Sunday 7 June 2009

Put An End To The Bloodshed, Stop Privatising The Amazon

"All the Amazonian countries have made preposterous claims that the great, empty Amazon jungle can finance national development, that it can provide an alternative for overcoming historical, structural problems," Evaristo Nugkuaq explained to me in 1990.

We were sitting in his office, the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples' Organisations of the Amazon Basin, better known by its Spanish acronym -- COICA. Evaristo was not only COICA's president, but also its founder.

I had first met Evaristo in the mid-1980s when I lived in Arlington, Virginia. As part of a career change, I was a graduate student at the School of International Service (SIS) at The American University in Washington, D.C. Somehow I had heard that Evaristo was going to address a group of environmentalists. I decided to go. After his speech, we spoke in Spanish for a while. Evaristo invited me to visit the Peruvian Amazon and find out first-hand the challenges indigenous people were facing. Not long after I did just that. It would be the first of several trips to the rainforest near the border with Ecuador. As a result Evaristo and I became friends. Whenever he was in the D.C. area we would get together with my family. Over the years we lost touch, as I began my work in international development.

But back in 1990 Evaristo's warning that ill-conceived government development plans would threaten the Amazon would prove to be all too prophetic.

"These flippant and irresponsible claims," said Evaristo, "which have been the basis for development policies over three decades, are of great concern to us -- not only because of their disastrous consequences for our indigenous peoples -- but also for the threat they pose to the very future of the entire Amazon Basin."

Now, 19 years later, the Peruvian Amazon is up in arms. Evaristo's people, the Aguaruna, have joined other indigenous people to fight for their land and its resources.

According to news reports up to 31 people died, with dozens injured, in clashes on June 5 between Peruvian police and Amazon tribes protesting against government efforts to attract foreign energy and mining companies to the rain forest. Tribal leaders and the Interior Ministry said 22 protestors and nine police officers died.

In response, angry protestors took a group of police hostage near an oil pumping station owned by the government. They threatened to set it on fire unless police called off efforts to break up demonsgrations in the Amazon Basin.

Approximately 54.8% of Peruvians live in conditions of poverty. This figure is up from 48.4% at the end of 2000. Those living in extreme poverty constitute 24.4% of the population, compared with 15% in 2000. Many of them are indigenous peoples. The top 20% of the population controls more than 50% of the country's wealth.

The attempt by the Peruvian Government, under Alan Garcia, to confront this challenge by “privatizing” the Amazon can only lead to further bloodshed.

No comments:

Post a Comment