SATIIM

Seismic trails used for poaching

2011-11-25T10:04:00.001-08:00

Oil exploration in theSarstoon Temash National Park (STNP) is helping poachers extractnatural resources, a SATIIM/Belize Defence Force (BDF) patrol hasdiscovered.

Since the seismictrails have been opened up, remnants (trunks and pieces of timber) ofillegal logging and hunting activities were observed, and thepoachers have cut smaller trails from the seismic lines to areasfurther into the park.

SATIIM rangers andBDF personnel departed Punta Gorda on November 15,2011, for a 4 day monitoring mission of the STNP. On this trip theyencountered US Capital Energy operations in full rig: seismic linescut, workers drilling, boats travelling up and down the rivertransporting workers, etc. The seismic lines, which originate fromthe banks of the Sarstoon River, cut right across the park. One ofthe first lines cut on the Temash River has been flagged with tapesand the mangroves have been cut clean about 10 feet from the river’sedge. Other seismic lines were flagged and cut straight to theriver’s edge leaving no buffer.

Gangs of illegalloggers are informed of SATIIM patrols via radio and are then able touse seismic lines to reach the river and escape to Guatemala by boatwithout being apprehended. SATIIMhas called on the Belizean government to make US Capital Energy coverthe cost for SATIIM to monitor and patrol the seismic lines which cutacross the park, coming from the international border and providingopen access to poachers and illegal hunters and loggers. This willhelp to ensure that these seismic lines will in fact not becomehighways for the Guatemalans to come and extract our preciousresources inside the park.

Due to the clear evidence of poaching, SATIIM is requesting that seismic testing activities are suspended until it is agreed how the impacts would be mitigated. SATIIM also suggests that an environmental assessment of seismic testing in the STNP should be conducted to identify potential impacts and recommend mitigation measures prior to the continuation of seismic testing.

Illegallogging discovered during the SATIIM/BDF patrol of the park

Seismictrail making an escape route in the park

USCapital Energy drilling a seismic line in the park

Seismictrails cut to the river's edge allow easy escape
routes forGuatemalan poachers

2011-11-08T14:11:00.000-08:00

“End the Secrecy!” – SATIIM Demands Explanation for US Oil Company’s Return to National Protected Land

*Government ignores local communities requests for information

*Defies historic Supreme Court ruling based on country’s constitution and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM) calls all those who care about Belize’s biocultural diversity demand that the government explain what an oil company is doing on protected land.

On October 25 SATIIM learned that the American oil company, US Capital Energy had suddenly re-appeared on protected and Maya land -- without prior notice or consent of the communities.

According to reports, the oil company has been operating for over a week inside the Sarstoon Temash National Park (STNP) in Southern Belize. While the park is officially co-managed with the surrounding Q’eqchi Mayan and Garifuna villages, the government never informed SATIIM that a permit had been issued. The company is wasting no time -- a truck equipped for seismic drilling has already arrived along with a drill-ready tractor. Trees were cut for two seismic lines in Sunday Wood village, with rumors of plans to cut more in the village of Crique Sarco.

This is merely the latest ‘surprise’ in a shameful history of secrecy that began one morning in 1997. Five Indigenous communities in Southern Belize woke up to learn that the government had declared their ancestral land a national park in 1994. Ever since, these communities have struggled to defend their land at every turn.

Notably, in 2006 they won a temporary injunction against seismic testing in this protected area, where an entirely new ecosystem was recently discovered. Another ruling from the Supreme Court confirmed Maya rights to land and resources and Belize’s obligation to conform to international standards of informed consent established when it signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007.

Nonetheless, the government has kept all dealings with US Capital Energy secret. SATIIM asked for information in several letters to the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Chief Forest Officer. The government has ignored each one.

When SATIIM met with Indigenous leaders Monday 7 November, all villagers expressed outrage and growing concerns that the government and the company did not inform them about the seismic activities. SATIIM demands that the government respect: 1) the rule of law; 2) environmental justice; 3) economic equality; and 4) its obligations under UNDRIP and legal rulings by Belize’s highest courts.

Most of all, SATIIM demands the government end the secrecy around US Capital Energy’s new operations in Southern Belize. SATIIM and the Indigenous communities have agreed to use any means necessary to bring the government and company in compliance with national and international law.

Another voice on sustainable community forestry

2011-09-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

John Makin, committee chairman...

2011-09-09T15:18:00.001-07:00

Listen to SATIIM board member and Conejo resident Manuel Caal talk about his village's sustainable community forestry initiative and fight for land rights:

Quilting for the Forest in Midway, Belize

2011-08-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

This summer, 13 women in the Q'eqchi Mayan village of Midwaygathered regularly to embroider quilt panels depicting flora and fauna of theSarstoon Temash National Park, beside which they live. The quilt project is acollaboration between SATIIM, the women of Midway, and the Washington, DC-basedAdvocacy Project. The panels will be sewn into a quilt by a group in DC, thendisplayed around the US to raise awareness about the park and threats to it,like deforestation and oil exploration. Ultimately, the quilt will be sold tobenefit the women who made it.

IACHR Highlights the Importance of Respecting Indigenous Peoples' Right to Prior Consultation

2011-08-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

From Amazone Watch:
IACHR
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | August 9, 2011
For more information, contact:
Caroline Bennett, 415-487-9600 x327 or caroline@amazonwatch.org

Washington, DC – On the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) highlights the importance of indigenous and tribal peoples' right to prior, free and informed consultation with regard to decisions that may affect them.

As the organs of the Inter-American Human Rights System have reiterated, States must guarantee that indigenous peoples are consulted on all matters that may affect them, taking into account that this consultation must be aimed at reaching agreement with regard to the administrative or legislative actions that have an impact upon their rights.

The right to consultation, and the corresponding State duty, are linked to several individual and collective human rights. Apart from being a manifestation of the right to participation, the right to be consulted is fundamental for the effective enjoyment of indigenous peoples' right to communal property over the lands they have traditionally used and occupied, and is also directly related to the right to cultural identity, insofar as these peoples' culture may be affected by the State decisions that concern them.

The right to prior consultation is especially relevant for the conduction of development or investment plans or projects and for the implementation of extractive concessions in ancestral territories, given that said plans, projects or concessions, in undermining the natural resources that are present therein, can affect the survival and cultural integrity of indigenous peoples and their members. The effective participation of indigenous peoples through their own institutions and distinctive forms of organization is required before the approval and implementation of these plans, projects or concessions, as a guarantee of their individual and collective survival, as explained by the IACHR in its Report on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples' Rights over their Ancestral Lands and Natural Resources.

The IACHR calls upon the States of the Americas to adopt the domestic legal measures required to recognize, and especially to enforce indigenous peoples' fundamental right to prior consultation and -in the cases defined by inter-American jurisprudence- to prior, free and informed consent, with regard to decisions that may affect their rights or interests.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has a mandate to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the OAS in this matter. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who are elected in a personal capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who do not represent their countries of origin or residence.

Oil Spills Inspire Bipartisan Surprise on Federal Pipeline Safety Reforms

2011-08-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

Some in the US might be waking up to what it takes, short of an all-out ban, to protect against oil spills. How about in Belize?

From SolveClimate News:

Three bills moving through Congress would significantly strengthen federal oversight for pipelines like the proposed Keystone XL

By Elizabeth McGowan

Aug 12, 2011

WASHINGTON—A series of headline-grabbing ruptures along the nation's 2.5 million-mile network of oil and gas pipelines is prompting a rare attempt at bipartisanship. Democrats and Republicans seem equally intent on significantly beefing up the pipeline safety standards that might have prevented some of these spills.
The timing of the legislation they're considering is especially vital because the State Department is in the midst of deciding whether a Canadian company should be allowed to expand its U.S. presence by building a $7 billion pipeline through the Ogallala Aquifer and other fragile landscapes in the nation's heartland.
TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline would pump millions of gallons of diluted bitumen —a particularly dirty grade of heavy crude — 1,702 miles from the oil sands mines of Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Three bills — two Democratic measures in the Senate and one cross-party initiative in the House — are now circulating. All of them would give federal regulators a bigger hammer to prevent pipeline leaks and accidents. Provisions include studying how diluted bitumen affects a pipeline's structural integrity, improving leak detection technology, increasing inspections, requiring steeper penalties for violations and mandating advances such as automatic shutoff valves and excess flow valves.
One unusual development is that industry groups and environmental and public interest advocates seem heartened by what they are hearing and seeing on the legislative front. ThePipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Wash.-based nonprofit whose sole mission is promoting fuel transportation safety, is also satisfied with where Congress is headed.
The Trust's executive director, Carl Weimer, and others from his organization have spent hours testifying before congressional committees.
"Before the rash of pipeline tragedies in the last 15 months, we'd be happy to have three of the 12 items on our laundry list in a bill," Weimer told SolveClimate News. "But this time around we've got most everything on our list in these bills.
"We're kind of surprised. We thought Sen. Frank Lautenberg's bill would be the high-water mark and things would go downhill in the House," he said, referring to the first bill introduced this session. "But in reality, by the time they got done with the House bill, in some ways it is stronger than the Senate bill."
Weimer says that a muscular law could emerge relatively quickly if another anticipated House bill doesn’t gum up the process — as it well could — and if legislators are judicious enough to combine the strongest pieces from each bill.
A Brief Look at the Bills
Lautenberg of New Jersey teamed up with fellow Democrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia in February to introduce the Pipeline Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2011. In addition to provisions that focus on studying diluted bitumen, improving leak detection and requiring advanced shut-off technology, it would authorize the hiring of additional pipeline inspectors and give pipeline operators deadlines for notifying local and state officials and emergency responders about accidents and leaks.
In early May, the measure passed the Democratic-majority Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which Rockefeller chairs. Lautenberg is chairman of the subcommittee that handles surface transportation. It is now awaiting a vote on the Senate floor.
The latest entry on the Senate side, the Clean Rivers Act of 2011, is co-sponsored by Montana Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester. It was rolled out just a week ago, less than a month after a ruptured Exxon Mobil pipeline spilled an estimated 50,000 gallons of oil into Montana's Yellowstone River. That Silvertip pipeline reportedly carried both conventional and oil sands crude.
In addition to upgrading oil spill response plans, the Baucus-Tester bill would update leak detection standards and require federal regulators to pay extra attention to pipelines sited near waterways. If TransCanada’s Keystone XL plans are approved, a section of 36-inch diameter pipeline would be buried in the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides most of Nebraska's drinking and irrigation water.
Over in the Republican-majority House, Rep. Fred Upton — the same Michigan Republican backing legislation that would force the Obama administration to give a "yea" or "nay" to Keystone XL by Nov. 1 — has teamed up with another Michigander, Democratic Rep. John Dingell, to cosponsor the Pipeline Infrastructure and Community Protection Act of 2011.
Environmental organizations are invigorated by the heft of the bill that Upton, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee, co-crafted with Dingell, former chair of the same powerful committee.
The bill was at least partially inspired by a spill last year that fouled Michigan's Kalamazoo River with more than 800,000 gallons of heavy crude from oil sands. The Environmental Protection Agency recently realized the extent of that contamination is more far-reaching than initially thought. The pipeline that leaked is part of the Lakehead system operated by Canadian-based Enbridge Energy Partners. Both conventional oil and diluted bitumen are shipped through that system, which stretches from the Canadian border through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.
"This bill demands improvements in both technology and personnel that can help prevent leaks from occurring in the first place and reduce the damage if they do," Upton said before the July 27 vote on his bill. "This is a subject with a long and bipartisan history ... and I look forward to additional improvements as we move forward."
His committee's subpanel on energy and power passed the Upton-Dingell measure in late July.
Industry on Board
Although the industry hasn't been particularly vocal about the evolving legislation, it seems to have accepted the fact that some sort of bill is going to be passed.
Andy Black, president of the Washington-based Association of Oil Pipe Lines, told SolveClimate News that Lautenberg's bill offers a sound foundation for whatever legislation emerges. Black's group deals solely with pipelines that transport liquid fuels.
"We don't think any of these bills is perfect," he told SolveClimate News. "But we're glad they're moving forward."
Weimer said the American Petroleum Institute, the Interstate Natural Gas Association and other influential trade associations are also rallying around the proposed legislation.
"Their message has been that these bills are all right and something they can live with," he said. "They're saying, let's get legislation passed. I think they want this over sooner rather than later."
Diluted Bitumen Study a Priority
Both the Lautenberg-Rockefeller and Upton-Dingell bills authorize a study of diluted bitumen and require the pipeline regulatory agency — the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — to use that study to decide if its current rules are strong enough.
"We see this as a very good starting point," the Natural Resource Defense Council's oil sands specialist Susan Casey-Lefkowitz told SolveClimate News. "It's really important that we know what is in those pipes and how it might affect those pipes."
TransCanada has repeatedly described oil from the Alberta mines as no different from other heavy crude the United States already imports.
However, a scientific report that the NRDC and other groups issued in February said Canadian diluted bitumen is a raw and thick form of oil that is significantly more acidic and corrosive than standard oil. It said it requires increased heat and pressure to move through pipelines and that it’s more difficult to clean up after a spill.
The researchers noted that the chemical composition of diluted bitumen — it has five to 10 times as much sulfur as conventional crude and contains more chloride salts — can weaken pipelines and make them susceptible to breaking during pressure spikes. They also found that the quartz sand and other solid material in diluted bitumen basically sandblasts pipe interiors.
Casey-Lefkowitz, who directs NRDC's international programs, said these findings show that the transparency and public information provisions in any final law must be particularly strong.
Refiners, pipeline companies and oil firms already know what type of oil is flowing through all of the nation’s pipelines, she said. Local communities, emergency responders, government officials and cleanup crews should have access to the same information, she added.
Weimer, with the Pipeline Safety Trust, said he was surprised by how receptive Republicans members of the energy subpanel were to the Upton-Dingell bill’s stipulation that diluted bitumen go under the microscope. He said he expected more pushback on the idea of a comprehensive study.
"I didn't expect that reaction, that they'd actually speak up in support of the study," he said.
Ideally, Weimer said, the study would be completed before Keystone XL is built. That might not be possible, however, because the State Department has said it will reach a decision by the end of this year. Due to the international nature of the project, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is tasked with granting a thumbs up or thumbs down to TransCanada’s request for a presidential permit.
"A part of the precautionary principle is that you ought to know if something is safe before you approve or build a pipeline to carry it," Weimer said. "That study ought to help answer those questions."
While pipelines are considered a safer mode of transportation than other options for moving gas and liquids, records show that close to 40 pipeline incidents each year since 2006 have resulted in a fatality or injury.
TransCanada Defends 'Heavy Crude'
The U.S. portion of a diluted bitumen pipeline that TransCanada has already constructed — known simply as Keystone — has leaked at least a dozen times since it opened in June 2010.
That pipeline, which sends oil from Alberta to its southern terminus in Cushing, Okla., and its eastern terminus in Patoka, Ill., is phase one of a Keystone infrastructure that TransCanada envisions pumping up to 900,000 barrels of heavy crude daily.
TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said the crude oils destined for the Keystone system are not unique.
"[They] are similar to those already being transported and processed by other pipelines and refineries across the United States," he said in an e-mail to SolveClimate News.
Cunha emphasized that TransCanada has already agreed to go above and beyond the current industry norm when building Keystone XL by agreeing to 57 safety conditions that the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, laid out after spills on its Keystone pipeline.
But watchdog groups say PHMSA's current safety measures aren’t strong enough to guarantee that the pipeline won't spring undetected leaks and that the new legislation is needed to prod PHMSA to bolster its rules.
Fly in the Ointment?
One development that could complicate the effort to pass new pipeline safety legislation is a bill that's expected to emerge from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) chairs that committee.
Black said his trade group expects Mica's committee to have a bill ready sometime in September. Mica's office didn't respond to emails and phones calls from SolveClimate News.
Weimer said committee members assured him at a recent meeting that they would take a bipartisanship approach. However, Weimer said some Republicans hinted that the bipartisan Upton-Dingell bill stretched "too far."
"We fully expect that bill to be weaker but how it is incorporated into the whole mix will be fascinating," Weimer concluded. "I just hope we don’t take a step backward."
From the Mouth of a Landowner
Landowners living along the proposed route of Keystone XL are seconding the notion of moving forward.
Sandy Barnick and her husband operate a ranch in Dawson County, Montana. They support the strongest federal legislation possible because TransCanada’s existing pipelines don’t have a stellar track record, she said in an e-mail to SolveClimate News.
"Safety provisions should not be voluntary," she said. "Unfortunately it has taken multiple disasters to make our government realize that this is an important issue. As landowners ... who rely on the land to make our living, and who did not ask for this pipeline, and who are likely to be condemned by the company so that they can build it, we deserve fully adequate safety protections."

Forest Guardians

2011-08-10T07:59:00.001-07:00

Watch SATIIM rangers and Belize Defence Force (BDF) soldiers conduct a bi-weekly 3-day patrol of the Sarstoon Temash National Park, Toledo, Belize. A group of only five rangers is responsible for almost 42,000 acres of wilderness, which is threatened by hunters, poachers, loggers, and an American oil company conducting seismic tests there. A rotating crew of four rangers and two BDF conduct these patrols every two weeks when funding permits. The Belizean government provides the soldiers, but the fuel, ranger salaries and all other expenses come from SATIIM.

Nigeria oil cleanup could take 30 years, U.N. says

2011-08-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

Lagos, Nigeria (CNN) -- Restoration of Nigeria's environmentally devastated oil-producing Niger Delta region could take up to 30 years, cost $1 billion and become the largest cleanup operation in history, the United Nations said Thursday.

