ALERT UPDATE
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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Environmentalists Occupy Threatened Ecuadorian
Rainforests
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TAKE ACTION:
Oil Pipeline Financiers Threaten Ecuador's Rainforests
and Peoples
http://forests.org/emailaction/ecuador.htm
1/13/02
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
Rainforest Action Network provides an important update on
threats to
Ecuador’s rainforests from a massive new oil
pipeline. Local
community residents, students, and environmentalists are
engaged in a
permanent peaceful encampment high in the mountains of
the Mindo
Nambillo Cloudforest Reserve to stop construction of the
pipeline.
You may recall from a series of earlier alerts that
WestLB Bank of
Germany is spearheading financing of a new oil pipeline
through
Ecuador's pristine rainforests. The pipeline is likely to
cause the
irreversible loss and diminishment of some the country's
last
remaining old growth rainforests and decimate territories
of isolated
indigenous peoples.
Thanks to your response to past alerts, it
appears that financing for the project is in
jeopardy. Forests.org
continues to call for the cancellation of the project and
a moratorium
on all new oil exploration in Ecuador and the World’s
rainforests.
Please respond to the still current action alert at
http://forests.org/emailaction/ecuador.htm .
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title:
Environmentalists Continue Forest Occupation in Mindo To Block
Pipeline
Construction
German Lawmakers
Hold Hearing on January 14 on WestLB's $900 Million
Loan to the
Controversial Pipeline
Source: Copyright
2002 Rainforest Action Network
Date: January 9,
2002
For the past week, local community residents, students,
and
environmentalists have been engaged in a permanent
peaceful encampment
high in the mountains of the Mindo Nambillo Cloudforest
Reserve to
stop construction of Ecuador's new heavy crude pipeline.
Several
activists have been climbing trees and building platforms
and about 20
others are chained to the base in order to ensure that
construction
crews for the 300-mile pipeline, known as the OCP, do not
enter the
protected area. Road building crews have reached the edge
of this
globally significant ecosystem forcing activists to begin
an
encampment of tree sitters. Unconfirmed local reports
indicate that
the police may be forcibly evicting the demonstrators in
the next
several days.
Faced with escalating protests and tree sitters
determined to stay
perched for months, OCP announced yesterday that it would
abandon
construction works in the Mindo cloud forest until the
end of the
rainy season in April. Since September, activists have
repeatedly
blocked construction crews and effectively slowed the advance
of
construction works in this contested part of the route,
counting on
the rainy season to buy more time for the endangered
Mindo cloud
forest.
While construction on the remaining portions of the OCP
route
continues, the Mindo protests were cited as a factor in
the
consortium's decision to temporarily suspend construction
in the
region. Environmentalists say there is another reason:
the consortium
is worried about their financing.
"It is obvious that the OCP consortium did not want
bulldozers
battling tree sitters at the very moment when the
company's $900
million loan is in jeopardy in Germany. This is a
significant factor
in OCP's announcement that construction is being
suspended in Mindo,"
said Yvonne Ramos of Acción Ecologica.
Called by the state government of North Rhine Westphalia
(NWR), the
hearing is set for January 14. At the hearing, lawmakers
will review
mounting evidence that Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB),
of which NWR
holds a 43 percent interest, has violated its own lending
policies by
syndicating a $900 million loan to the OCP project. NGO
experts will
testify on how the project violates minimum environmental
guidelines
set by the World Bank. According to WestLB, adherence to
World Bank
standards is a "prerequisite for any financial
involvement of WestLB
in the project."
In recent months, debates about WestLB's role in the
project have
raged within the Bank and in the State Parliament of NWR,
leading to
strong denouncements from Green Party members and
officials including
the Prime Minister Wolfgang Clement and State Minister of
Environment,
Baerbel Hoehn.
"We're calling on the NWR parliament to ensure that
WestLB does not
contribute to the irreversible loss of endangered
ecosystems. We urge
the bank to cancel this loan immediately," said
Atossa Soltani of
Amazon Watch.
The pipeline is setting off an unprecedented boom in new
oil
investments --- over $2.5 billion over the next five
years from oil
exploration, drilling, feeder pipelines, refineries, and
related
processing facilities. Much of the crude needed to feed
the pipeline
lies beneath national parks and indigenous lands in
pristine
rainforests. Prominent Ecuadorian and international
environmental and
human rights organizations are calling for the
cancellation of the OCP
project and a moratorium on all new oil exploration in
the country's
ecologically and culturally sensitive rainforests.
Building on tactics used in forest defense in the U.S.
and Canada, the
planned tree occupations in Ecuador is the first of its
kind in South
America. A statement follows from Julia Butterfly Hill,
known
worldwide for her two year long tree sit atop a
threatened 2000-year-
old redwood tree in northern California.
###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###
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