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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Peru Prospectors Defy Amazon Natives

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

December 12, 1995

OVERVIEW & SOURCE

Pratap Chatterjee reports for the InterPress Service (IPS) on the

onslaught of oil and biological miners moving into the Peruvian

Amazon. Local peoples are deeply concerned that development be

equitable and ecological; but it appears that one of the last

great wildernesses on the planet may fall to the same forces that

have destroyed so much of the world's biota already.

g.b.

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/* Written 3:40 PM Dec 2, 1995 by pchatterjee in

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/* ---------- "peru prospectors" ---------- */

From: Pratap Chatterjee <pchatterjee@igc.apc.org>

PERU-ENVIRONMENT: Prospectors defy Peruvian Amazon natives

by Pratap Chatterjee

WASHINGTON, 19 Sep (IPS) -- Medicine hunters from Missouri and oil

drillers from California and Texas are on their way to exploit the

rain forests of the Peruvian Amazon despite a clear message from

the native people: Stay out.

Walter Lewis, a scientist from Washington University in St. Louis,

Missouri, will be flying to Lima later this month to talk to the

Peruvian government and local groups about searching the Amazon

for new medicinal plants that may hold the cure for diseases like

cancer.

California-based Occidental Petroleum, a U.S. multinational with

1994 sales of 9 billion dollars, set off huge explosions in the

same region this summer in a vain effort to find underground oil

reserves. The company says it is now pulling out, but other

companies are on their way.

''Is this a boon to mankind or the last great pillage of the rain

forest?'' asks Edward Hammond, an activist who works with Peruvian

native groups for Rural Advancement Foundation International

(RAFI), a non-governmental group in North Carolina.

''The answer will depend on whether scientific and corporate

interests can be turned into solid support for the local peoples'

own priorities: land rights, self-determination, and a healthy

ecosystem,'' he says.

So far, the reports activists like Hammond have received from the

remote Peruvian forests have not been very promising. In fact RAFI

and Rainforest Action Network (RAN), a San Francisco-based group,

have both sent out alerts to their members warning them that the

situation looks grim for the region and its peoples.

The Maranon region of northern Peru, named after the Maranon

river, has some of the most unique forests in the world because of

its geographical location -- the junction between the temperate

rain forests of the Andes meet the lush Amazon jungle along the

banks of the river.

The jaguar, the giant river otter and the giant anteater -- all

endangered species -- roam these forests. Three groups of

indigenous peoples -- the Aguaruna, the Candoshi and the Huambisa

-- have also lived in this region for centuries.

None of the indigenous groups are happy about the new visitors.

But the government of President Alberto Fujimori, which achieved

the highest economic growth rate in the world last year largely by

exporting of natural resources has rolled out the welcome mat.

The native people fear that oil drillers will chop down forests

and pollute the many waterways that run through their forests with

toxic chemicals. They are also convinced that they will receive

almost none of the profits, according to groups like RAN.

There are good reasons for their fears. Oil drilling by Texaco,

another U.S. multinational, has ruined the fragile Oriente region

of Ecuador's Amazon, just north of Peru. The company spilt an

estimated 66 million litres of oil into the rivers that the

Quechua peoples, an Ecuadorean indigenous group, depend on.

Nor are there historical reasons to believe that money from new

plants will be given to the local people. Quinine, the drug used

to treat malaria, was discovered in Ecuador, while the potato, a

staple food for millions of people around the world, comes from

Peru. No money from the billions of dollars in sales from these

plants goes to the native people.

Candoshi leaders, who represent the 2,000 members of the

indigenous group, say that Occidental failed to meet their own

environmental promises when they started searching for oil in what

is called ''Lot 4,'' in the eastern Maranon. Last August, the

Candoshi people voted to tell Occidental to go away, and began

organising to protest.

Their message was circulated here by Shannon Wright, a RAN

activist who mailed out an alert last month headlined: ''Oxy

invades Candoshi homeland in Peru.'' Shortly after that, the

company pulled out.

''We have ceased exploration because we have not found any

commercial quantities of oil. It has nothing to do with any

protests. We have very good relations with the Candoshi,'' says

Roger Gillott, a public relations official at Occidental.

The neighbours of the Candoshi -- the Aguaruna and the Huambisa,

who live in the western part of the Maranon -- also had some

initial success in keeping out visitors when they complained to

the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which oversees the work

of Walter Lewis.

A 400,000 dollar annual grant for Lewis was frozen after the

native people wrote to the NIH to say that he had not told them of

plans to sell the plant collections to Monsanto, a pharmaceutical

multinational in St. Louis with 1994 sales revenue of 8.3 billion

dollars.

The Consejo Aguaruna y Huambisa, the council that represents the

45,000 people who belong to the two indigenous groups, alleges

that Lewis illegally exported plants he had gathered.

''Lewis ran into a number of problems. It is a difficult

situation. We will wait and see what happens at the meeting at the

end of this month. In the meantime, we have mounted a thorough

investigation into his contracts,'' Joshua Rosenthal, the program

manager for the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups

Program (ICBG) at the NIH, which dispenses the money to Lewis.

''What will the Aguaruna see of these wonderful new medicines?

There are promises, but they are vague and depend upon whims of

bureaucrats and thumps of the market,'' says Hammond, who is still

sceptical. Lewis did not return repeated telephone calls.

But now the Aguaruna and Huambisa are about to be invaded oil

companies. YPF, an Argentinian company, and Quintana Minerals of

Houston, Texas, are currently negotiating to drill for oil on

their land.

This land, known as ''Lot 50,'' was explored three years ago by

two Houston-based firms -- Edward Callan Interests and Halliburton

Geophysical Services.

At the time, local people complained bitterly about the

explorations. ''The detonations and the clearings being made are

scaring away the animals and destroying the resources that our

families depend upon to survive,'' said Emir Etsam Nugkuag, a

native Aguaruna from the community of Napuruka.

The indigenous groups have vowed to keep up the struggle. ''Oil

companies have already been conceded seven million hectares of

indigenous lands in the Peruvian Amazon. We cannot allow

indigenous people's voices to be quieted on this subject again,''

says Juan Chavez Munoz, the president of AIDESEP (Interethnic

Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon).

(ENDS/IPS/PC/JL/95)

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