A landmark report from the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP) concluded that pollution from more than 50 years of oil operations in Nigeria's Ogoniland region is more far-reaching than thought. The assessment, commissioned by the Nigerian government and funded by oil giant Shell, comes on the heels of the company admitting liability for two spills in Nigeria.

Nigeria's Niger Delta, the world's third largest wetland, is diverse and rich with mangroves and fish-rich waterways. But oil drilling has turned it into one of the most oil-polluted places on Earth with more than 6,800 recorded oil spills, accounting for anywhere from 9 million to 13 million barrels of oil spilled, according to activist groups.

But the environmental disaster has never received the kind of attention paid to last year's oil catastrophe along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Amnesty International, which has researched the human rights impacts of pollution in the Delta, said people in the region have experienced oil spills on par with the Exxon Valdez disaster every year for the last half century.

Many residents make their livelihoods from fishing and are dependent on the polluted mangroves and creeks.

"This report proves Shell has had a terrible impact in Nigeria, but has got away with denying it for decades, falsely claiming they work to best international standards," said Audrey Gaughran, the monitoring group's global issues director.

In a statement issued Thursday night, Shell said the two spills to which it has admitted liability amounted to about 4,000 barrels. The statement from Mutiu Sunmonu, managing director of Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, blamed most of the spills on sabotage or attempts to steal oil.

"It is regrettable that any oil is spilt anywhere, but it is wildly inaccurate to suggest that those two spills represent anything like the scale which some reports refer to," Sunmonu said. He called on the Nigerian government "to end the blight of illegal refining and oil theft in the Niger Delta."

In a 2009 report, Amnesty cited independent environmental and oil experts in estimating that between 9 million and 13 million of barrels had leaked in the five decades of oil operations in the Delta. It also quoted U.N. figures of more than 6,800 recorded spills between 1976 and 2001.

Oil companies operating in the region believe the figures are exaggerated.

In the 1990s, Shell was forced to stop operating in Ogoniland after mass protests against the lack of investment and environmental damage culminated in a military crackdown.

Then, a special tribunal found Nigerian writer-activist Ken Saro-Wiwa guilty of complicity in the murders of four Ogoni chiefs. The government executed him and other activists in a move widely condemned internationally.

Shell last year paid $15.5 million in an out-of-court settlement in a civil case brought by members of Saro-Wiwa's family and others.

Now Shell has accepted responsibility for two oil spills in 2008 and 2009.

The Bodo fishing community sued Shell in Britain alleging that oil spills in 2008 and 2009 had destroyed the environment and ruined the livelihoods of 69,000 people.

Martyn Day, who represents the Bodo people, said cases like this one languished in the Nigerian court system for years, if not decades. That's why the claim was brought in London, Day said.

"In the end there was no resolution, no compensation and there was no cleanup," Day said.

He said Shell could have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

The U.N. assessment team examined more than 200 locations over a 14-month period for the assessment.

Among its findings:

-- Some areas that appear unaffected at the surface are in reality severely contaminated underground.

-- In at least 10 Ogoni communities contaminated water has seriously threatened public health.

-- In one community, at Nisisioken Ogale, families are drinking water from wells contaminated with benzene, a carcinogen, at levels over 900 times above World Health Organization guidelines.

Individual contaminated land areas in Ogoniland can be cleaned up within five years, the report said. But heavily affected mangroves and swamplands will take up to 30 years.

Before any clean-up can begin, the report said, ongoing contamination has to end.

CNN's Christian Purefoy contributed to this report.

$35 Billion of Oil Plus an "Uncontacted" Tribe Equals Coverup

2011-08-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

Sunday 31 July 2011

by: David Hill, Truthout | Report

What do you do if you want to build a pipeline to move 300 million barrels of oil but an "uncontacted" tribe is in the way? Employing consultants who claim they don't exist certainly helps.

On July 22, Peru's Energy Ministry [3] gave the green light to Anglo-French company Perenco to build a pipeline in a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon that was described by one US scientist as, "the most biodiverse area in South America." [4] Perenco is operating in an area between the Napo and Tigre riversknown as Lot 67 [5], the first oil concession created in that region and initially licensed to US-based Advantage Resources in 1995.

Earlier in 1995, to the southwest of Lot 67, Peru went to war with Ecuador in a dispute over their borders. The fighting was once described by Bill Clinton as,"the longest running source of armed international conflict in the Western Hemisphere." [6] It dated back to independence in the 19th century, but the stakes had been raised by the prospect of valuable natural resources below the soil. During the conflict in the 1990's, Peruvian troops at one military post in the Napo-Tigre region refused to patrol in small groups. Scared of the Ecuadorians? Actually, it was the no contactados they were scared of: indigenous people who lived without regular contact with outsiders. Some years later, in 2002, two Peruvian soldiers glimpsed two of these no contactados - or "calatos" (naked people), as they're sometimes called - and were so alarmed that they bolted, lost their bearings and spent the next 13 days wandering about the rainforest until rescued by colleagues.[1]

The soldiers aren't the only ones to have seen or found evidence of the no contactados in this region. Local indigenous people and mestizos, loggers, fishermen, anthropologists - all have stories to tell.[2]

Numerous Peruvian government institutions have acknowledged the no contactados in this region too, including the Energy Ministry, [3] Health Ministry [7], the Natural Resources Institute,[4] the Indigenous Affairs Institute (INDEPA) and the national ombudsman.[5] "It has been proven that isolated indigenous people live in this zone," INDEPA stated in a letter to the Energy Ministry in 2007.[6]

Even Ecuador's government has followed suit, with a promise to allocate $38,000 to fund a "bi-national" plan to protect the no contactados in this region.[7] Indeed, Ecuador's famous "Yasuni-ITT initiative" [8] to forgo exploiting millions of barrels of oil in rainforest inhabited by no contactados in return for billions of dollars in compensation is so close to Lot 67 and Lot 39 [5] - which was created in 1999 and surrounds Lot 67 - that some no contactados, not recognizing national borders, appear to move between both regions [9] - that is, between an area one government has said it is willing to protect and another where the government intends to do the exact opposite.

At first, the oil companies seemed to agree. In 2003, Spanish multinational Repsol-YPF, operating in Lot 39, held a public workshop titled, "The no contactados" during which, according to a record of the meeting signed by a Repsol-YPF representative, the company agreed to prepare a response plan in case its workers made contact with the no contactados.[8] One subsequent plan was submitted to the Energy Ministry and listed a series of recommendations - some bizarre, others dangerous - to its workers. They included: 1) "Use a megaphone to inform the natives in the local languages why we are there and that it is not the company's intention to interfere with their activities" and 2) "Explain to them their vulnerability to Western diseases and the risk they run of getting ill and infecting others in their group which could kill them."[9]

Likewise, Barrett Resources, which had taken over Lot 67, acknowledged the existence of the no contactados and recommended megaphones to communicate with them, [10] a move slammed by Peru's national indigenous organization, the Interethnic Association of Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (known by its Spanish acronym, AIDESEP), as "farcical." [10]

"Workers will probably come across these uncontacted people," Barrett admitted in its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), [11] after announcing, in late 2006, that the oil deposits in Lot 67 were commercially viable and Peru's president, Alan Garcia, had paid a visit to the site to celebrate.[12]

But then things changed - dramatically. AIDESEP had long opposed the companies' operations by demanding this region should be made off limits and turned into a reserve,[13] and now it stepped up its opposition by filing a lawsuit against the companies [11], appealing to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights [12] and making increasingly frequent public statements. International organizations joined the fray, too. Survival International [13], where I worked at the time, launched a high-profile media campaign in 2007, while US-based Amazon Watch and Save America's Forests issued the starkest possible warning to Anglo-French company Perenco when, in early 2008, it announced it had taken over Barrett and Lot 67 [14]: "You are Inheriting a Potential Disaster in Peru. [15]"

What was all the fuss about? First, that under international agreements and norms such as the International Labor Organization's Convention 169 [16] or the United Nation's (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [17], neither Perenco nor Repsol-YPF has the right to operate in Lot 67 or Lot 39. Second, as Repsol acknowledged in its response plan, the no contactados, because of their lack of immunity to outsiders' diseases, could be decimated by contact with any oil company employee - or, indeed, any outsider.

The companies responded by doing U-turns: they started to cast doubt on the no contactados' existence, or to deny it outright. Perenco estimates at least 300 million barrels of oil, worth about $35 billion at current prices, lie in the Napo-Tigre region, and Repsol-YPF, partnered by ConocoPhillips until recently [18], will be hoping large deposits lie in Lot 39, too. With that kind of money at stake, neither company wants any "naked people" in the way.

Perenco justifies its claims by citing a 137-page report by an environmental consultancy, Daimi [19], a participant in the UN's Global Compact [20], a business initiative supposedly aimed at curbing human rights and environmental abuses. This report, paid for by Perenco, was based on research done by various teams sent into the region by Daimi, including archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, linguists, and biologists, and claims that, "nothing happened and there was no sign of any anthropological character" to suggest there were no contactados in Lot 67.

"No information exists that demonstrates or suggests the existence of isolated indigenous people in the area under investigation," stated Daimi's report, dated September 2008. "Given the lack of proof or traces, it has not been possible to confirm their existence."

But how reliable was Daimi's report, given that Perenco funded it? And what about all the evidence that had been collected in the past?

When AIDESEP proposed a reserve in this region for the no contactados, it had interviewed scores of local people and produced its own weighty report listing all kinds of evidence for no contactados' existence: sightings, gardens, meat remains, shelters, paths, footprints and even crossed spears.[14 ] The local group Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the East (known by its Spanish acronym, ORPIO) followed this up with its own report in 2009, including 23 sworn legal testimonies from local people.[15] It was this sort of material that has permitted so many different individuals and organizations, over the years, to acknowledge the no contactados in this region: not just government institutions like the Energy and Health Ministries, but a long, long list of NGOs and others, including Survival, Amazon Watch, Save America's Forests, The Field Museum,[16] Intermón Oxfam, Rettet den Regenwald [21], Rainforest Action Network [22], Accion Ecologica, Forest Peoples Programme, the International Federation for Human Rights, and representatives from the Environmental Defense Fund, EarthRights International, and the Centre for International Environmental Law.

In 2009, I received a tip-off about a Peruvian anthropologist, Virginia Montoya, who had worked for Daimi, but whose name, for some mysterious reason, didn't appear on its 2008 report. The rumor was she had found evidence of the no contactados, but it had been buried. I tried to contact her, but didn't hear back, and then mentioned the existence of a potential whistleblower to British journalist Marc de Jersey, who, with Channel 4 News, was contemplating a trip to Peru to investigate. Three weeks later, on April 30, 2009, Channel 4 fixer Ines Fisher met Montoya in Peru for "a long chat" and reported via email:

Her team made two expeditions to Lot 67 (in addition, she made another one all by herself), which resulted in the confirmation of traces of tribes. This finding was obviously included in the final overall report delivered to Perenco. Soon after, she found out (someone within Perenco told her) that her part, that is, the chapter in which was explained the finding of traces, was completely deleted from the final report. Even her pictures with objects, and proofs of the traces, as well as other evidence were deleted. Who did this? She says the advisory team of Perenco.

Channel 4 didn't pursue the story, and de Jersey made the trip with Guardian journalist Rory Carroll. On June 30, 2009, I read an advance copy of Carroll's proposed article, due to be published in four days time, on July 4, in The Guardian's Saturday magazine. It described how Carroll met Montoya in her office in Iquitos, the largest town in the region, and her response when he asked if she thought there were no contactados in Lot 67:

"Yes. Yes I do." She hesitated once more, then it came out. "There is no doubt in my mind that there are uncontacted groups there." She had documented evidence, especially pathways. "But it was all edited out. I was really upset when I saw the final report. It didn't lie, the language was technically correct, but it did not reflect my view or that of many colleagues."
Carroll's proposed article also quoted Teudolio Grandez, an anthropologist at Peru's National Amazon University (UNAP) [23] who was cited as one of the lead author's of Daimi's report: "Yes. Certain nomadic groups are there. But they [Daimi] wanted to show that there aren't any. Our conclusion is that there are."

Carroll also spoke to Lino Noriega, described as a forestry engineer who had visited Lot 67 on several occasions. Noriega said: "There were a lot of irregularities in the reports. Besides playing down the damage to vegetation and wildlife, they said there were no uncontacted groups. But there were footprints, signs of dwellings ... Perenco got everything it wanted."
But when the article was published [24], the claims had been toned down. Noriega's “There were a lot of irregularities in the reports. Besides playing down the damage to vegetation and wildlife. . . Perenco got everything it wanted” was removed, and so too was Grandez's “But they (Daimi) wanted to show that there aren't any (no contactados).”

Why such changes? Perenco's lawyers had been getting heavy, that was why. On Friday July 3, less than 24 hours before publication, general counsel Roland Fox had sent an urgent email and fax to The Guardian, saying he was aware of its intention to publish an article about Perenco:

Perenco Peru to date has read with increasing disquiet several completely false allegations made against it. We have taken the view that to take action against the writers of such internet articles is pointless, particularly as we consider that most objective observers would give little credence to their unsubstantiated allegations. However, if a newspaper with the standing and credibility of The Guardian were to repeat these allegations, either directly itself or by quoting those who have made the allegations, we would take a different stance, as we are determined to protect our reputation. I would therefore suggest that a very careful legal review is made of this article.

I continued trying to contact Montoya but still didn't hear back. Later that year, I gave her name to two Belgian researchers, Marijke Deleu and Thomas Quirynen, who met her twice in Iquitos and whom she told - like Fisher, like Carroll - that she thought there were no contactados in Lot 67:

She says the area of Perenco is used as a corridor for uncontacted tribes that move back and forward across the border with Ecuador. She doesn't want to make any statements ... She told us the stuff DAIMI deleted is history of population in the region (and) photos of paths and testimonies. When we told her about ORPIO, she said she was going to contact them ... She clearly wanted to show off a little, saying she had sooooo many more testimonies (than ORPIO).... She said she was invited by Perenco to talk about the case (and was received by someone pretty high up, I think, I think she mentioned it was a French guy). And this guy was really interested in her work and claimed Perenco never received any of her work from Daimi....

Earlier this year, I flew to Peru hoping to meet Montoya myself. What exactly did her evidence consist of, and would she share it with me? On my first day in Iquitos, by complete coincidence, a public meeting about the no contactados was held at the National Institute of Culture. The meeting's stated aim was to find ways to protect Peru's no contactados, numbering an estimated 15 groups in total, and it had been convened by the Peruvian Amazon's Investigation Institute (IIAP) together with INDEPA. The chairperson? None other than Virginia Montoya [25], now working as the head of IIAP's sociodiversity program.

No mention was made of either Lot 67 or Lot 39, although at one point Montoya said, tellingly, that regions should be made off limits even if only one "uncontacted" person was thought to live there. After the meeting, I introduced myself to Montoya, who said she would be "delighted" to talk and suggested ringing her office on Monday to fix a time. When I called I was told she was traveling and wouldn't be back for several days.

In the meantime, I went upriver to get as close to the action as I could. This wasn't easy: a rapido speedboat from Iquitos to a tiny port downstream, a five minute mototaxi ride on a concrete strip through the rainforest, another rapido for four hours up the Napo river to Santa Clotilde, the town where Repsol-YPF had admitted the existence of the no contactados in 2003, and then, after two nights there, I hitched a lift with a logger, whom I'll call "O," going in the same direction. O's boat was a battered old speedboat with no roof, no protection from the sun or the rain. Just me, O, and two workers of his. We left Santa Clotilde after lunch, spent the night at a Kichwa village, and arrived at an indigenous-cum-mestizo village, Buena Vista, one of the remotest in the entire Peruvian Amazon and one of the closest to Lot 67, late the next morning.

Buena Vista was rumored to be difficult. In the past, residents had gone on record about the no contactados,[17] but after striking deals with the oil companies they were now less prepared to talk. Back in Iquitos, the advice had been, "Don't say you're interested in the no contactados or they won't let you stay."

But one of O's two workers, whom I will call "J," was happy to talk.

"Yes, they're there," he told me, one morning, after I had speculated how dangerous his job as a logger must be: the rainforest, the wild animals, the no contactados.

He told me he had seen them, once, four months before. "Groups of them."

What happened? "Nothing. All very calm. We looked at them and they looked back at us."

What were they wearing? No clothes, but they had bracelets, feathers in their noses, red paint under their eyes, and something around their private parts.

I said I had heard that some people in Buena Vista now claimed they didn't exist. He shook his head and said that was because they "didn't want foreigners coming to try and find them."

J continued upriver and left me in Buena Vista, where I spent almost a week. Evidence of Perenco and Repsol-YPF was everywhere: launches and speedboats going up and down the river, orange jumpsuits hanging on washing lines, helicopters overhead, announcements on the village radio about meetings with company personnel and thank-you's to Perenco, Lego given to the children by Repsol-YPF, sweets and mineral water handed out after church. In one house, there was even a DVD of "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian," which had been given to the family living there, according to the head of the family, by Repsol-YPF's community relations officer. This was eery: Repsol-YPF had given the Smithsonian Institution $635,000 to work in Lot 39, according to The Washington Times [26], and has used this connection to defend its activities there [27].

Sometimes in Buena Vista, the no contactados came up in conversation without me having to mention them. Over lunch one day, my host, Victoria, mentioned a German evangelical missionary, Christian, who had recently built a house in the village.

"He's here to find the Arabelas malas," she said - literally, the "bad Arabelas." Buena Vista was officially an indigenous Arabela village, but many of its residents were mestizos.

Who did she mean? "The people who live hidden, further upriver."

"The no contactados!" her husband chimed in, his mouth full of plantains.

Others in Buena Vista said the same. One evening on the village's main drag, standing around a blaring television, I got talking to an old man, Modesto, who had lived there for years. He was calm until I asked about the no contactados.

