2023-06-26 21:24:00
The warning is clear, in the Waorani language it is a war song: “we will not allow + kowori + (foreigners) to enter block 43”. But for once, it is not aimed at oil companies, but at defenders of the environment.
In the Yasuni nature reserve, in the north-eastern Amazon of Ecuador, a referendum on August 20 on the suspension of oil exploitation divides, including within indigenous communities.
Called for by the environmental group Yasunidos for ten years, this national consultation finally authorized last May by the highest court of the country must decide on the future of the block Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini (ITT), known as “block 43”, in boundary of Yasuni Park, whose million hectares of rainforest constitutes a world reserve of biodiversity.
Favorable to the pursuit of extraction, half-naked women escorted by warriors spear in hand sing their song of war in front of the journalists invited by the national oil company Petroecuador.
Technicians from the state-owned company Petroecuador take crude oil samples from a deposit in Ishpingo, Yasuni National Park, northeast Ecuador, on June 21, 2023 (AFP – Rodrigo BUENDIA)
They “call to consult the real owners of the land”, like the Waorani, and not the entire Ecuadorian population, explains Felipe Ima, one of the leaders of the Kawymeno community to which they belong, the only one of the people. waorani in the area of block 43, in the extreme east of the province of Orellana, bordering Peru.
– “Health and education” –
Its 400 members, as well as some neighboring communities of the Kichwa people, believe that oil exploitation compensates for the absence of the state: “If there was no oil industry, we would not have (.. .) education, health, family well-being,” Panenky Huabe, community leader, many of whom work for Petroecuador, told reporters.
Aerial photo of the Ishpingo oil platform of the public company Petroecuador in Yasuni National Park, northeast Ecuador, on June 21, 2023 (AFP – Rodrigo BUENDIA)
Oil exploitation began on a large scale in Ecuador in the 1970s, at the rate of the economic colonization of the Amazon regions desired by the State. The left-wing president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) had approved oil exploitation in the Yasuni following having unsuccessfully tried to compensate by an international plan of 3.6 billion dollars for the non-exploitation of the deposit in the name of the protection of the environment.
Crude began flowing in 2016 and now contributes 57,000 barrels per day (bd) to Ecuador’s total production (464,000 between January and April).
The country’s leading export product, black gold brings in an average of $12 billion in revenue per year, a blessing for the state coffers and the country’s “development”, according to the authorities. A curse according to environmentalists, while the forest is ineluctably shrinking and large-scale pollution continues its misdeeds, they accuse.
Waorani indigenous people from the Kawymeno community in Yasuni National Park during a demonstration in favor of oil exploitation in northeastern Ecuador on June 21, 2023 (AFP – Rodrigo BUENDIA)
Other oil fields than ITT have already been exploited for years in Yasuni, and block “43 is the only part (of the forest) that remains to be saved with the referendum”, assures AFP Pedro Bermeo, lawyer and spokesperson for the Yasunidos collective.
– “Sign of hope” –
The referendum is causing divisions within the Waorani people themselves, who number some 4,800 members and own regarding 800,000 hectares of forest in the provinces of Orellana, Pastaza and Napo.
Passing through Paris last week alongside Sweden’s Greta Thunberg, Ecuadorian activist Helena Gualinga, from the Amazonian Sarayaku people, stressed that this consultation “is an extremely important precedent, which can be replicated around the world and should be a a sign of hope (…) that people can decide the direction they want to take” regarding the ecological future of their territories.
In 2019, the Waorani of Pastaza won a historic court ruling preventing oil companies from entering 180,000 hectares of virgin territory.
At the entrance to Ishpingo A, a native in overalls and a red stripe painted over his eyes, says that “we will continue to work” for the ITT because “black gold benefits everyone”.
Waorani indigenous women demonstrate in Yasuni National Park in favor of oil exploitation in northeastern Ecuador, June 21, 2023 (AFP – Rodrigo BUENDIA)
To exploit the block, Petroecuador is authorized to operate on some 300 hectares of Yasuni; she says she barely used 80 hectares. ITT’s fields have already brought in $4.2 billion to the state and its reserves are estimated at 282 million barrels out of a total of 1.2 billion.
If the referendum decides on the end of the exploitation, the losses will be considerable, warns Petroecuador: 16.47 billion dollars lost over 20 years, abandonment of deposits and investments already made, unemployment, warns AFP the company director, Ramon Correa. This while “ITT is the fourth largest field in the country and the youngest (ten years)”.
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