Indigenous groups have condemned plans by the Ecuadorean government to expand oil production into ancestral territories in the Amazon without their consent, as is required by law.
President Daniel Noboa’s government recently announced its ‘Hydrocarbon Roadmap,’ a $47 billion project to open up around 35,000 square kilometres of the Amazon to oil drilling – an area roughly the size of Taiwan. To save on cost, exports will go through a pipeline in North Peru.
Of the 22 proposed oil blocks to be auctioned, 18 will go over indigenous ancestral land. In a joint statement, seven indigenous nationalities in the region have denounced the project, saying they had no prior warning.
“It has been very quiet, so to speak,” Diana Chávez, a leader of Pakkiru, one of indigenous nations in the affected province of Pastaza, in eastern Ecuador, told Latin America Reports.
“We only learnt about it when an announcement came from the Peruvian side,” she said.
Under the Ecuadorean Constitution and the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights, extractive projects require the prior consultation of indigenous peoples before operating on their lands.
The government claimed that consultations were held in 2012, and the remainder would proceed in accordance with Decree 1247. Critics, however, have argued this Decree severely undermines a legitimate consultation process.
“According to the government there have already been consultations and even consents given,” said Chávez. “We, the peoples and nationalities here in Pastaza province, have said that is not true.”
“We do not want oil exploitation to damage our lands, contaminate our rivers, bring disease, or turn us into a backyard for resource extraction,” she added.
Noboa’s Oil Push
Unlike Ecuador’s northern Amazonian regions, Pastaza has long resisted oil exploration. In 2019, for example, the Waorani people won a historic court ruling which voided a similar consultation for oil drilling in the region.
“Indigenous groups [in the area] have a history of using legal action to exert their rights, and they will certainly do so,” said Kevin Koenig, Climate, Energy, and Extractive Industry Director at Amazon Watch.
However, civil groups have warned that President Noboa’s legislative agenda is weakening indigenous land and environmental rights.
In July this year, the National Assembly approved a law allowing private entities to help manage conservation zones. That same month, President Noboa folded the country’s independent Environment Ministry into its Ministry of Energy and Mines.
“That’s a big signal of the direction that Noboa wants to take the country in,” said Koenig. “He’s really setting the stage for a dramatic increase in extractive industries,” he added.
Despite this, Chávez insisted that the indigenous groups have the country’s support: in 2023, the population voted to halt the development of oil wells in the Yasuní national park – where one of the oil blocks is currently being auctioned.
“This contradicts the democratic mandate that the people have already expressed,” said Chávez.
The Ecuadorian government was contacted for comment but had not responded by the time of publishing.
Featured image:
Image: Oil Refinery in Ecuador
Author: KelvinLemos
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Licence: Creative Commons Licenses