"There aren't any, mister!" he cried, suddenly very agitated. "We've got to work with the company!"

He gestured how the seismic lines and the no contactados were in different places.

"This is where the seismic lines are," he said, "and the no contactados are here over the border with Ecuador."

He called them the "no adoptados, the people we don't know much about."

Then he mentioned the missionary. "He's come here to look for them, to talk to them, to teach them."

Back in Iquitos, I tried to meet Montoya again, but I was told she was still away and to ring back. This was becoming the story of my life. What to do? First, find the missionary. Second, track down the 22 people listed as contributors to Daimi's research and 2008 report. If Montoya wouldn't blow the whistle, maybe someone else would?

Finding a missionary named Christian in a city of several hundred thousand people wasn't easy, but eventually, after knocking on random church doors, I found someone who knew someone who knew him and could direct me to his church. Within minutes, I had found out his full name and was speaking to his wife on the phone. She invited me to dinner. Christian mentioned the no contactados before I did, after asking about Buena Vista.

"There are petrol companies up there. There's another tribe up there. I was looking for them ... I want to give them the chance to receive the Gospel," he told me in excellent English.

He was due to travel to Buena Vista very soon. To look for the no contactados? "Yes."

Had the people there ever spoken to him about them? He nodded, as if to say, "Many times."
What did they say? "Years ago, they said they were there. Now, it's not convenient for them."
What did Perenco and Repsol-YPF think of his work? "They don't like it."

Christian said how easily rumors could spread in Buena Vista, and how many there had been about him - for example, that he was "selling information to NGOs."

Information about what? "About the tribe above."

The three lead authors of Daimi's report were almost all equally candid. First I spoke to Grandez, the UNAP anthropologist who had gone into the field with Daimi and had been quoted by The Guardian two years before.

"We found evidence of their existence," Grandez told me in his UNAP office. "There were signs. We never said there weren't any."

Grandez said that, in the most remote village in the region, just upriver from Buena Vista, he had heard how one man, Alejandro, had seen the no contactados - one woman and two children - and had returned home, scared, to tell his wife. Grandez wanted to hear this from Alejandro firsthand, so he visited his house, but he was away, working, and only his wife was in.

"It was nine o'clock at night," Grandez told me. "I called out to her once, twice, three times, and when she opened the door, she asked me what I wanted. I told her. She invited me in, lit a candle, and we began to talk. Her husband had been upriver, she said, and saw several people, all naked, gathering suri grubs."

Did he tell Daimi? Yes, he said, he told Daimi representative Violeta Chamorro, but it didn't appear in the report. There was even more evidence than this, he said, but he didn't have it on hand.

Grandez was especially critical of how little time he had to investigate: five days upriver from Buena Vista, more or less. "It was all so quick. More studies need to be done. For us, as professional anthropologists, it wasn't satisfactory."

Did Daimi deliberately conceal the no contactados' existence? Grandez chuckled and said, "They've come to the conclusion that suits them."

While we were talking, another of the cited lead authors of Daimi's report entered the office. This was Rosa Aguilera Rios, another UNAP anthropologist, who hadn't gone into the field with Grandez but had read a "draft report" about their findings. What did the draft say?
"That some signs of their existence were found," Aguilera replied.

I remarked that Daimí's 2008 report claimed no evidence was found. Aguilera appeared to be unaware of this, pulled a shocked face and appealed to Grandez, on her right, for confirmation.
"Of course," he said.

"You can't say there isn't any evidence for their existence," said Aguilera, who had visited the Napo-Tigre region years before, "because there is evidence. There are people all over that area who have seen them, who talk about them."

Did she think there are no contactados there? "Of course."

She said the man to speak to about the draft was Jose Moscoso Conde, another lead author, another UNAP anthropologist who had gone into the field and shared the same office.

"We didn't see them ourselves, but we found signs," Moscoso told me. "We heard about one sighting and saw broken arrows and cut branches."

He talked in detail about the sighting: how one local man had seen "two people, naked, about 200-300 meters away, a long way away. They realized a mestizo was watching them and fled."
Moscoso said this sighting, along with information about a path or track, camps or fire remains believed to belong to the no contactados, was included in a paper copy draft which he, together with Grandez, signed but which now he didn't have. When I told him Daimi's report claimed no evidence at all was found, he seemed extremely surprised, like Aguilera.

"Our intention was to sound an alert so an area could be created for the no contactados which the companies couldn't enter," Moscoso said.

It was extraordinary: all three lead authors were saying the precise opposite of what Daimi's report claimed. Did other contributors feel the same? Some were in Iquitos, some Lima, others elsewhere. One, whom I will call "A," who did not confirm whether I could use his name or not, informed me that the following evidence for the no contactados was found: "twisted leaves, tracks leading to the river, animal bones and feathers from birds hunted by them, small shacks recently built by them, footprints, fruits from wild trees recently eaten by them...."

A said he had been in Buena Vista and the village upriver, Flor de Coco, for a month, "talking to the Arabela about their uncontacted relatives," then spent another month upriver from there, and then another month along another river. What happened to all this evidence?

"It was all given to Daimi," he said. "We were left with nothing. The videos, photos, recordings ... they have it all."

What did he think of Daimi claiming no evidence was found?

"The final report was dressed up and presented as if no evidence was found in order not to cause any problems for the government ... It makes no mention of what any of the local people told us. They deny it all. Yes, they say there aren't any no contactados, but time will tell.

Which other contributors might confirm that evidence was found? Two people, independent of each other, suggested I speak to Haroldo Salazar Rossi, but Salazar, working for INDEPA, now part of the Culture Ministry, denied it.

"Nothing, nothing was found, no recent evidence, no evidence found," he told me in his office in Peru's National Museum in Lima, although he did point out that they had wanted to visit an area where no contactados were reported to have been seen but it was too far away.

Salazar didn't deny their existence entirely. They had wanted to "do a good job," he said, but there wasn't enough time, meaning large areas weren't visited at all. For example, Lot 39, which completely surrounds Lot 67. For example, the Pucacuro Reserve, a supposedly protected area. In short, Salazar's conclusion was: "It can't be said the no contactados don't exist. You can't say there are or there aren't any."

Linguist Rossana Arbaiza Gonzales, another of the listed contributors, said the same. She cancelled our meeting in Lima, but emailed this: "We only visited half of the places we were supposed to ... Given that, we can neither confirm or deny the existence of isolated indigenous peoples in the areas we didn't go to."

But some of the listed contributors did deny their existence. "Fiction," said archaeologist Ruben Wong Robles in his Lima office. "Total lies," said Klever Oversluijs Quevedo in Iquitos. "No traces were found," said anthropologist Felix Auqui Baygorrea via email from Cusco, although Auqui pointed out the Daimi team had entered the region after seismic tests had already been done. That is, the no contactados might have been scared out of the region before Daimi even got there.

Explaining such differences in opinion isn't difficult. For people continuing to work for Perenco, or in the industry in general, or those who may want to do so in the future, admitting any evidence was found clearly isn't in their interests. Or they may genuinely be unaware that any evidence was found: after all, different teams of people went to different places at different times. When I asked forestry engineer Peter del Risco Torres, who went into the field with Daimi but wasn't listed in its report, about Virginia Montoya, he said he had never heard of her.
"Do you think it's possible that someone found evidence, but you just didn't know about it?" I asked Oversluijs, remarking that although he said no evidence had been found, others disagreed.

"Who said that?"

"Virginia Montoya."

"She saw some footprints," he said dismissively, as if that didn't matter.

Montoya never saw me, though. I tricked my way into her Iquitos office, got her mobile number, and spoke to her. She told me if I flew from Iquitos to Lima, she would meet me. She didn't. She didn't answer her mobile again. I left messages for days running; I texted her; I emailed her: no reply. Not even visiting IIAP's satellite office in Lima helped. There, an IIAP employee rang another number for Montoya and an assistant answered and promised he would ring back later, about four o'clock, with a time the next day, about noon, to meet Montoya. He never did so.

Why wouldn't Montoya talk? Explaining that isn't difficult either. Her employer, IIAP, is a Peruvian government institute within the Environment ministry [28], and the government is so determined to keep Perenco working in Lot 67, it has declared operations there a "national necessity." [29] Second, Montoya, in her IIAP role, is, or has been, working closely with INDEPA [30], anothergovernment institute [31], which has since done its own U-turn from its June 2007 position, and now claims there isn't enough evidence to prove the no contactados exist, after all. Third, IIAPsigned a deal [32] earlier this year with - guess who - Perenco, the stated aim of which is to carry out "biodiversity studies, cultural salvage work, and strengthening of productive activities" in the Lot 67 region.

Not that Montoya was the likeliest to speak out anyway, if her past record is anything to go by. Back in 2003, AIDESEP slammed a report of hers about Peru's biggest gas fields where other no contactados were in danger, describing her as being "extremely well known" for being on the side of oil and gas companies and "bolstering the argument that our isolated brothers don't exist so that oil and gas activities can continue happening."[18] Sound familiar? AIDESEP was so angered by this report, it declared her co-author, Juan Ossio, persona non grata in the Amazon [19], which is ironic given that Ossio is now the culture minister, [33] the titular head of INDEPA, and has been under fire again [34]in recent weeks after revealing new plans [35]making it easier for oil and gas companies to operate on no contactados' land elsewhere in Peru.
A coverup has taken place: none of the evidence found by Grandez, Moscoso, A or Montoya found its way into Daimi's report.

Neither did Montoya's own name. Who else was omitted, and what might they know?

I visited Daimi's office in Iquitos to ask such questions, but they had moved on. Punching their name into Google revealed a (spoof?) Facebook account [36], with a profile photo of a man wearing a balaclava and clutching a laptop and a wad of US dollars.

Currently, Perenco is gearing up to build a more than 200 kilometer pipeline [37]right through the Napo-Tigre region, while Repsol-YPF has recently acquired a new partner in Lot 39,PetroVietnam [38], after ConocoPhillips sold its stake. Now that this cover-up has been exposed, there should be no delay in aborting any such pipeline plans or further exploration and leaving some of Peru's most vulnerable citizens, some of the world's last "uncontacted" people, to live in peace.

If that doesn't happen, they could be wiped out.

Chamorro and IIAP's president, Luis Campos Baca, did not respond to questions about their work in Lot 67.

1. Estudio Técnico: Delimitación Territorial a favor de los pueblos indígenas en situación de Aislamiento Voluntario ubicados en la Cuenca Alta de los Rios Curaray, Napo, Arabela, Nashino, Pucacuro, Tigre y Afluentes, AIDESEP, 2005.
2. Ibid.
3. Letter to Survival International, 17 May 2007.
4. Letter to the Energy Ministry, 29 March 2007.
5. Informe Defensorial 101: Pueblos indígenas en situación de aislamiento voluntario y contacto inicial, Defensoria del Pueblo, 2006.
6. Letter to the Energy Ministry, 5 June 2007.
7. Plan de Medidas Cautelares a favor de los Pueblos Taromenani y Tagaeri, presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 2007.
8. Resumen del Seminario Taller: Promocion de la Actividad de Hidrocarburos en Comunidades Indígenas, 2003.
9. Plan de Contingencia para pueblos indígenas en aislamiento voluntario y/o no contactados, Repsol-YPF, 10 July 2007.
10. Plan de Contingencias Antropólogico para Pueblos Indígenas Indígenas en Aislamiento Voluntario, Barrett Resources, 2007.
11. Estudio de Impacto Ambiental de la Prospección Sísmica 3D del Lote 67, Barrett Resources, 2007.
12. Statement by the Energy Ministry, 17 December 2006.
13. Estudio Técnico: Delimitación Territorial a favor de los pueblos indígenas en situación de Aislamiento Voluntario ubicados en la Cuenca Alta de los Rios Curaray, Napo, Arabela, Nashino, Pucacuro, Tigre y Afluentes, AIDESEP, 2005.
14. Estudio Técnico: Delimitación Territorial a favor de los pueblos indígenas en situación de Aislamiento Voluntario ubicados en la Cuenca Alta de los Rios Curaray, Napo, Arabela, Nashino, Pucacuro, Tigre y Afluentes, AIDESEP, 2005.
15. Fortalecimiento de la Propuesta de Creacion de la Reserva Territorial Napo-Tigre, ORPIO, 2009.
16. Rapid Biological Inventories, 18, Nanay-Mazan-Arabela, The Field Museum, 2007.
17. Estudio Técnico: Delimitación Territorial a favor de los pueblos indígenas en situación de Aislamiento Voluntario ubicados en la Cuenca Alta de los Rios Curaray, Napo, Arabela, Nashino, Pucacuro, Tigre y Afluentes, AIDESEP, 2005. Fortalecimiento de la Propuesta de Creacion de la Reserva Territorial Napo-Tigre, ORPIO, 2009.
18. AIDESEP statement 1 July 2003.
19. Ibid. AIDESEP confirmed Ossio is still persona non grata, eight years later, in a recent statement [39].

UN Habitat lists SATIIM community forestry among promising practices

2011-08-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

2010 Best Practices Database

Building Q'eqchi' Maya Capacity, Flexibility, andAdaption to Climate

Summary:

The Toledo District in southern Belize is hometo the indigenous Maya, living in a region characterized as one of the fewprimary tropical rainforests in the country. The Maya, with a strongconnection to the land, have acted as guardians of the forest for centuries andhave developed extensive knowledge of the forest flora and fauna, sophisticatedfarming techniques, and complex land management systems.

The Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management(SATIIM) was founded in 1997 by indigenous communities (the Garifuna &Maya) to safeguard the ecological and cultural integrity of this region for theeconomic, social and spiritual wellbeing of its indigenous people. Althoughthere are conservation efforts seeking to protect the Sarstoon Temash NationalPark, which SATIIM co-manages with the Forestry Department, little has beendone in relation to sustainable forest management with communities along thebuffer zone.

As such, the main purpose of the initiative was to promoteCommunity-Based Forest Management with Q’eqchi’ communities in the buffer zoneof the Sarstoon Temash National Park, dissuading industrial logging whilebuilding environmental awareness, sustainable livelihoods, and communitymanagement of natural resources.

The project works to diminish the effects of poverty andenvironmental degradation within the rural indigenous communities and habitatsin the Toledo District. The initiative encompasses three elements,including conservation, sustainable-development and income generation. Thecommunities, Santa Teresa and Conejo (with a project in Crique Sarco currentlyunderway), are participating directly in the management and sustainable use oftheir natural resources and rainforests, reducing large-scale logging,preserving the natural ecosystem and protecting species depleted tonear-extinction. It provides an alternative to large-scale deforestation,promoting community-based conservation, autonomy and sovereignty for localdecision-making, and the use and management of resources with the view tofulfill the needs of the communities and all of its members.

Key Dates:

March 2008 – Development of comprehensive work andprocurement plan approved by the Conseration of Central America WatershedProgram (USAID)

March – May 2008 – Development of a Community-based ForestManagement Enterprise with two indigenous communities in southern Belize

March – October 2008 – Development and establishment ofthe first commercial census of community forests

March – October 2008 – Training of community members inReduced Impact Logging (RIL)

Narrative:

SITUATION BEFORE THE INITIATIVE BEGAN

The Toledo District is the poorest in Belize, with a77% incidence of poverty among the Maya. Thus the main problems andissues addressed were poverty and environmental destruction.

Santa Teresa: 260; M: 142 F: 118

Crique Sarco: 293; M: 156; F: 137

Conejo (project currently underway): 196; M: 104 F: 92

ESTABLISHMENT OF PRIORITIES

· To promotedevelopment of a model of community-based sustainable forest managementinSouthern Belize as a conservation and sustainable-development strategy.

· Strengtheningof traditional institutions (social, political and economic) of the Mayacommunity to cultivate their awareness of the effects and capacity to adapt toclimate change through a Community-Based Sustainable Forest Management and Enterprise development(CBSFME) in the communities of Santa Teresa, Conejo and Crique Sarco.

The Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management,as an organization which represents five indigenous communities, worked withtraditional leaders (Alcaldes) and other community members in theprioritization of the project.

FORMULATION OF OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGIES

Communities trained in Sustainable Forest Management(SFM):

· On sitetraining workshops in sustainable management practices

· Standards andregulations developed

· Incorporationof the Community-Based Sustainable Forest Management Enterprises(CBSFME)

Training in technical/administrative issues:

· Training inaccounting and financial systems.

· On siteworkshops on harvesting (includes direct felling, hauling, trails/timber yardsconstruction and transportation).

· On siteworkshops on primary industrialization (includes timber processing, grading andmeasurement).

Development of sustainable forest management plan andannual operational plans following reduced-impact logging principles and SFMcriteria:

· Inventory ofall tree species within the harvest area

MOBILISATION OF RESOURCES

Financial and technical assistance were obtained throughUSAID, WWF (provided technical assistance through USAID), the Finnish Embassy,and the World Bank. SATIIM has a full time Development Officer whoseprimary responsibility is the mobilization of resources for programs andprojects. SATIIM is responsible and accountable for managing allresources on behalf of the communities, and has a full-time Financial Officeron staff.

PROCESS

The initiative is a Maya community-based sustainableforest management and development enterprise: the first and only one of itskind in Belize. The project/enterprise is completely owned andoperated by the Maya communiries of Santa Teresa and Conejo. The enterpriseshave a business plan, articles of incorporation and by-laws that are registeredwith the Government of Belize. SATIIM provided the initial management andbusiness trainings and continues to work with the enterprise in an advisory capacity.All community members are shareholders of the enterprise, holding equal shares.Income from the sale of products produced from the harvesting of timber willpay the salaries of those individuals involved in the harvesting of the timberand transformation to lumber products. Profits from the sale of harvestedtimber and other timber products are reinvested into the enterprise for new orreplacement equipment, twenty five percent is held in trust for communitydevelopment projects and any additional funds are distributed to the shareholders as a dividend. The dividends are anticipated to continue for the lifeof the enterprise and grow in size as the enterprise becomes more efficient andknown throughout Belize for it products.

