Source: AFP
A thick slick of oil covers part of an estuary in Ecuador’s Amazon, where indigenous Waorani people are begging authorities to stop drilling for the black gold that continues to pour into their environment.
Black mud also coats the vegetation next to a road leading to the village of Guiyero in Yasuni National Park, one of the most diverse biospheres in the world.
“It’s time to say enough! We have been abused,” Ene Nenkimo, vice president of the Waorani Nationality (Nawe) organization, wearing a headdress of colorful feathers, told AFP.
The oil spill occurred in June, according to environmentalists, the latest of many at the reserve.
Source: AFP
Read also
Trucker protests fuel fear of food shortages in Colombia
State oil company Petroecuador has admitted that an unspecified amount of oil leaked into the environment from one of its blocks, contaminating water sources in several cities and reaching the Napo River, a tributary of the Amazon.
“The big lizards died,” lamented 44-year-old Pablo Ahua, one of nearly 100 indigenous people living in Guiyero, near one of the reserve’s oil fields.
The deadline for the referendum is over
Yasuni National Park was thrust into the international spotlight last year after Ecuadorean citizens voted to halt drilling in a block in the reserve, a move hailed as a historic example of climate democracy.
The reserve spans over one million hectares (2.5 million acres) and is home to at least three of the world’s last uncontacted indigenous peoples, as well as an abundance of plant and animal species.
The referendum required the government to halt mining from Block 43 by August — however, only one of its 247 wells has been shut down.
Read also
Sammy Gyamfi shares instant solution to tackle galamsey menace in Ghana
The government estimates it will take at least five years to cut all output from the block, which produces 50,000 barrels a day, about 10 percent of total production in the country.
Nenquimo said the Ecuadorian state “must respect” the referendum, “like it or not.”
Some locals, like Nenquimo, want to end all oil extraction in the reserve and elsewhere in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Source: AFP
Oil spills leave “a huge impact that no one can fix,” Nenquimo said.
“They say (oil) is for the development of communities and there is no development. All it leaves is environmental damage.”
“We are forgotten”
However, others support the oil companies and the benefits that economic development has brought to their villages.
In 2023, Ecuador projected losses of $16.47 billion over two decades if it were to close Block 43 — one of 80 blocks in the country’s part of the Amazon.
Read also
Fuel shortages, rising prices deepen Nigeria’s frustration
Oil exploitation has been one of the pillars of Ecuador’s economy since the 1970s.
Crude oil, its top export, brought in $7.8 billion in 2023.
Indigenous communities are the most affected by poverty in Ecuador, which reached 25.5% in June. Extreme poverty affects more than 10 percent of the country’s population of 17 million.
“We’re not taken care of, we’re forgotten” because of the lack of basic services like health care, Nenquimo said.
The Waorani tribe consists of about 4,000 people who own about 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) in the Amazon, although they claim 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) more.
Source: AFP
In Ecuador, the Constitution recognizes “collective ownership of land by indigenous peoples as an ancestral form of territorial organization.”
The state, however, retains control over everything underground.
“High rates of cancer”
Kevin Koenig, of the NGO Amazon Watch, highlighted another risk for Yasuni residents: the links between those living near oil wells and “high rates of cancer”.
Read also
Hungry times for Istanbul’s street food vendors
He urged developed countries to finance environmental protection with alternatives such as debt swaps.
Source: AFP
Yasuni National Park is home to species of about 2,000 trees, 610 birds, 204 mammals, 150 amphibians and more than 120 reptiles, according to the University of San Francisco, Quito.
In Guiyero, a group of indigenous men, naked and holding spears, sing in their language, wao terero.
“They say: Help us defend our territory,” said translator Freddy Nihua, leader of the Wao of Orellana, one of Yasuni’s two provinces.
Source: AFP
