erosion

If you use the free GIS program, Google Earth, you can get a good aerial view of the pipeline right-of-way and the tremendous erosion caused by construction.

Just copy and paste the following sets of lat,long coordinates into the Google Earth search field (one at a time):

12°14'15.13"S, 73° 0'36.96"W

12°12'32.64"S, 73° 0'27.60"W

The above sites are both in the Machiguenga Communal Reserve. The aerial images are from May 2004. Some terracing/erosion control are visible but there are also some blowouts into the watersheds on the side. These images demonstrate how the strategy of building the pipeline along ridgelines affected watersheds on both sides of the divide.

In 2003, I visited the region during pipeline construction with Environmental Defense and Global Village Engineers (GVE). The following is from GVE's report:

In the steepest areas of construction observed there was little, if any attempt at environmentally sound construction. Over the entire portion of pipeline corridor observed (approximately 60 km), during construction there was total clearing of vegetation and topsoil to a depth of approximately 0.5 meters during the 2002 dry season. According to reports from local people, and supported by the absence of any protected stockpiles of such material, the cleared material was stockpiled along the corridor. However, there is currently little or none of this material remaining adjacent to the corridor. Thus, the removed vegetation and soil most likely washed into the nearest watercourse. In addition the construction left soils exposed during the ensuing rainy season and in some areas over two meters of the exposed soils were eroded and washed into the nearest watercourse. The net result of erosion and clearing was washing up to 100 tons of soil and vegetation per meter of pipeline into sensitive aquatic habitat.

It is hard to imagine this not being one of the causes for the dramatic decline in fish stocks reported by Machiguenga communities along the pipeline ROW.

Here are a few other coordinates to check out in Google Earth.

Las Malvinas camp and facility:
11°50'26.07"S, 72°56'49.64"W

Where the Camisea pipeline crosses under the Urubamba River:
11°56'47.85"S, 72°55'27.11"W

Pagoreni Well Platform - Block 56 and road (in the Machiguenga community of Shivankoreni):
11°42'54.59"S, 72°54'1.85"W

Machiguenga Community of Shivankoreni (village center)
11°42'41.38"S, 72°55'43.79"W

Pagoreni B Well Platform - Block 56
11°41'28.45"S, 72°56'56.96"W

San Martin 3 Well Platform (I believe) - Block 88
11°47'8.71"S, 72°42'5.02"W

I'll try to keep posting other coordinates of places of interest in the future.

Defensoria del Pueblo: Perupetro Must Coordinate with INRENA and INDEPA on New Blocks

A March 20, 2007 report by the office of Peru's Public Ombudsperson (Defensoria del Pueblo) analyzes the overlap of Peru's 18 new hydrocarbon exploration concessions with Natural Protected Areas, Protected Area Buffer Zones, Reserve Zones (a transitional protection status), and existing and proposed Territorial Reserves for indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. The report cites date from civil society organizations that one Block, 131 overlaps with a protected area (El Sira Communal Reserve); six blocks (130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, and 140) overlap buffer zones; four of the blocks (135, 137, 138, and 139) overlap the Sierra del Divisor Reserve Zone; four blocks (132, 133, 138, and 139) overlap Territorial Reserves for indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation; and four blocks (135, 136, 137, and 139) overlap proposed Territorial Reserves.

The report found considerable disagreement between the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), Perupetro - the state company that promotes hydrocarbon exploration - and Peru's natural resource agency (INRENA) in their interpretation of the law. MEM and Perupetro claim that INRENA only needs to be consulted when the contracting company submits an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for exploration in the protected area, but does not need to be involved in the designation of hydrocarbon exploration blocks. The Defensoria's report concludes that the government must obtain a technical opinion from INRENA before it auctions off blocks in protected areas and that INDEPA should be consulted on blocks that overlap with Territorial Reserves for isolated peoples.

In an interview on "Mesa Central" on Chanel 7, Perupetro President, Daniel Saba (pictured), tried to discredit the Ombudsperson's report, questioning the organization's motives. He claimed that INRENA's only role in the process of hydrocarbon development in protected areas was to review the EIS submitted by the company and then went on to deny the existence of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in the Peruvian Amazon. Saba dismissed evidence of the existence of isolated peoples saying that it was invented by an anthropologist who now works at the World Bank. (Ironically, the person in question, Alonso Zarzar, was head of community relations in the 1990's for Shell in Camisea and spent much of his time trying to disprove the existence of isolated peoples in the Nahua-Kugapakori Territorial Reserve in order to justify Shell's drilling there.) Saba then announced that Perupetro would do its own study to show that isolated peoples do not exist.

Link to the interview with Perupetro's Daniel Saba.
Related: Peru's New Petroleum Concession Map Covers Most of Amazon

Peru's New Petroleum Concession Map Covers Most of Amazon

Perupetro SA, Peru's state company responsible for promoting hydrocarbon exploration and development recently released a new map showing existing and planned concession blocks. The new map shows a number of new areas of the Peruvian Amazon now open for oil and gas exploration including the Sierra del Divisor Reserve Zone that borders Brazil. The portion of Peru's 67 million hectares of Amazon rainforest that is slated for oil exploration now exceeds the 50% reported on December 4, 2006 by the Environmental News Service.

According to Rigzone, Perupetro signed a record 16 contracts with private companies for oil and gas exploration and exploitation in 2006 and is putting another 18 on the auction block in 2007, which it will promote in at a roadshow in Houston this month.

Peruvian Comission to Evaluate Compliance with IDB Loan Conditions

An October 27 Ministerial Resolution has created a multi-sectoral committee reporting to the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) in order to ensure compliance with the environmental and social conditions of the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) loan, and to determine possible changes in the government's management of the project. The commission will be comprised of MEM, the Peruvian Finance Ministry, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, INDEPA (institute for indigenous and afroperuvians), National Institute for Natural Resources (INRENA), the National Comission of Environment (CONAM), and the Supervisory Agency for Energy (OSINERG). The Camisea coordinating body, GTCI, will be the secretariat. Notably, Peru's Public Ombudsperon (Defensoria del Pueblo) is not included, nor any civil society organizations.

The committee is tasked with developing and action plan that includes:
Improving the Camisea Fund, aka FOCAM;
Improving compensation and indemnity procedures for affected communities;
Improve legal access in relation to defense of protected areas and indigenous territorial reserves;
Increase the presence of the government in the project area in support of an integrated monitoring plan;
Support the Protection Plan for the Nahua Kugakapori Reserve for Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation;
Implement mechanisms for participatory sustainable development in the Lower Urubamba valley;
Ensure adequate resources for protected areas;
Improve communication with civil society in the areas of influence of the project; and
Strengthen the function of PROPARACAS.

This committee is forming at the same time that the IDB is contracting ICF International to carry out its own four-month environmental and social audit of the Camisea project.