The project is designed as a sustainable reduced-impactforest management enterprise. GPS mapping determined the size of the harvestingarea to be involved in the project and how best to section (harvesting blocks)to obtain the longest harvesting period and greatest yield per harvestingseason (during the dry season). A Forest inventory and managementplan were created with the assistance of community members and consultants. Atree inventory includes species and size and its GPS location within theharvesting area. Participants were trained in conducting the inventory. Mapswere created and printed to be used in the educational process and forinclusion in the plan.

Community members were trained in Reduced-Impact Logging(RIL). Care is taken to include all trees within each harvest block (regardlessof size or species). An annual census will be taken after each harvestingseason to assess the health of the rainforest and reforest.

RESULTS ACHIEVED

Results:

· Thecommunities have a heightened environmental awareness of climate change and itsconnection to sustainable forest management

· The project ispredicated on the sustainable extraction of timber products through theintroduction of FSC standards and criteria, processes which are designed tominimize ecological impacts, and encourage the improvement of habitat qualityby dissuading large-scale logging, or the pursuit slash-and-burn techniquesthat are precursors to climate change

· Socialbenefits accrued in terms of strengthened livelihoods and community managementcapacities of the CBSFME

· Reduction ofdeforestation due to the CBSFME

· Directincreases in household income amongst project participants and indirectincreases in the overall well being of the community

· Active reforestationprograms ensure that for each tree extracted, seedlings will be planted in itsplace; a practice without precedence in the history of logging in Toledo.

Measured through:

· Recordedattendance and participation at workshops.

· GIS Mapping of(Santa Teresa and Conejo) community managed forest area.

· Registrationdocuments of community-based forest enterprise with the Belize Government

· ManagementPlans from each community presented to the Belize Forest Department

· EnvironmentalImpact Assessment presented to the Belize Environmental Department

· Implementationof operating plans

· Administrativeand accounting system operating

· Financialreports, timber harvesting report, annual operating plan and labor and incomereport

· Inventory ofequipment purchased

· Reports andreceipts on sales of timber products and contracts negotiated

SUSTAINABILITY

The Q’eqchi Maya of southern Belize havesustained an intimate relationship, centuries long, with the rainforests theyinhabit, acting as guardians of the forest. To them, the forest’ssignificance goes beyond the confines of economy and the maximization ofindividual profit, and is closely linked with their cultural identity and localself-determination. The forest represents ways of getting food andshelter, preserving and transmitting knowledge, of conceiving cycles, ofrelating to the environment and of conducting spiritual, family and communitylife. The consequences of uncontrolled development and large-scalelogging have compromised their cultural heritage and natural resources.

As such, SATIIM believes that empowering communities incommunity-based sustainable enterprises, links conservation, indigenousknowledge, and sustainable livelihoods, providing long-term solutions forcommunities addressing poverty, environmental destruction and climate change.The use of reduced-impact logging techniques, seldom if ever used in Belize,is one of the key elements of sustainable forest management. Conservation andsustainability are ensured through select species harvesting and sylviculturetechniques, protecting endangered plants, seeded trees and seedlings. Rotationalcycles guarantee forest recovery and growth, conserving rainforests, whichregulate climate and provide a range of other ecosystem services to humanity.

The project has unlimited potential to be replicated byother indigenous groups who have access (through logging concessions) orcommunal titles to forested areas. Other indigenous villages havebeen contacted to gauge interest in obtaining land titles and developingsimilar community enterprises. SATIIM’s Community-based ForestManagement Project acts as a pilot project, and demonstrates best practices indeveloping reduced-impact logging in other areas of Belize. Thecommunity enterprise has by-laws, internal rules, administrative manuals and astrategic plan, in order to guarantee long-term permanence.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned through the community-based forestmanagement and enterprise development project piloted/pioneered by SATIIM insouthern Belize include the following:

1. It is possible to reconcile Indigenous and forestdependent peoples social, cultural, economic and spiritual needs with sustainableforest management and strengthens their stewarship in both a traditional andcontemporary manner;

2. Indigenous People Land tenure security isfundamental to sustaining progress made to safeguard natural forests;

3. Traditional knowledge enhances themanagement effectiveness of forests.

Lessons from other initiative, including guidelinesregarding successful community forest projectsGuatemala, outline a five plliarapproach:

1) Community organizing;

2) Technical andadministrative training;

3) Development of Forest managementPlans;

4) Reduced Impact logging,and;

5) Traning in negotiatingequitable contracts.

While the legal and political environment differs amongcountries, SATIIM has been able to modify the approach to suit our communitiesrealities.

Related Policies:

Despite not having legal framwork in Belize, SATIIMand our communities have been taking the moral high ground by developingcomprehensive community forest management plans which has been used as anogotiating/lobbying tool by SATIIM and the communities to convince andinfluence government forestry policies. Forestry is currentlydeveloping a new forest policy and no doubt the convincing alternatives offeredby SATIIM and the communities have been a major impetus for policy change. TheDirector of SATIIM, Gregory Ch’oc, is currently advising the Government ofBelize on how to integrate sustainable forest management into a revisednational forest policy.

SATIIM has been at the forefront in promoting responsibleforest management with indigenous Q’eqchi’ villages, and established the twocommunity enterprises, which have acted as pilot projects for other indigenouscommunities in the area. The Maya community of Conejo is currentlyin the project planning stages.

http://www.unhabitat.org/bestpractices/2010/mainview.asp?BPID=2543

a devastating spill you likely never heard of...

2011-07-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

July 23, 2011

http://detnews.com/article/20110723/METRO/107230346

Oil spill cleanup on Kalamazoo River continues a year later

River still shows damage from Enbridge pipe rupture
JIM LYNCH
/ The Detroit News

Marshall — A year after the worst spill in Michigan's history, pockets of oil contamination remain along a 40-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River, and that is still closed to the public.

Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of the underground oil line rupture in Marshall Township that sent 800,000-plus gallons of crude into the surrounding area and, eventually, the river. Oil flowed west down the river, causing problems for a string of communities including Ceresco, Battle Creek, Galesburg, Augusta and Kalamazoo. It brought thousands of local, county, state, federal and privately contracted cleanup workers to the region and drastically altered the way of life for many.

After 12 months of work, isolated problems remain and it's unclear if the river will reopen before the end of the summer. Residents have pulled up stakes and sold their homes to pipeline owner Enbridge Inc. rather than remain in the midst of the cleanup work. Thousands of animals had to be captured, cleaned and released after coming into contact with the oil.

And to outsiders, this area has become synonymous with the spill.

"We're nearly a year into our Enbridge pipeline oil spill response and we can certainly point to tremendous cleanup results," said Susan Hedman, the EPA's regional administrator. "But work continues. It will continue for a number of years."

Despite the turmoil, life in the affected area has settled into something approaching normal, according to many who live here. Enbridge officials said they have removed roughly 90 percent of the released oil. Crews will continue to work to meet deadlines for cleanup that could allow parts of the Kalamazoo River to be open to the public in late August.

The biggest remaining cleanup issues center on collections of submerged oil in three main locations: a dam near Ceresco, a mill pond at Battle Creek and, at the western end of the contaminated stretch, where the mouth of the Kalamazoo River empties into Morrow Lake. The Enbridge crews are trying to meet an Aug. 31 deadline in accordance with an EPA directive.

In addition, Enbridge continues to buy homes along the 40-mile stretch to help the hardest hit families. To date, the company has bought 130 properties.

For its efforts, the company has earned generally complimentary reviews from local and state officials. Marshall City Manager Tom Tarkiewicz recently graded Enbridge's performance as an A.

Not everyone has been as charitable.

More than 100 residents complained of headaches, nausea and vomiting in the weeks after the spill, and the state Department of Community Health plans to study the long-term health impacts from the mishap.

Enbridge also faces a civil lawsuit charging the company with negligence and "strict liability for abnormally dangerous activity." The latter charge could be precedent-setting as it labels simply transporting oil — particularly tar sands oil, the corrosive form that was in Enbridge's line that ruptured — as inherently dangerous.

Company officials estimate the spill will eventually cost $550 million, and Enbridge's insurance carrier will likely cover all but $35 million to $45 million. Losing the case could potentially mean large financial penalties. Last year, the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center estimated Enbridge could be liable for up to $100 million in civil penalties.

But not all of the problems generated by the spill have to do with money.

Many have left homes

Jack Cull's buddies were never far away last year. Whenever the 8-year-old wanted someone to play with, he could hop on his bike in the Squaw Creek neighborhood where three of his best friends were just doors away.

It was a small, out-of-the-way Marshall Township community where everyone seemed to know everyone and Cull's father, Toby, didn't worry much about his son or strangers passing through.

But a branch of the Kalamazoo River — one right near the site of the Enbridge line rupture — passes through as well. In the months following the spill, Toby Cull estimated 17 neighbors opted to sell their houses and leave. That included the families of Jack's friends.

"Now he has nobody here," Toby Cull said. "That's the biggest thing Enbridge can't put a price on — what they've done to our daily lives."

In places like Squaw Creek, with roughly 70 homes, the results of the home-buying program are noticeable. Many houses are obviously empty and certain stretches have a ghost town feel to them. Yet even unoccupied properties are well-maintained and some of the homes have been rented to Enbridge contractors. It's part of the company's efforts to lessen the negative impacts of the spill.

Of the 130 homes purchased, 114 are in Calhoun County where Marshall Township is located and the remaining 16 are in Kalamazoo County.

'Just plain trapped'

Oil spills aren't standard training for assessors, so Robin Kulikowski essentially had to create her own playbook over the last 12 months.

The flood of home purchases by Enbridge has slowed but, to date, the company has bought 64 in Kulikowski's Marshall Township alone. Among its roughly 3,000 residents, those sales could have had a drastic impact on home values and tax rates.

Kulikowski, the assessor for Marshall Township, has worked to keep local residents from taking a hit. She has held the Enbridge purchases out of her annual calculations for the township's assessed property values.

The company, she said, agreed to pay market value for the homes and now takes over as the taxpayer. Market value is higher than most of the homes were selling for at the time she said — something that could have skewed the tax rates.

But Kulikowski's efforts have not eased the worries of some residents, she said.

"People are concerned that when these homes are put up for sale people won't want to buy them because of the oil spill," she said.

Cull said the oil spill has devalued his home — one that was not eligible for purchase in Enbridge's program because it was considered too far from the river.

"You're just plain trapped," he said. "It's going to take at least 10 years for these homes to get their value back."

In addition, there are worries about how Enbridge will sell the homes. If they let the properties go at rock-bottom prices just to be rid of them, values of the surrounding homes are likely to drop.

If they put the homes up for sale at the same time, the market will be flooded, Kulikowski said.

Enbridge officials said they plan to address home sales on a case-by-case basis.

"Enbridge is committed to having no negative impact (on) market values," said Jason Manshum, a company spokesman, in a written response to questions.

"If Enbridge elects to sell a home, we are committed to selling it consistent with current market conditions. In fact, we have received strong interest in Enbridge-owned properties."

Some businesses perk up

Summertime's normal activities — camping, canoeing, fishing and inner-tubing — are not happening this season at Shady Bend Campground. After four decades of operation, the signs on the camp that sits alongside the Kalamazoo River just outside of Augusta all say "Closed for the season."

Mark and Diane LeBlanc have operated Shady Bend for the last 22 years.

"We've been closed ever since the spill took place," Mark LeBlanc said. "But Enbridge has worked with us."

For the most part, few businesses along the affected stretch of the Kalamazoo have been adversely impacted by the spill. Even Shady Bend is likely to survive.

Matt Davis, chairman of the board of the Marshall Area Chamber of Commerce, said only a very small portion of the region's economy is tied to recreation along the river. As such, he said the oil spill has not had a big impact on the local economy.

Enbridge agreed to rent out the LeBlanc's operation for the summer as a river access point for cleanup crews. The LeBlancs said they hope to be open for business again in 2012.

In some cases, however, the spill has been good news. At some point, 2,500 workers were in the region last summer to address spill impacts. At Marshall's Rose Hill Inn bed and breakfast, owner Carol Lehman saw plenty of unfamiliar faces between August and November.

"We had lots of interesting guests for about three months," she said. "At first there were local families forced out of their homes by the oil spill. Then, after a while, we started seeing scientists, Enbridge people, reporters and even a film crew."

Local favorite Pastrami Joe's has two locations — in Battle Creek and Marshall. The spill brought plenty of new people to both restaurants last year. For a few months, owner Mike Caron said, business "probably doubled."

jlynch@detnews.com

(313) 222-2034

Yellowstone Oil Spill Reveals Gaps In Pipeline Oversight

2011-07-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

By MATTHEW BROWN and GARANCE BURKE

07/21/11 05:29 AM ET

BILLINGS, Mont. -- Three weeks after a broken Exxon Mobil pipeline spilled 1,000 barrels of oil into the Yellowstone River, federal officials remain unsure how many pipelines carrying hazardous fuels cross the nation's rivers and streams, nor can they say how deeply those pipelines are buried.

The spill into the Montana river amid historic flooding this month drew attention to what had long been an overlooked part of the nation's energy infrastructure: the presence of pipelines underneath rivers coursing throughout the country. The spill raised concern that other underwater pipelines may have been exposed to debris by high and fast-moving waters that swept much of the U.S. in recent months.

As regulators scramble to gauge what other lines might be at risk, lawmakers from both parties are raising alarms that another spill could be imminent unless the government steps up oversight of the largely self-regulated pipeline industry.

"If we don't know where the (pipelines) are in the ground and how many crossings are under rivers and streams so we can check on them, we're asking for another catastrophe," said U.S. Sen. Jon Tester.

Tester, a Montana Democrat, said he was dismayed that the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration could not immediately provide an inventory of pipeline crossings when he requested the information. "We had massive water this year, make no mistake about that. We need to re-evaluate the impact of those floods on the river crossings," he said.

Pipeline safety officials on Wednesday gave The Associated Press a preliminary estimate of 35,000 river, stream and lake crossings within the country's half-million-mile network of natural gas and hazardous liquid transmission pipelines. They said a review of pipeline crossings in the Missouri River basin in Montana and Wyoming is under way and there are plans to expand that effort nationwide.

But the federal government still can't pinpoint exactly where the crossings are, and has no information about additional spots where smaller gas distribution and gathering pipelines traverse streams, said spokesman Damon Hill.

Federal regulations require that pipelines crossing rivers be buried at least four feet underneath most riverbeds. They can be placed at shallower depths if the soil is rocky. There is no requirement for companies to periodically re-evaluate the original depth.

Flooding rivers can scour riverbottoms and expose pipelines to powerful water currents and damaging debris. That's the prevailing theory of what happened to Exxon Mobil in Montana although the investigation into the spill is not complete.

Exxon Mobil had recently examined the Montana pipeline prior to its July 1 failure in response to local officials' concerns that the river bank was eroding amid violent river flows brought on by a record winter snowpack. Yet when another company with an adjacent natural gas line shut down the line over floodwater concerns, Exxon Mobil did not, a decision the company has since acknowledged was a mistake.

A survey conducted by Exxon Mobil last December indicated its pipeline was buried at least five feet beneath the river bottom.

Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton, who chairs the Committee on Energy and Commerce, said he was concerned current depth requirements did not go far enough, particularly in light of recent accidents. Last year, an Enbridge Inc. pipeline ruptured in Upton's district, spilling more than 800,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River.

"The Yellowstone River incident is disconcerting in that it appears the operator and regulators had properly maintained and inspected the line where it ruptured, yet the spill still occurred," Upton said. "My concern is not that regulators are not doing their job, but rather whether or not the proper regulatory requirements are in place to prevent future incidents."

Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. and numerous other witnesses are scheduled to testify at a hearing before the committee on Thursday.

The pipeline safety agency says operators must protect their lines from damage, no matter the depth.

But pipelines that were built and laid in the ground before 1970 – when major pipeline safety rules went into effect – were allowed to remain at their original depth, even if it was less than four feet. Even now, if pipeline operators repairing their pipes find that some segments are too short to meet the depth requirements, the rules let companies keep those segments buried where they are.

One proposed pipeline that would carry crude oil extracted from western Canada's tar sands to refineries in the U.S would cross water bodies 1,904 separate times, including 389 crossings in Montana, 354 in South Dakota, 160 in Nebraska, 368 in Oklahoma and 633 in Texas.

The Keystone XL project – which would run from Alberta, Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast – has drawn fierce opposition from environmental groups who call it an ecological disaster waiting to happen.

"This pipeline would go through the most productive parts of the Ogallala aquifer, the Sandhills region, where there aren't any other oil pipelines," said Anthony Swift, a policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council which wants the government to give the project more rigorous environmental review. "The water table is at ground level in some of that region, so a spill could cause an instant problem."

Pipeline company TransCanada carefully selected each crossing for the Keystone XL project after weighing possible threats of erosion or the potential for floods to scour the riverbed, said spokesman Terry Cunha.

The company plans to place the pipe 25 feet or more below the riverbed at major river crossings, Cunha said.

The furor over the Yellowstone River spill comes 15 years after an even more damaging flood event in Texas in which eight ruptured pipelines spilled more than 35,000 barrels of oil and oil products into the San Jacinto River. More than 500 people were injured when the oil ignited.

That event spurred the National Transportation Safety Board to push for companies to adopt guidelines on how to deal pipeline crossings on flooded rivers. Those guidelines were adopted in 2005.

Former Conoco Pipe Line Co. president Tom Miesner said the guidelines reinforced the industry's longstanding focus on safety.

"No one wants a leak at all, and some of the most expensive leaks are going to be ones that occur in rivers," said Miesner, now an industry consultant and author.

Burke reported from San Francisco.

CAMP 2011: SATIIM talks to kids about the Sarstoon Temash National Park

2011-07-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

Pipeline protesters hit Montana governor's office

2011-07-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

By John S. Adams, USA TODAY

HELENA, Mont. — More than 100 environmental activists from across the country descended Tuesday on the Montana Capitol to demand Gov. Brian Schweitzer rescind his support for the Keystone XL oil pipeline and ExxonMobil's megaload transportation project.

Approximately 70 of those activists filled the governor's reception room, where they pounded homemade drums and chanted slogans such as: "No pipeline, no oil, the Big Sky State's too good to spoil."

Two activists also scaled the flagpoles in front of the Capitol and strung up a banner that read "Pipelines spill, Exxon kills. Big oil out of Montana."

Six activists from the environmental groups Earth First! and Northern Rockies Rising Tide, including one activist from Great Falls, locked their hands together within a mock oil pipeline made of PVC plastic pipe and said they wouldn't leave willfully until Schweitzer met their demands.

Law enforcement officials cut the activists out of the pipes. The group of activists dispersed late in the afternoon after police arrested two men and three women who refused to leave and were chained together.

Group members said earlier in the day that they would not leave until Schweitzer, a Democrat, gave up his support for two major projects related to oil sands development in Canada: the Keystone XL pipeline that would transport Canadian oil sands crude to the Gulf of Mexico; and the "Kearl Module Transportation Project," which would ship about 200 massive Korean-built oil sands processing modules across Montana highways to the Kearl oil sands region in northern Alberta. That megaload project is slated to start later this year.

Schweitzer met with the activists for nearly 20 minutes in the reception room of his office, but ultimately refused their demands.

"I'm not prepared to do that today," Schweitzer said.

Members of the group told Schweitzer that last week's rupture of ExxonMobil's Silvertip pipeline — which poured an estimated 1,000 barrels of crude oil into the Yellowstone River downstream of Laurel — is a prime example of why Schweitzer should "toss big oil out of Montana."

"We feel the Silvertip pipeline disaster on the Yellowstone is just a preview of what's to come if you continue to cater to big oil's interests and turn us into what would essentially be an energy extraction colony," said Missoula resident Max Granger of Northern Rockies Rising Tide, a group that has led protests against the Kearl Oil Sands project and the development of the Otter Creek coal tracts in Eastern Montana.

After listening to the protesters complaints and demands, the governor said he hoped the environmental activists would put their passion toward ending the nation's addiction to foreign oil.

"I will say to you that this country uses an inordinate quantity of hydrocarbons. I would say to you that 25% of all the oil that's consumed in the world is consumed by us — you, me," Schweitzer said.

Protesters cut off Schweitzer several times during the 20 minute meeting before one activist began playing a honky-tonk tune on a piano in the reception room. At that point more than a dozen protesters jumped onto the large meeting room tables and began dancing and chanting.

In a news release, Northern Rockies Rising Tide criticized Schweitzer for publicly chastising ExxonMobil while continuing to promote the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, megaload shipments bound for the Alberta oil sands and other "extreme fossil-fuel projects" throughout the state.

"As the recent ExxonMobil pipeline disaster has made clear, Governor Schweitzer is attempting to turn Montana into an extraction state, while at the same time publicly proclaiming his supposed support for clean energy, protecting the environment and building healthy communities," said activist Erica Dossa of Bozeman. "It's one or the other — you can't be clean and dirty at the same time."

A report released Monday by University of Nebraska-Lincoln engineering professor John Stansbury said that neither TransCanada nor the federal regulators evaluating the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have properly considered the risks associated with the project. Stansbury's report states that TransCanada underestimated the frequency of spills on the pipeline and the severity of the worst-case scenario spills.

TransCanada disputed the report's findings, saying in a lengthy statement that the company has more than 60 years of experience, and that safety is the company's top priority.

Pipeline Spills: Learning from Disaster

2011-07-12T16:09:00.000-07:00

By Amy Bracken

With all the catastrophic oil spills that have happenedaround the world, one might assume that energy companies and regulators havelearned their lessons, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

After every disaster, there’s talk of strict laws,enforcement, and oversight. Talk.Indeed, some good measures are put in place, but they’re undermined by cutcorners. BP surely had an assortment of impressive measures in place when, as aWhite House report concluded, it took cost-cutting measures that increased therisk of a blowout.

But now let’s look at Exxon, since that’s who recentlyspilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude into the Yellowstone River inMontana.

I used to live in Valdez, Alaska – a small town made famousby the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, in which tens of millions of gallons leaked into the Prince William Sound,killing more than 100,000 birds, otters, seals and whales. Working for a localradio station 20 years after the disaster, I interviewed subsistence andcommercial fishermen, hunters and tour boat operators about the tragedy. Somestill teared up talking about the sight of the flailing oil drenched wildlife.

Litigation took so long that many affected by the spill diedbefore seeing any of the compensatory and punitive damages they were owed. Evenfor those who did receive thousands of dollars, what the spill had taken fromthem would be lost forever. After the accident, nearby Native American villagesemptied out. Residents were forced to abandon subsistence lifestyles, join thecleanup effort, and then seek jobs elsewhere, precipitating the loss of alreadyendangered languages and cultures. Families were also casualties of the spill,as instability, unemployment and depression broke up marriages.

Today, Prince William Sound looks pristine again, but tarballs continue to cling to the sand of some beaches, and the herring populationhas never rebounded.

Meanwhile, locals are terrified of another spill – not somuch from another tanker in the Sound as from the pipeline that runs throughAlaska and across precious wetlands upon which moose, bear, salmon, swans, andmillions of shorebirds depend. And there’s good reason to be terrified. Spillsalong other parts of this pipeline are, in fact, a common (and oftenunpublicized) occurrence, with thousands of barrels leaking due to corrosionand accidents.

And then there’s the latest large spill, on the YellowstoneRiver in Montana. The cause of the crack in the pipe under the river is stillunknown, and it took the company an hour to stop the leak. By that time, some42,000 gallons had spilled into the rushing water. With the river flooded, oilcoated lawns, farmland and ponds. Among the affected are fishermen (the riveris known for its fishing), farmers (who use the river for irrigation) andneighbors (who worry about health effects of inhaling fumes from the spill).But the scope and severity of the impact is not yet known. Oil has been foundmore than 270 miles downstream.

Now let’s return to Belize. If such a disaster can happen inthe United States at the hands of one of the world’s richest and largest oilcompanies, what does it indicate about the risks of oil exploration by a smallprivate company in a country like Belize, where laws and enforcement are farmore lax?

Texas-based US Capital Energy(USCE) has been exploring for oil within the Sarstoon Temash National Park,cutting seismic lines that cross both Sarstoon and Temash rivers, and manycreeks. If a spill were to happen in this area, the impact on the nearbywildlife and villages could be catastrophic. The park itself is home tothreatened and vulnerable species, like the West Indian Manatee, the HickateeTurtle, and the Morelett’s Crocodile – all of which could be directly hurt by aspill. This is one reason that the convention on wetlands in Ramsar, Iran,designated the park ‘a wetland of international importance.’ And oil in theTemash would surely spill into the ocean and reach the barrier reef, which liesjust some 50 miles offshore – a small fraction of the distance oil has traveledin the Yellowstone River. Finally, as in Alaska, small, nearby indigenousvillages would be most affected by any harm to this natural environment.

And yet, protection of this precious area is anything butguaranteed. The Belizean government is so blithe to health, safety andenvironmental risks that it didn’t even demand an Environmental ImpactAssessment for USCE to explore there until it was required to by a SupremeCourt ruling (SATIIM vs. Forest Department). It is this very administration,along with the determined but cash-strapped Sarstoon Temash Institute forIndigenous Management (SATIIM), that is charged with protecting the park.

The prospect of oil in one’s backyard can spark theimagination, eliciting hopes of quick development and wealth, an escape fromthe hardship of daily life. USCE might indeed build a swing set or a buildingto house a clinic and bring some computers to a village. It might also providesome temporary jobs and pave a road, but the real long-term and irreversibleimpacts just might be environmental, economic, and cultural devastation.

Corporations and governments might not learn from pastmistakes, but the people who will suffer from them have a responsibility tostudy, learn, and join together to demand their own protection.

For more information on oil drilling and the Sarstoon TemashNational Park, contact SATIIM: www.satiim.org.bz,satiim@btl.net, 501-722-0103, 81 Main Street, Punta Gorda Town, PO Box 127,Toledo District, Belize, C.A.

Bringing the Amazon to Central America

2011-07-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

Sarayaku at the Inter-American Court in Costa Rica

July 11, 2011 | Andrew Miller

Amazon Watch

Overthe past four years as an Amazon Watch campaigner, I have had the opportunityto meet some extraordinary indigenous leaders from around the region. None aremore inspirational, however, than the tremendously savvy, well-organized, andpersistent Kichwa from Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Lastdecade, the Ecuadorian government made the mistake of trying to force oilexploration on the Kichwa, without any prior consultation. When the communitypushed back, the government sent in military forces and the companies usednefarious divide-and-conquer strategies, including inciting violence. This isof course standard across the Amazon. In this case, however, the colludingforces of government and oil companies didn't comprehend how fierce and doggedthe community's resistance would be.

Sarayakuis the model par excellence of how towage a multi-pronged strategy on behalf of the rights of an indigenous people.The foundation is perpetual local-level community organizing, including aneffort to build leadership and involve all sectors of the community. Buildingupon this, they have reached out to allies on national and internationallevels, strengthening a widespread network of support in Ecuador, LatinAmerica, the U.S., and Europe. A third element is a commitment to buildingtheir own in-house technological and media outreach capacities.

Allof this was evident this past week when a significant component of theirinternational strategy – bringing the Ecuadorian state to court before theInter-American human rights system – culminated before the Inter-American Courtof Human Rights in Costa Rica. Because Amazon Watch's Ecuador ProgramCoordinator Kevin Koenig was otherwise busy back in Quito, I was tasked withaccompanying them in San José. Previously, I had met a number of their leadersand organized meetings and media interviews for a delegation when they were inWashington, DC in late 2009.

Bystrategic choice, they turned the Court's hearing room into Little Ecuador,replicating their own dynamic and strengths to the degree possible. First, theybrought an impressive group of community leaders, elders, and children,totaling 18. Then, they invited many indigenous and civil society allies toaccompany them. Of course their lawyers from Fundación Pachamama and CEJIL werethere. Additionally, their entourage included Humberto Cholango, the newpresident of Ecuador's national indigenous alliance CONAIE, a campaigner fromAmnesty International's London headquarters, various other long-time allies,and myself from Amazon Watch.

Sarayakuharnessed the power of media and internet technology to get the word out aboutthe landmark hearing, and to keep their own community members informed abouteach of their activities. Prior to their trip, Sarayaku whiz kid EribertoGualinga produced a short video as a popular introduction to the delegation'splans. They held multiple press conferences, in both Quito and San José, whichgarnered an increasing amount of coverage as the hearings drew near. Thehearings themselves were telecast via the Court's website, and watchedsimultaneously on multiple continents, including within Sarayaku.

OnWednesday, the first day of the hearing, they prepared by dressing intraditional clothing and painting their faces with ceremonial designs. Thegroup marched from their hotel to the Court and performed a ceremonial actimmediately outside, bringing the full spiritual force of their homeland to theLos Yoses barrio of San José. The ceremony involved drumming, dancing, theinvocation of a sacred song by 90-year old spiritual elder Sabino Gualinga, andthe nasal inhaling of tobacco juice. Some 40 people, both friends andfunctionaries of the Court, watched on.

Inthe Court's hearing room, Sarayaku offered four witnesses, each of whomprovided powerful and often emotional testimony. Patricia Gualinga spoke outand served as an interpreter for Sabino Gualinga and Ena Santi, both of whomdelivered their testimonies in Kichwa. Marlon Santi, former president of bothSarayaku and CONAIE, broke down crying after entreating the government torespect the community's rights and to leave them to live in peace.

Thoughnot a witness, Sarayaku President José Gualinga made a statement on behalf ofthe community in the final oral arguments session on Thursday afternoon. Heconcluded stating that "We have always, and will always protect andnurture our Mother Earth, the forest that nourishes us every day. We from theworld of the Kichwa culture are always ready to defend the right to life andthe rights of nature."

Experttestimonies were provided on Thursday morning. James Anaya, the UN SpecialRapporteur for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, spoke at length about thestate of indigenous rights. He noted that, "Unfortunately, today therepersists a line of thinking that continues with the image of the indigenous asa savage, though perhaps not using this word, and uses this image to justifynew acts of undermining indigenous participation. But fortunately, there existsanother line, one of recognition, appreciation, and inclusion of indigenouspeoples. This line of thinking is a threat to the legacy of the history of oppression.This new line manifests itself in new international instruments, like the UNDeclaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and new constitutions likethat of Ecuador."

TheEcuadorian State's arguments were emblematic of how governments attempt todefend their egregious behavior. Some were standard – That oil development isessential to the broader development of the country and that the localcommunities are an obstacle to such. Others were bizarre – that the courthaving issued protection measures for Sarayaku somehow lessened the security ofneighboring communities. Implicit within the latter argument is the notion thatthe Ecuadorian state has pushed that Sarayaku is the perpetrator of violenceagainst their neighbors. This point was made by one of the State's witnesses,David Gualinga, a Kichwa individual who was expelled from Sarayaku 15 years agoand has since had a contractual relationship with oil companies and thegovernment. Bringing a competing indigenous voice to the court is a standardtactic, attempting to demonstrate that there are conflicts amongst theindigenous groups.

JamesAnaya addressed this final point when he noted that many indigenous conflictsare brought on by outside interests.

The broader implications of the Sarayaku case

TheSarayaku case, focusing on events in 2002 and 2003, is really about the futureof the indigenous territories which cover the great majority of the Amazonrainforest. The Correa government is currently in the process ofrepeating the same violations of indigenous rights via expansion of oilexploration throughout the southern Ecuadorian Amazon without the consent ofnumerous affected indigenous peoples. A favorable judgment in this casewould add pressure for the Ecuadorian government to finally enter intogood-faith consultation with affected and vulnerable communities.

TheSarayaku case is emblematic of dozens of other situations across the Amazonrainforest in which governments have promoted extractive industries, includingoil extraction, mining, and mega-dam construction, against the express wishesof local indigenous peoples. A strong judgment in favor of Sarayaku'sclaims would provide additional moral and judicial weight to the Amazon-widedemand for drastically improved protection of the rights of indigenous peoplesand the defense of their environment.

TheCourt's judgment is likely to be made before the end of 2011. As in the caseagainst Chevron, the eyes of the world are closely watching the legal outcomeof the Sarayaku case within the Inter-American human rights system. Whateverthe decision, however, the people of Sarayaku will continue to campaign forrespect of their rights, and Amazon Watch will continue to support them.

Exxon has yet to craft Montana pipeline fix plan

2011-07-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

Tue, Jul 5 2011

* No date for restart as investigation continues

* High river levels hampering investigation of cause

* Refinery at "minimum rates" until secure other supply (Recasts, updates details about spill, adds comments from pipeline company president)

By Kristen Hays and Erwin Seba

HOUSTON, July 5 (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) does not have a definite repair plan yet for the ruptured Montana crude oil pipeline that it shut over the weekend, and company and government officials are still trying to determine the cause of the spill, a top executive said on Tuesday.

The company and state and federal investigators are "working in parallel, looking at both the investigation, trying to determine what happened, as well as possible repair plans," Gary Pruessing, president of Exxon Mobil Pipeline Company, told reporters in a briefing.

"We do not yet have a definitive plan on when we will be able to restart the line," he said.

Exxon estimated that up to 1,000 barrels (42,000 gallons) of oil spilled into the rain-swollen Yellowstone River when its Silvertip crude oil pipeline ruptured late Friday. Exxon said it shut the 40,000 bpd pipeline early Saturday within seven minutes of discovering a pressure loss that indicated a rupture.

High, rushing water in the river was hampering the probe, but Pruessing said the company hadn't confirmed any soiled areas beyond 25 miles downriver.

"River levels continue to be very high, the river is very strong, that does become something we need to consider in trying to get at the actual site where the incident occurred," Pruessing said.

He said Exxon may use directional drilling to reach the rupture site.

"We need to give the experts a little bit of time to determine the safest way to do the repair," he said.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency are investigating the cause of the spill, along with Exxon Mobil and Montana state environmental regulators.

Sherman Glass, global president of Exxon's refining and supply, said the company's 60,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Billings, Montana, was running at "minimum rates" as the shut pipeline is its primary source of crude supply.

Glass said Exxon was working with other refineries in the area to line up additional crude supply, with "some success," and that the plant would have adequate gasoline and diesel for customers "for at least the next couple of weeks."

"We're optimistic that over the next few days we'll line up the crude needed to keep the refinery running. Maybe not at full rates, but certainly running well," Glass said.

Last year Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) experienced two larger leaks from ruptured crude oil pipelines.

Nearly a year ago Enbridge's (ENB.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) 290,000 bpd Line 6B, which runs from Indiana to Ontario, was shut for nine weeks after it ruptured and spilled 19,500 barrels (819,000 gallons) of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River system. The line feeds refineries in Detroit, Toledo, Ohio and several in Canada.

In September Enbridge's 670,000 bpd Line 6A, which feeds Chicago-area refineries as well as the Cushing, Okla. crude oil hub, leaked 6,100 barrels (256,200 gallons) of crude near Romeoville, Illinois, and was shut for about two weeks. (Additional reporting by Anna Driver; Editing by David Gregorio)

2011-07-05T16:34:00.001-07:00

CourtingJustice: Sarayaku v. Republic of Ecuador

July 1, 2011 | Kevin Koenig

Amazon Watch

Ina packed press room in Ecuador's National Congress building yesterday, leadersof Sarayaku – the representative community of Kichwa indigenous peoples at thegateway to Ecuador's Amazon – brought their calls for justice to the country'scapital en route to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in San Jose, CostaRica, where they will testify in the final hearing of their case against theRepublic of Ecuador for human rights violations.

Thecase stems from a variety of rights abuses inflicted upon the community between2002 and 2003 when armed forces and oil workers from Argentine company CGCentered Sarayaku territory – without the permission nor consultation of thecommunity – and began seismic testing activities in search of oil.

"Inthe beginning we did not understand what was happening, it seemed like anightmare; all of a sudden armed forces entered with the petroleumcompany," recalled Sarayaku President Jose Gualinga in a press release."We had always believed that there was a respect for our territory and ourauthorities. The company incited panic, created divisions amongst families andprovoked violence. The impacts are still felt and will be difficult to erasefrom our memory."

Inresponse, Sarayaku waged a historic campaign to defend their lands and keep thecompany out. Met with adamant resistance, the Ecuadorian military and company,in cahoots, sought to break the community by any means necessary. Sarayakumembers were detained and tortured by the armed forces at the CGC oil facility,the military blocked and patrolled rivers in and out of Sarayaku in an attemptto isolate and intimidate the community, and CGC left highly explosive materialused in seismic testing scattered throughout Sarayaku territory.

Thecase has wide sweeping implications for indigenous peoples across the Americas.It is a major, precedent-setting case of accountability – will the governmentof Ecuador be held accountable for egregious rights abuses against its owncitizens? Given that the current administration of Rafael Correa seeks to openup some six million acres of pristine rainforest and indigenous lands to newoil drilling, which includes Sarayaku, a "get out of jail free" cardto the government will only guarantee future abuses.

Alsoat play is the right to consultation regarding "development"activities on indigenous lands. Sarayaku is advocating for the principle andapplication of Free, Prior, Informed, Consent (FPIC). This is essentially theright to say "No" to any proposed project that the community is notin agreement with. A binding decision from the Court on FPIC and itsapplication this will not only set precedent in Ecuador (where there currentlyis no law on consultation though the Constitution guarantees the right to it),but throughout Latin America where indigenous peoples are fighting for thisbasic right.

Accordingto Gualinga, "We do not want oil exploitation in our territory. Wherethere was seismic exploration there are no longer animals, the forest is empty.My people are fighting for their dignity, for reparations of the damagescaused, and for the removal of the pentolite planted in our territory. We hopeto achieve justice, that this never comes to repeat itself."

Staytuned here where we will post updates of the Sarayaku delegation to Costa Ricaand their historic effort for justice. The hearing will be streamed live onJuly 6th (3 pm Costa Rica time) and July 7th (9 am Costa Rica time) at www.corteidh.or.cr.

Theroughly 20 men, women, children, elders and medicine people are still in needof financial support to get there. Please support them by joining the Cause on Facebook anddonating now!

http://amazonwatch.org/news/2011/0701-courting-justice-sarayaku-v-republic-of-ecuador

LA Times: Oil spill outrages Montana residents

2011-07-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

Up to 42,000 gallons surge overnight Friday into the Yellowstone River, and some say Exxon Mobil's cleanup needs more oversight.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
July 4, 2011

An oil spill in Montana's Yellowstone River surged toward North Dakota on Sunday as outraged residents demanded more government oversight of Exxon Mobil's cleanup.

An estimated 750 to 1,000 barrels, or up to 42,000 gallons, spilled through a damaged pipeline in the riverbed, Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said. The break near Billings could be related to the river's high water level, officials said.

More than 120 people were working on the cleanup late Sunday, Jeffers said. But local officials said because of the raging floodwaters, only a handful of crews were laying absorbent pads and booms to trap the oil along short stretches of the river between Billings and Laurel. In some areas, residents said, oil may be flowing underneath the booms and continuing downstream in the murky water.

Jeffers said most of the oil was believed to be within 10 miles of the spill site, and Exxon crews were flying over the area late Sunday to assess how far it had spread since the Friday night spill.

But Montana's governor disputed the 10-mile estimate.

"Nobody can say definitively," Gov. Brian Schweitzer said. "It's too early. We need boats on the water," not just flyovers. Because of the high water, however, boats were potentially unsafe.

There were reports of oil as far as 100 miles away near the town of Hysham, Yellowstone County Commissioner Bill Kennedy said.

Although the spill is downstream from Yellowstone National Park and the fertile Yellowstone fly-fishing grounds, some officials worried it could harm the tourism industry, which draws 11 million visitors a year to a state with a population of just 980,000.

"We take our rivers very seriously here in Montana," said Schweitzer, a soil scientist who planned to visit the spill site Tuesday. "We will not allow this catastrophe to affect the $400-million trout industry in Montana."

Schweitzer, a Democrat, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had been working with state agencies to investigate the cause of the spill and would test air, water and soil samples. Exxon will be expected to pay for the cleanup so that "everybody along that river is made whole," he said.

But residents were worried.

"We can't really tell what it's going to do for our fisheries downstream," Eric Beebee, 37, said as he worked Sunday at Bighorn Fly and Tackle Shop in Billings. "If it was going to affect anybody, it's going to be the farmers and the ranchers because the water is pushed up so high, when it recedes [the oil is] going to be left on their land."

Goat rancher Alexis Bonogofsky pulled on waders and slogged through the oily residue at the bottom of her pasture, snapping photographs of oily grass and water.

"Places where the water has gone down the soil is shiny, there's residue oil and you can see where the grass is already dying. I'm really concerned about the wildlife," said Bonogofsky, 30, who also works for the National Wildlife Federation. "I've seen Canada geese try to take off and they can't get lift because of oil on their wings."

An Exxon crew arrived at her ranch south of Billings late Sunday to lay absorbent pads on oil patches.

Bonogofsky and husband Mike Scott, 31, who works for the Sierra Club, were trying to organize landowners to demand more transparency and accountability from Exxon. She faulted local public health officials for failing to conduct their own reports and relying instead on Exxon.

"Exxon says they are monitoring it, but we don't have access to that data," Bonogofsky said.

"We're sort of in limbo here," Scott said. "We have been spending a lot of time in the soil, and our livestock has. Nobody is telling us what we could have been exposed to."

Jeffers said he met with some residents Sunday and assured them that company tests, including air quality monitoring, showed no cause for alarm.

"There's no effort to withhold important information from the public," he said. "We have not seen anything that causes public health concern."

Exxon pipeline workers became aware of a problem shortly before midnight Friday when pressure readings in the pipeline dropped, Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. President Gary Pruessing said Sunday. Workers turned off the pumps within six minutes, he said.

Jeffers said Exxon had temporarily turned off the foot-wide pipeline in May out of concern that seasonal flooding could damage it. The company reopened it a day later after reviewing the 20-year-old pipeline's safety record.

"We did a safety analysis and concluded the line was safe to operate," Jeffers said.

The pipeline was last inspected in 2009 using a robotic device designed to detect corrosion and other flaws, Jeffers said.

The most recent depth tests, in December, showed the pipe was 5 to 8 feet below the riverbed, he said. But that was before record rains and melting snowpack flooded the river in May, which Exxon and government officials have said may have exposed the pipe to damage from debris.

"That's just speculation at this point," Jeffers said. "We don't know at this point what caused it."

Some officials feared the oil would reach the Missouri River, just across the border in North Dakota.

"The water is fast and furious," said Kennedy, the Yellowstone County official. "I'm hoping that we get it cleaned up and stopped before it even approaches there."

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Barranco and the Temash River, site of oil exploration

2011-06-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

The Temash River, Sarstoon Temash National Park, near the site of US Capital Energy's seismic testing
http://www.flickr.com/photos/advocacy_project/sets/72157626450434987/show/

Gas Flaring in Belize

2011-05-30T12:59:00.000-07:00

· BNE continues to flare around the clock. These pictures were taken on May 18, 2011 at 9:40am. Because of the haze, the waste from the flare is staying close to the ground as it travels toward the Belize River. Every time one passes Belize Natural Energy (BNE), you notice the flare and the particles. Gas flaring is generally discouraged as it releases toxic components into the atmosphere and contributes to climate change.

· Flares have harmful effects on the health and livelihood of the communities in their vicinity, as they release a variety of poisonous chemicals including nitrogen dioxides, sulphur dioxide, volatile organic compounds like benzene, toluene, xylene and hydrogen sulfide, as well as carcinogens like benzapyrene and dioxin. Humans exposed to such substances can suffer from a variety of respiratory problems. These chemicals can aggravate asthma, cause breathing difficulties and pain, as well as chronic bronchitis. Benzene known to be emitted from gas flares in undocumented quantities, is well recognized as a cause for leukemia and other blood-related diseases.

Win for environment at SATIIM school fair

2011-04-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

As a part of its Environmental Education Program, the Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM) held its third Environmental School Fair on April 8, 2011, in Conejo Village, Toledo District. Local schools from across the district took part, giving pupils the opportunity to learn about the environmental issues affecting their lives.

A child from Conejo enjoys ones of the displays

Students were tasked with finding innovative ways to protect the environment around the theme of “Community Based Natural Resource Management”. Teams from each school worked together to create an interactive display and to give a presentation. From songs to dances to poetry, the performances were diverse and imaginative. Though it was San Felipe Government School that most impressed the judges and they took first prize.

The upper division students of the Primary Schools from the villages of Barranco, Conejo, Crique Sarco, Midway, Santa Anna and San Felipe all participated in the fair. Taking first place San Felipe received $1000. In second place, Santa Anna were given $600 and Midway, who were placed third received $400. All three winning schools were given a plaque to commemorate their success.

The team from San Felipe make the judges smile

All day the sun shone as students took the opportunity to look and learn from each other’s displays. Every school made a gallant effort, with posters, 3D models and artifacts all being used to raise awareness on environmental issues. Meanwhile, judges Glenford Parham from the Toledo Education Department, Christine Valerio from Protected Areas Conservation Trust and Julio Chub from the Ya’axche Conservation Trust closely looked at each school’s entrant and asked the children questions on their displays.

Judge Glenford Rarhum said: “The science fair is important as it creates an awareness in children of taking care of the environment and how the environment affects their daily lives. San Felipe won first prize as they were well organised and very knowledgeable on everything they had displayed.”

Teacher Miss Finela Wagner, from winning school San Felipe said: “We are so pleased to win as the children worked very hard. It is the first time we have ever won anything, so I am so proud to be bringing this prize back to the school.”

In the words of students from San Felipe school: “Thank you SATIIM”.

Students from Santa Anna give their presentation

The earth cried over plans for oil

2011-04-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

As if casting an omen on the plans being discussed beneath, the sky spilled relentlessly upon the oil meeting organized by the Government.

Buses had brought villagers from across the district to the Mayan community of Corazon. There they sheltered beneath thinly thatched roofs as the rain fell, scattering mud with every thud as it hit the ground. Defiant, the Deputy Prime Minister and other Government officials stoically continued, raising their voices above the hissing weather. In front of the stage stood a solitary woman, her umbrella bright against its dreary backdrop.

Woman listens to Government panel

The Mayan and Garifuna people had gathered to listen to the Government put forward an argument for why they should willingly surrender their land to oil extraction. It was here that these Toledo residents would decide whether to put faith in the nation’s leaders when they say “there are impacts but we can manage them and minimize them.”

In organizing the outdoor event, the Government had not taken the risk of bad weather into account. Juxtaposed against their claims that they would take all necessary precautions to prepare for and minimize the risks of oil exploration, their words did little to appease the concerns many bystanders. As Dr Colin Young said himself “Oil spills that can happen, especially when you don’t have the right procedures in place”.

The consequences of the possible oil spillage disaster were also discussed. A member of the audience asked whether stories that he had been told of people dying and of fish being killed as a result of oil exploration were true. Such examples had been given at an event held by SATIIM the week before. The Honorable Gaspar Vega cut straight to the point, accusing the NGOs that talk of such case studies as “liars”.

Sea breaking more than 90 miles from the BP oil spill

Given that in February a court in Ecuador found ChevronTexaco guilty of crude oil pollution causing serious and ongoing environmental and health problems, Vega’s accusation seems unfounded. The judge obviously did not conclude that the residents of the Amazon, who are experiencing increased rates of cancer as a result of crude oil pollution, were liars at all. In fact, the judge awarded them over US$8billion in damages.

The residents of coastal towns on the Gulf of Mexico, where oil pollution from a BP off-shore rig has destroyed their fishing and tourist trade, would also beg to differ with the Deputy PM’s assertion that their tale is untrue. As families of fisherman unable to work in their polluted oceans struggle with growing debt and oil smeared beaches lie desolate of their usual sun seekers, the effects of oil exploration are excruciatingly evident.

Dr Young stepped in, “when there is an oil spill, perhaps there are some species of fish and marine organisms that will be affected. So we are not saying that the figure is an absolute lie.” He contradicted. “What we are saying is that some of the NGOs like to use the extreme, the worst case scenario, to scare people into not choosing development for themselves.”

In response, Gregory Ch’oc of SATIIM later stated “We are working with a number of organizations to ensure that the people who will be most affected by oil pollution are aware of all the possible consequences. The rights of communities are violated when anyone comes and makes claims that there are no consequences associated with oil exploitation or that the communities are going to benefit economically. We are inviting the people to make their own decision, based upon all the facts and experiences from around the world.”

Honorable Gaspar Vega, Deputy Prime Minister

In the afternoon the speaker panel moved to a second event in Punta Gorda, at the same venue that had been used by SATIIM for an event just days before. The room was crammed, chairs spread from wall to wall, each one filled. People even sat in aisles or leaned against the walls. Each face was young, their attire identical. The room was filled with school children. As Young explained to the children “listen and pay attention, as you will need to go home and tell people what you know”.

What continued was an argument in support of oil that purported its advantages. The people, and children particularly, have a right to hear all the information surrounding the consequences of oil extraction. The Government view it as a low risk and high profit initiative, whilst non-profit organizations highlight issues they find concerning: environmental damage, human rights violations, disregard for law and low profit economic structure. At the end of the presentation, two school children took to the stage at the end of the presentation to state that “we know there are advantages to oil development, but we know there are disadvantages too”.

It was then explained that as the event had overrun, there would be no time for questions. Gasps shot from around the room and people immediately protested, demanding that it was the people’s turn to be heard. The panel soon realized this could not be avoided and before numbers could be minimized, a line of people with queries had formed. The questions that followed each demonstrated that the interrogator was firmly opposed to oil exploration. As they spoke, they were treated to whoops of encouragement from the audience.

A gentleman finally queried on the Government’s opinion of the People’s Position Paper, written collaboratively by leaders and members of communities across the district the week before. It outlined their concerns and appealed for the Government to work alongside them on oil development plans.

Vega responded to say that he would look and respond to it in due time. The paper in question had been read aloud in front of all the major news outlets, shown on national television, discussed in newspaper reportage. Not to mention having been sent to his office, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment. Yet no attention or response had yet been given to the collaborative voice of the people whose lives are built upon the land where oil drilling to commence.

That morning, men, women and children had gathered in their droves despite the pouring rain to listen to what Vega had to say. The Government themselves asked “listen and pay attention”. The people did, but when will the Government listen to the people?

Mayan villagers in Corazon

Indigenous people make united stand at summit

2011-03-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

Attempting to adjust the trajectory of their nation’s development, the Indigenous Peoples of rural Belize call their Government’s approach into question

With the vast majority of Belize currently under concession from oil companies, the commitment of the Government on resource extraction is undeniable. In the southern Toledo district, US Capital Energy are already at work and are reported to be just months from beginning to drill. The Indigenous Peoples, who have lived upon the land for generations, were expected to accept this as a done deal. Yet, to quietly sacrifice their land is not on their agenda. They are making a stand and forcing their Government to listen.

Panel of speakers listen to Greg Ch'oc

In Punta Gorda, the principal town in the district, leaders from indigenous villages crowd in a community hall. They have come to listen to experts on the legal, environmental, social and economic aspects of oil development. A translator reiterates in their Que’qchi language. After a series of round table discussions are held, it is proposed that a stand against the Government is made. A vote is held and a unanimous show of hands give their support.

The participants decide to collaboratively write a declaration. A document is projected to the front of the room and the audience take turns to contribute to its content. Phrasing is debated and the use of single words questioned before finally agreed. The resulting People’s Position Paper outlines the concerns of the Indigenous Peoples and states how they intend to proceed.

Santa Theresa's Mario Chub states the People's Position

The media soon arrive with their video cameras, microphones and flash photography. One of the village members is chosen to read the statement aloud. Santa Theresa resident Mario Chub stands defiantly as he reads: "We learned first hand about the hidden consequences of oil development, including challenges to negotiating fair and equitable compensation, dealing with inevitable environmental pollution and possible human rights violations."

He compounds their decision for a participial role for all communities in proceedings, stating with certainty that this is “the beginning of a conversation which will ensure that throughout the oil development process, our communities are treated with fairness; dignity and their legal and human rights are honoured.”

The unprecedented event is plastered across the news. The Mayan people are having their views heard by millions across the country, demanding that their human rights are respected throughout their country’s ill-conceived pursuit of wealth through oil. In the national debate on this contentious issue, their message is loud and clear.

Amandala Page 3, the widest read newspaper in Belize, 11/03/2011

For the Mayan people whose lives are built upon lands that are an oil hot spot, extraction has irreversible social and cultural implications. For it to go ahead, they will have to sacrifice huge areas of their traditional land. Land where generations of their people have felled trees for buildings, hunted for food and sought natural medicines. The erosion of their culture will be inevitable as machines, foreigners, industrial infrastructure and pollution are brought into their rural villages. Should there be any of the inevitable mistakes and mishaps that are so common in oil extraction projects across the world, the consequences would be of catastrophic proportion.

Greg Ch’oc from Sarstoon Temash Institute of Indigenous Management (SATIIM) stated that “an oil spill would not only be an ecological disaster, but an act of genocide. For the Mayan people, their land is integral to their way of life.” Of Mayan background himself, Greg pioneers the rights of his indigenous people. At the event in Punta Gorda, facilitated by SATIIM, Ch’oc speaks to his fellow people: “If we do not fight for our share, we’ll forever be worse than where we are right now... If we lose the land and lose the river and lose the wildlife, then what do we get? We end up losing everything.”

Whilst discussions take place amongst indigenous community members, Government officials stand outside the venue handing out leaflets to participants and passers by. Entitled ‘Facts about oil exploration’, the leaflet advertises all of the supposed benefits of oil extraction. Lee McLoughlin, from the organisation Ya’axché Conservation Trust, shakes his head in disbelief. “The irony is” he says “is that it has come from the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment. I would like to know on what basis the Deputy Prime Minister, who is Minister of this department, claims that oil development is beneficial for the environment of Belize”.

The leaflet features the case study of Spanish Lookout as an example of a successful oil extraction project. Given that minutes earlier, Leonard Reimer, former member of the resident’s Petroleum Board at Spanish Lookout, was advising event participants of his regret of going ahead with oil exploration, its timing is almost comical. Reimer had just explained that the company failed to meet any of the agreed conditions of the contract intended to benefit his community. He explains that the money they received as compensation “was not near what the damage was”. Members of his community were compelled to move away as they feared the pollution caused would affect their health. Meanwhile the oil company demanded that the biggest proportion of the money the community received be invested into new roads that could cater for their heavy machinery.

Despite dissatisfaction and protest, the leaders of the nation have dollar signs in their eyes as they consider the potential value of the oil buried underneath the feet of some of their people. In February, Prime Minister Barrow stated that US Capital Energy “is no more than 6 to 9 months away from actually beginning to drill, and certainly when they reach that point, drill they will”. Outcry ensued as numerous organisations in Belize declared such action illegal.

Today, the certainty with which Barrow stated that “that remains the position of the Government and that position will not change” is being questioned. As Ch’oc explains "The battleground is in Toledo, what happens in Toledo will determine what happens in the rest of the country.” The Indigenous Peoples are taking matters into their own hands to play a pivotal role in the future of their nation. They know their rights and they will not go down without a fight.

Will Belizeans let history repeat itself?

2011-03-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

A court in Ecuador has found Chevron Corporation guilty of crude oil pollution in the Amazon. Chevron have been ordered to pay US$8.64 billion in damages to residents of the Amazon. Yet, the residents have appealed the verdict stating that the amount awarded is not enough to repair the vast environmental damage inflicted by the oil giant.

The landmark ruling finds Chevron guilty of what has been dubbed ‘Rainforest Chernobyl’. During oil extraction 18 billion gallons of toxic waste were reportedly dumped into unlined pits and rivers. Cancer rates amongst the local people have been seen to increase as they were forced to drink from contaminated water sources, bathe in polluted rivers and breathe in toxic vapours. Four times as many children in the area have leukaemia as elsewhere in Ecuador, with children as young as a few months dying from the disease.

An unlined waste pit filled with crude oil left by Texaco - Lou Dematteis

In Belize, Government is making moves to allow another oil firm into an area of huge biological significance. Prime Minister Barrow declared“the Government has no intention in stopping the exploration process, especially not in the Sarstoon-Temash Park… US Capital energy, which is the company that has the concession, I think is no more than 6 to 9 months away from actually beginning to drill. And certainly when they reach that point drill they will.”

Since the case against Chevron began, the Government of Ecuador have strived to avoid further drilling in the area. In an innovative move, President Correa appealed to the international community to subsidise a decision to cease further exploitation. Their proposal was that Ecuador would not allow extraction of their largest oil field in the Amazon if compensation would be given.

The quantity of oil in the area, known as the Yasuni National Park, is estimated at 850million barrels and is worth a possible US $7,000million. Correa asked for compensation of US$350 million to be given each year for 10 years. The proposed 50% profit margin to be given to the Government of Ecuador is an excellent return on the oil. Had Correa instead formed a contract with an international oil firm, it is likely that a smaller fraction of the profits would have been received.

Correa’s proposal for the world to “share in the sacrifice” of Ecuador in the fight against global warming and to preserve the biodiversity of the Earth was commended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. It offered the country the economic benefits of oil exploration without damage to the environment and with no further human cost.

During the Aguinda v ChevronTexaco case, experts testified that oil exploration cost local people their livelihoods as crops were destroyed and animals killed. Photographic and video evidence was shown in court of the vast crude oil pollution such as toxic waste swamps and ignored oil spills. Health specialists concluded that increased cases of cancer are a direct result of oil related contamination.

Old oil barrels - Kayana Szymczak

In Ecuador, lessons were learned. The more recent innovation of Correa’s Government proves that there can be a solution to the economic, environmental, social and cultural concerns that energy development brings. As an alternative to oil drilling it sets a precedent.

For now there will be no further oil exploration in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This offers little respite for the Aguinda that have been fighting for 18 years for reparation from Chevron and the clean up is yet to begin. Described by campaigners Amazon Watch as “an environmental and public health catastrophe”, the damage caused to their lives and land by oil firm Texaco, who were bought out by Chevron, is irreversible.

Even the multibillion payout awarded by the court in Ecuador is deemed as insubstantial. Luis Yanza, speaking on behalf of the Assembly of those Affected by Chevron said “eight billion dollars does not represent a significant amount to repair the environmental damages”. The plaintiffs are appealling the verdict, as are Chevron, claiming it “contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence”. A date for the appeal is yet to be set.

In Belize, preparations are going ahead for oil exploration in the Sarstoon-Temash National Park. This is in despite of oil exploration being declared “illegal” by numerous organisations including SATIIM and APAMO. Previously, SATIIM successfully took Government to court on contention of this issue. The court ruled that seismic testing could go ahead in the park as ‘scientific research’ only if an Environmental Impact Assessment took place. Greg Ch’oc, Executive Director at SATIIM is adamant that “at no point did this judgment allow for drilling to take place in STNP, even for exploratory purposes.” Yet the Government progresses with its oil development plans.

Sarstoon-Temash National Park

It was back in 1994 that the 50,000 acres park was dedicated a protected area, a contract legally bound under the National Parks Systems Act. The area is home to 38 Mayan communities who have respected the area as protected and refrained from utilising the land and its resources for the past seventeen years. It contains plants species and ecosystems found nowhere else in Belize and is home to endangered species such as the jaguar and manatee.

An ecological disaster of the scale of that in Ecuador would have catastrophic consequences for the area considered the most biologically diverse in the country. The lives of the Mayan people, who rely on the land for food and shelter, would be gravely affected. Repair would take years at best and may even be impossible.

The voices of multiple organisations are calling for the public to stand up and join a national debate on oil exploration in protected areas such as the Sarstoon-Temash National Park. They are campaigning for alternative and sustainable development solutions that do not pose a risk to our natural heritage or to the culture of indigenous people.

The historic success of the 30,000 inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest is unprecedented. According to Amazon Watch it is the first time indigenous people have sued a multinational company in the crime where the crime was committed and one. They hope that it “sends a loud and clear message”. The Mayan people of the Toledo region can but hope that this message reaches the people of Belize. Let Belize not make the same mistake as Ecuador.

PM makes shocking illegal statements

2011-02-10T08:38:00.000-08:00

PM Barrow announces that drilling will go ahead in Sarstoon-Temash National Park and wrongly states that such action is in keeping with the law

Today, Prime Minister Barrow today hosted his first quarterly news conference of the year. The two hour long event commenced harmoniously and he soon pleased the public with an announcement that there will be no new taxes. He then dropped a bombshell.

"the Government has no intention in stopping the exploration process, especially not in the Sarstoon Temash Park... US Capital energy is no more than 6 to 9 months away from actually beginning to drill. And certainly when they reach that point drill they will'

A public outcry is sure to ensue. Outraged, SATIIM is trying to set the record straight. Joining forces with numerous organisations including APAMO, the Belize Coalition to Save our Natural Heritage and the Mayan Leaders Alliance, we are working to highlight the laws in place to protect areas such as the Sarstoon-Temash National Park and the intention of the Government to ignore them.

The statement made by PM Barrow demonstrates his complete disregard for the laws that are in place to protect our country and its people. He claimed that in the 2006 Supreme Court Decision regarding SATIIM v the Government of Belize, the Court decided the "legality of drilling… was perfectly consistent, perfectly in order". This is a fabrication and shows he has gravely misinterpreted the decision. To go ahead with the oil drilling in Sarstoon-Temash National Park (STNP) would be illegal.

To clarify, in 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that seismic testing could go ahead, in keeping with environmental regulations, as 'scientific research’. At no point did this judgment allow for drilling to take place in STNP, even for exploratory purposes. Under the Environmental Protection Act, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) would have to be conducted. Only 'seismic activities associated with the exploration phase' were addressed by the EIA that was completed in 2007.

Since the judgment of 2006, SATIIM has been working with local communities and associated organizations to ascertain how development can be approached to best benefit every Belizean. It is calling for the Government to make decisions in line with the law of our country and with the support of all Belizeans.

'To drill for oil is contempt of court' Maya leader states

2011-02-10T07:06:00.000-08:00

The Mayan Leaders Alliance speak out against oil drilling in the Toledo District and declare their defiance to protect their lands.

Cristina Coc, member of the Mayan Leaders Alliance was interviewed on national radio yesterday, 9th February 2011. She called into question the legality of proposed development in the area and called for public support in the protection of the land and Mayan rights.

"We have been seeing... concessions being granted on Maya land, particularly in areas in Southern Belize that have been named by the Supreme Court as lands that are used and occupied by Mayan people. We thought that it was necessary... to point out that Government has no legal authority to allow oil activity on our lands, particularly because of the injunction that was granted by the Supreme Court on June 28th of last year.

"If permission was given and Companies began to drill for oil or there was any activity, the Government would be in contempt of Court. And we would certainly make sure that we follow through with that. It would be violating the orders of the Supreme Court of Belize.

"We are not saying no development or no exploration. What we are saying is that for any of these activities to happen, whether it be drilling for oil, whether it be any kind of resource extraction, or any kind of development on lands that our people live, it has to be a situation where both Government and the Maya people make those decisions together and sit at equal ends of the table. It can't be that Government makes those decisions without informed consent of the people or without any kind of agreement between both parties. We have to begin to sit together and come to some kind of resolution.

"We'd certainly like to also expect support along with the Environmental Organization, to help in championing the cause against oil exploration in protected areas. We feel that it's not just Mayan Land. It's also those areas that have been protected. So we stand in solidarity with organizations like APAMO... we feel that as Maya people we've always stood against social injustice, and we agree with them. We agree that it's time for us to stand up with the people and resist where there is an injustice."

A complete transcript of the interview is available at Love FM

A frightening reality check

2011-02-04T08:47:00.000-08:00

Will your family be living next to a polluting oil field?

This map shows the vast amount of our nation that has been sold to corporate giants seeking our resources for their wealth. Petroleum contracts have been given by Government in all but the few remaining white areas. Everywhere else, petroleum operations are currently going ahead.

We must act to stop this now. Soon, it will be too late.

Kimano, son of Denys - Oil Prospector!

2011-01-31T09:58:00.001-08:00

Posted: 28/01/2011 - 10:32 AM

Author: Adele Ramos - adelescribe@gmail.com

Amandala received a revised printed version of Belize’s petroleum contracts map on Wednesday, January 26, showing that a major concession—the largest onshore block—has been granted to a newly formed company, Paradise Energy Limited, whose shareholders are listed as Alfredo Acosta and Kimano Barrow, nephew of Prime Minister Barrow and son of Justice Denys Barrow. The company (in which Barrow holds 50% stake) was formed less than a year ago.

Kimano Barrow, Commissioner of the Public Utilities Commission, confirmed via phone that he is a shareholder of the company, but he told us that he has no further comment at this time.

Before we could ask the younger Barrow why he has invested in a concession for an area that government experts have publicly declared has “no petroleum potential,” he dismissed our call, saying he only returned our call because he thought we were calling him about something important.

Amandala was unable to reach Acosta, who we understand has interest in another petroleum concession granted under the People’s United Party administration.

The concession area which Barrow and Acosta have acquired spans the Maya Mountain Massif, and includes some of Belize’s most prized forests, particularly the area spanning the Chiquibul, where gold prospects are said to be very promising. (See map)

In our July 1, 2010, headline story captioned “Broke, no experience, but gets oil concession!!” we had reported on a statement made to us by Director of Geology and Petroleum, Andre Cho, that no contracts were given out for the Maya Mountains area, because it is not a sedimentary basin.

A Canadian company going by the name Centam Canadian Energy Corporation had, nonetheless, won a concession for the Maya Mountains under the Musa administration in January 2008.

Cho had told Amandala back in July 2010 that that company, owned by an Arab, Bassam Al-Sarraj, was a “fly by night” venture. “He got it under [Florencio] Marin,” Cho said, claiming that there is no petroleum potential in that portion of Belize.

He had also told Amandala that the Canadian company did not pay the first year of fees and the concession was cancelled. The BZ$300,000 that comes in yearly from such concessions is “enough to pay some bills,” Cho had told us.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow told Amandala this evening when we asked him about Paradise Energy Limited that “the name doesn’t ring a bell.” When we told him that his nephew is a shareholder, he said, “I don’t know about that.”

The Minister of Natural Resources, Gaspar Vega, who Amandala was unable to reach today, brings those contracts to Cabinet, and if the company got a concession, then it would have had to have been after Cabinet consideration, said the Prime Minister.

If indeed Kimano got a concession, then “bully for him,” Prime Minister Barrow commented, saying that his nephew would have gotten the contract “fair and square.”

He went on to say that he is sure that the concession is “in some low potential area.”

He insists that Toledo is the most promising part of the country for petroleum exploration, and reiterates his government’s position that it will allow petroleum exploration onshore Belize—not barring such activities in protected areas.

This Tuesday, the Belize Coalition to Save Our Natural Heritage held a press conference to reiterate its call on Government to ban petroleum exploration offshore Belize and inside protected areas.

For Barrow, the Supreme Court has already established that petroleum exploration can be done inside protected areas. He said that he will await the results of a national referendum, for which the Coalition is calling, to finally decide how to proceed with new petroleum contracts offshore.

Yesterday, Oceana issued a call on Government to not issue any further offshore contracts in light of its finding that the Chinese Petroleum Corporation, owned by the state of Taiwan, had relinquished its entire offshore concession for 1.139 million acres. The contract was acquired through CPC’s overseas arm — Overseas Petroleum Investment Corporation.

Oceana says, “Among the reasons OPIC is abandoning its lease is the growing public opposition to any oil exploration and development that would harm the country’s prized barrier reef.”

It points out that the government did not make this relinquishment public—but neither did the government report that concession areas in Orange Walk for two other companies—RSM Production Corporation of the USA and West Bay Belize Limited—were also vacated during 2010, our newspaper has observed.

“A hell of a storm is coming”: Coalition to Save Our Natural Heritage

2011-01-31T09:57:00.000-08:00

Posted: 28/01/2011 - 10:20 AM

Author: Adele Ramos - adelescribe@gmail.com

Maya activist and environmentalist Greg Ch’oc had the support of the Belize Coalition to Save Our Natural Heritage and the Association of Protected Areas Management Organizations (APAMO) at a press conference held in Belize City Tuesday morning, at which he made an ardent appeal to Prime Minister Dean Barrow to reason with them to revisit Government’s policy of permitting petroleum exploration across the entire length and breadth of Belize, including protected areas, which comprise 26% of national territory.

The issue has come to the fore after the Prime Minister said in recent media interviews that drilling could proceed in Toledo on the concession area for which US Capital Energy, a US-based company with operations in both Belize and neighboring Guatemala, has a contract.

However, Ch’oc argues that whereas the government has a contract with the oil companies, it also has a contract with the people of Belize—one that is just as valid and binding.

“So, Mister Prime Minister, you have said that you won’t break legitimate contracts. Is it, then, that our laws which bind and commit us as a people to protect our natural wonders not worth the paper [they are] written on? Furthermore, [are] the international conventions that Belize has signed on also rendered meaningless in this country? Are you saying that the only legitimate contracts recognized by the government are those signed to accommodate special interest groups at a specific time?” he questioned.

Ch’oc points out that through the laws of the land, the government has limited access of people living in Toledo to protected areas, such as the Sarstoon Temash National Park, which he helps to manage.

“Through the instrument of law, these communities that live around protected areas have been denied their traditional resources for their livelihood by denying them access to these protected areas. Therefore, government has a moral and legal obligation to respect these protected area laws and honor the sacrifice our communities keep making,” he commented.

Although PM Barrow has so far not responded to Ch’oc’s letter expressing concern over his recent statement in the media about drilling in the South, Ch’oc is extending an appeal to the Prime Minister to revisit his position. He said that he is still hoping for a response from Barrow.

“I hope you will choose to stand with us and recognize our contract and reason with us,” Ch’oc said, directing his public comments to the Prime Minister. “We are all aware of the state of our economy. It requires bold and swift action. The actions we take must not only be for the purpose of creating jobs, but must lay the foundation for dignity, equality and opportunity for all our people. Rebuilding our economy requires innovation and creativity—certainly not by destroying its foundation.”

According to Yvette Alonzo, APAMO executive director, petroleum exploitation and exploration entail the construction of roads and infrastructure, deforestation and biodiversity loss, contamination of water and soil, among other impacts.

“By virtue of their protected status, these protected areas should remain free from destructive human intervention,” said Alonzo. “We cannot get away from the fact that oil exploration and exploitation often requires lots of construction which can destroy natural environments.”

She added that, “APAMO strongly believes that as a country, we need to have areas that are off-limits to oil exploration and production—and protected areas should be one of such areas...”

She expressed the view that petroleum exploration is not the economic solution for Belize. It has been proven worldwide that foreign-owned oil companies garner the bulk of revenues, while locals and their governments get a small percentage, she said, adding that “oil will not last forever.”

As an umbrella organization which represents SATIIM and other non-governmental organizations that partner with the government to manage protected areas across Belize, APAMO issued a call on the government “to do the right thing”—that is, to ban petroleum exploration in protected areas, onshore or offshore, and world heritage sites, such as the barrier reef that spans offshore Belize.

“APAMO is seriously concerned about the negative impacts [that] oil exploration and exploitation inside our protected areas would have on its rich biodiversity and most importantly on its critical ecosystems services, which would, in turn, affect the people of Belize,” she stated.

“The clear position of APAMO is that these activities are incompatible with the objectives of our protected areas legislation,” she added. “Furthermore, the government has failed to develop a policydealing with protected areas...in order to protect these precious resources.”

Alonzo also pointed out that the government does not have the proper legal framework or the human and technological capacity needed to meet the demands that would be created by the impending petroleum exploration projects.

Geovanni Brackett, speaking for the Coalition, said: “We are here to take a proactive measure. Maybe it should have been done a decade ago; maybe it should have been done years ago—but it’s happening now. And the government today has the opportunity to adhere, to show its people that it is willing to listen, to show its people that it will not carry on with its status quo and continue to have the same oppressive system....”

The risk of serious accidents—including mass casualties—is real, Brackett also stated, citing a series of international incidents. The Coalition also presented a video exposing the lingering effects of oil exploration and abandoned well pits left by Texaco on indigenous tribes in Ecuador.

“The threats are real, and don’t let the oil companies fool you. Damages, deaths, explosions, accidents can occur at all levels of operation—whether exploration, production, transportation,” said Brackett.

Close to home was the accidental death, which our newspaper had reported on last year, of a worker, Allen Bonnell, who was killed when an oil rig capsized as it was being towed to Big Creek. That oil rig, said Brackett, is owned by Island Oil but was built at Shipyard in Belize.

The Niger Delta petroleum operations are infamous for the negative repercussions they have had on the lives of locals, and, according to Brackett, there was no comprehensive strategic plan in place there. Companies moved into sensitive habitats, including areas vital to fish breeding. That, he said, sounds similar to how things are being approached in Belize right now. He said that Belize has no framework to protect people and national resources.

“We are being led by a government straight on to a financial hell, and if we as a people will not stand up, if we as a people do not get informed and start a move to action, the government will continue with its intention to drill,” Brackett commented. “And it’s not that we are scared of technology; it’s not that we are scared of development—it’s because we are scared of the very same oppressive system that has continued to drag us down this road.

“It is because we know how the financial minds of most of these companies have acted in the past and how they continue to act that makes us take a stand, and we are calling on our government to protect our people first and foremost.”

Rather than letting the oil companies dictate the policies of the day, it is the people that should dictate how they want their government to run, he said.

“This government, like Pontius Pilate, cannot wash its hands and pretend as if though it is clean, when it has been guilty of defending the status quo. Our entire country continues to be on sale to the oil companies—every single inch!” Brackett commented.

“There are so many areas of Belize that have not been explored outside of protected areas, and I can’t believe...we have blocked out our people for years from out of our protected areas, and yet now we open fully to the oil companies. It doesn’t make sense to me!” he remarked.

Ch’oc said that SATIIM has not ruled out the option of taking the government to court over the matter. In 2006, it won a partial victory when it got the court to stall seismic testing in Toledo until an Environmental Impact Assessment could be completed. Government is of the view that the EIA also covers exploration drilling in the same area.

Deon “Ras Pitta” Pitter, who attended the press conference, presented a copy of the 2008 general election manifesto of the ruling United Democratic Party, and read from the section that deals with oil and energy—promises which he deems to be a valid contract with the voters who elected them to power.

In that document, the ruling party spoke of ensuring proper management of the industry that will increase standards of living and help realize citizens’ dreams of a prosperous future.

“I don’t want to hear anything about any offshore drilling. Let us solve this situation here first before we even go there. This is what I voted for the government for,” said Ras Pitta.

The manifesto promised that the UDP will, among other things, revisit existing agreements to guarantee equitable return to all Belizeans; offer shares in a national oil company so the masses of people can have a prosperous stake in the petroleum wealth; increase the number of scholarships in relevant fields; and establish an office of energy responsible for regulating the petroleum industry.

In that manifesto, the UDP also said there would be a review of the petroleum contracts that had been signed, in an effort to improve the benefits to the Belizean people.

Dean Barrow and the UDP contracted this with the people, he added. “If Barrow and the government stand up for the things promised, I will stand with them too,” he said.

Ch’oc said that rather than revisiting the contracts as the UDP had promised in its manifesto, the Barrow administration back in 2008 simply extended the expired contract of US Capital Energy.

Ch’oc said that this is a matter that all Belizeans should care about—not only the people of Toledo: “Today, it might be the Sarstoon Temash National Park; tomorrow, it might be right in front of Belize City.” he said.

ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS TAKE THE PRIME MINISTER TO TASK

2011-01-28T13:35:00.000-08:00

ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS TAKE THE PRIME MINISTER TO TASK

January 25, 2011
The organizations, namely the Sarstoon-Temash Institute for indigenous Movement, SATIIM, the Association of Protected Areas Management Organizations, APAMO and the Belize Coalition to Save our Natural Heritage, continue to stand firm in their opposition to oil exploration in protected areas and off shore. Their fight now has been thrust into a stronger sense of urgency following a statement made by the Prime Minister, Dean Barrow earlier this month where he said oil drilling will be permitted at the Sarstoon-Temash National Park. SATIIM’s Executive Director Greg Choc says the statement was irresponsible.
Greg Choc – Executive Director, SATIIM
“I said the statement was irresponsible, inaccurate and misleading as it relates to the SATIIM versus Forestry Department judgment of 2006. I stand by my words.Through the instrument of law these communities that live around protected areas have been denied their traditional resources for their livelihoods by denying them access to these protected areas. Therefore, government has a moral and legal obligation to respect these protected areas law and honor the sacrifice our communities make and keep making. So honorable Prime minister you have said you will not break legitimate contract. Is it then that our laws which mind and commit us as a people to protect our natural wonders not worth the paper it is written on? Furthermore are the international conventions that Belize has signed on also rendered meaningless in this country? Are you saying that the only legitimate contracts recognized by government are those signed to accommodate special interest groups at a specific time?”
Coordinator at APAMO, Yvette Alonzo says the government should be more committed to respecting the protected areas legislation.
Yvette Alonzo – Coordinator, APAMO

“APAMO strongly believes that as a country we need to have areas that are off limits to oil exploration and production and protected areas should be one of such areas. After so many years of conservation efforts and resources invested in these protected areas by conservation groups, the international community the government and the people of Belize it is unacceptable for any oil company to pursue profits with total disrespect for both our protected area and the people of Belize. Furthermore the government has failed to develop a policy dealing with protected areas and oil exploration in order to protect the country’s precious resources. The government does not have the proper legal framework nor the human and technological capacity to protect the natural resources and the people from oil exploration and production.”
Geovannie Brackett, Chairman for Belize Coalition to Save our Natural Heritage adds they are not completely against oil exploration but says parameters need to be set.
Geovannie Brackett – Chairman, Belize Coalition to Save our Natural Heritage
“Where exploration extraction is considered, we must ensure that the highest environmental standards are adhered to. But let us not confirm our debate to only the environmental as ecological aspect but government should ensure the people of Belize must benefit significantly from the oil industry. We are not saying no completely to oil, but conduct it to benefit the people, let it be done in a safe manner, with parameters to protect our people.”

When asked whether they have considered joining in the development of policies or framework to protect Belize’s natural resources should their efforts prove futile, this was Choc’s response.

Greg Choc – Executive Director, SATIIM

“If we embrace what you are saying, in fact we have become like the politicians because we want to amend the law, we want to circumvent the law for personal interest when we should be looking at the interest of this country.”

At this juncture, Choc says they are hoping the Prime Minister heeds to their cause.

Greg Choc – Executive Director, SATIIM

“I hope he stand with us; I hope he reasons with us because I think what binds us together is our commonness, our wish to safeguard and protect Belize, what we call home. Rebuilding our economy requires innovation and creativity, certainly not by destroying its foundation”.

SATIIM Executive Director, Greg Choc added that they maintain their options open in terms of the next action they will take in their protest against oil exploration in protected areas in the country.

Oceana Victory: Oil company gives up concession on sea

2011-01-28T06:31:00.000-08:00

Jan 26, 2011

Oceana Victory: Oil company gives up concession on sea
http://edition.channel5belize.com/archives/47443

Oceana has scored a major victory in its battle to preserve the Barrier Reef. There have been about seventeen companies which have been granted concessions to explore for oil on land as well as deep in our terrestrial waters. But today the N.G.O. announced that the second largest holder of a concession has backed off and relinquished its claim to drill in over a million acres of sea that spans the length of the country. According to Audrey Matura Shepherd, Oceana’s Vice President for Belize, OPIC, the Taiwanese state owned company has voluntarily released its block of one point one million acres since October.

“That is very good news that OPIC would say look we are stepping out of this game. And our understand is through certain channels and sources that two main reasons. One being; after they looked at the seismic and all the data and heavy study that had been done previously and did the desk work, because you can look at previous seismic and could tell what are your chances, they don’t believe there is oil there, and if there is even, it is not worth the investment, it might be just something small. And two, apparently when they got into the agreements with governments in 2006 and then 2009, there were of the view and understanding that there is no opposition to the issue in Belize. And as such, they like that because they don’t want as a state owned oil company to come into another country that there would be this controversy that can affect relationships between the two countries. And so in 2006, there were told that there was no opposition and that don’t worry, you can go ahead. Of course, a lot has changed since 2006, because people from the embassy have been seeing our local presentations through the news and different medium and they know that the people are aware about the issue. We don’t want offshore drilling in our waters. And especially if you look at that map, you will see that they had a substantial portion from Belize City down to Dangriga and it stretched the entire barrier system there. So now that’s being released and I think that’s good.”

Jose Sanchez

audrey matura-shepherd

“This is clearly a victory for Oceana, environmentalists and people who care about the reef itself, but throughout this entire time, we were all under the impression that OPIC still had that million plus body of water. What is the significance now of this information coming out?”

Audrey Matura Shepherd

“Well it serves a major problem for the government if we believe what the government has been saying. Remember the Prime Minister has said in several interview some of them with yourself that yes we may be calling for these contracts to be made null and void but they wouldn’t go and do that because they would suffer serious legal repercussions because imagine if we break these contracts—this is not a B.T.L. situation and so we will honor these contracts because these are valid contracts. And so now with OPIC gone, without the contract being withdrawn from them or nullified, they had left. So this means that the Prime Minister doesn’t have to worry that OPIC will sue them because OPIC left on their own. And it means the second thing, what we’ve been saying is, do not give out the area, do not reissue. If they feel that there is a need to really comprehensively study the aspects of offshore drilling in Belize, it has to be, we would strongly recommend after the referendum. What we are saying through the petition drive we have is that Belizeans should be given an opportunity to vote on the issue—to say yes we want offshore drilling or no we don’t want offshore drilling. Now we in good faith, if the government is really talking to us in good faith, they would say this area is free and we will not do anything with it until we hear from the people.”

Matura Shepherd says OCEANA is calling for a referendum on the issue. OCEANA has sent a letter to the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister and has also sent letters to key personnel in related ministries. The letter calls for a dialogue instead of any new issuances of contract for the area once parceled off to OPIC.

Open Letter to Prime Minister Dean Barrow

2011-01-13T09:21:00.001-08:00

Dear Prime Minister Barrow,

In a recent interview with the media, on January 7, 2011 with Channel 5 Belize, you stated:

“…In terms of the national parks, we are hopeful that the U.S. Capital Energy people in the south will be able to proceed. Everything is coming up roses in terms of seismic that has been shot. And I’m telling you, since that matter has already went to court, if they say they are ready to drill they will be allowed to drill. That matter I was involved in the issue when it went before Mister Justice Awich and that’s been cleared and so I believe that’s also part of your breech. But while I can’t give you a definitive position on offshore, I am giving you a definitive position on that one. Drilling will be permitted.”

I am shocked that you would make such inaccurate statements about the Supreme Court ruling. As former Lead Council for SATIIM, you shouldn’t have to be reminded of the the 2006 Supreme Court Decision regarding SATIIM v the Government of Belize.   That case was specific to the seismic testing aspect of oil exploration in the Sarstoon Temash National Park (STNP).   You said so yourself in a September 28, 2006 interview with Love FM:

“…we asked for the decision of the forest department to issue that permit be quashed. It has been quashed. The sole release sought was the quashing of the permission granted by the forest department to the US Capitol energy to enter the national park and to conduct and to conduct seismic surveys.That permission has been quashed.”

SATIIM wanted the Supreme Court to find seismic testing (setting off explosives below the ground to generate seismic waves to test for oil) illegal in the park. However, the court accepted seismic testing as “research” as provided for in the National Parks Act.   The court quashed the permission granted by the Forest Department because by law it required an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

Hon. Prime Minister, your statement to the press gives the public the perception that the court also gave a green light for oil drilling inside the national park. Your statement is not only irresponsible, but also inaccurate and misleading.    It is not a done deal Mr. Prime Minister.

Respectfully yours

Gregory Ch’oc

SATIIM's Environmental Education Program

2011-01-13T09:20:00.001-08:00

Satiim Science Fair 2010

2011-01-13T08:14:00.000-08:00

DM2009 Proposal 1401 - Belize

2011-01-13T08:12:00.000-08:00

Land, Value and Economic Development in Toledo

By Gregory Choc, 16 June 1996

"May the spirit of Mother Earth watch over her children."
Today most of us live in a capitalist world where land is regarded as a commodity,-something that has an exchange value and can be traded. This attitude has alienated land from man: man has relinquished his proper role of stewardship and protector of land resources. This is one reason why the plea to save the rainforests, the home of the Aboriginal people of Central America often seems to be something belonging to another time. In the present age of "progress," the concern about Aboriginal ties to the land often seem to be anachronistic.
The propriety attitude of land ownership usually destroys land stewardship, since the owners of land often buy and sell land as an economic commodity, with little concern for such matters of environmental degradation, pollution, erosion and so on. This unfortunate "Euro-American" attitude to land use is gaining ground in Belize; and, in many cases, is being supplemented by the present Asiatic attitude to land use, which is to grab what you can from the environment and take off. In the specific case of Belize, something even more sinister may be in progress.
The Asiatic money that is, with Belize Government consent, backing the attack on our Toledo Forests will have a serious effect on the Mayas. Their attitude about land is different and has evolved over a time scale of many centuries. Maize (corn) has long been the basic food crop and is almost considered as a "gift from God" since their earliest days. It is still considered a sacred crop. Land that can grow corn is still important for the Mayas and they have evolved an agronomic system using forest fallowing to ensure that the soils remain reasonably fertile. Their system provides the nearest thing to sustainable production of essential food crops in most of Central America. Despite years of agricultural use, the land is still largely clothed in forest. To turn loose Asiatic entrepreneurs to destroy the Mayan agricultural system (and the cultural value that go with it) is something about which all Belizeans should be ashamed.
It has not escaped the notice of the Mayas that most of the local Asiatic stooges are from our own East Indian (Asiatic in origin) ethnic population, who have never had much to do with environmental conservation. They are "front" men used to help legalize the activity of the Taiwanese entrepreneurs. In effect, there is a battle in progress in Toledo between an Indigenous (to Central America) ethnic group who care about how they treat the land and have no wish to sell or buy land, and foreign ethnic invaders who think of land only as a means of making profit by acquisition and subsequent sale - something Mayas simply cannot understand or approve of. For the Mayas the "value" of land and its resources is life itself - something priceless. For centuries the Mayas derived their food, clothing and shelter from the land. The system of government, religion and beliefs sprang from the intimate relationship with the land. The cultural identity is still tied to the land - therefore a land base is vital for the continuity of the Mayas. We have seen what happened to native people and their land since 1492.
What needs to be understood is the centuries of betrayals. When woodcutters were extracting hardwood from the forest of British Honduras, they wanted only the wood. It was not the wood, but its effect that enabled other parties to exploit the Mayas and the resources of their land. We are not against 'progress' or development per se, but there is the need to find a fair solution to the cultural orientations underlying the land conflict in Toledo.
The ideological, spiritual and economic relation of the Mayas to the land has meant that land and its resources are perhaps the most decisive element to ensure successful economic development. It is critical if the Mayas are to successfully pursue traditional forms of economic life, since development programs supported by government continued to cause social and cultural stress to the Mayas.
For development to benefit the Mayas it is critical for them to actively participate in all levels in any and all development so that they benefit from any development. This specifically important to development which affects the land and the livelihood earned from it, so that the Mayas participate in the economic benefits which flow from such projects.
Sad to say that the logging madness rampant in Toledo by unscrupulous business interests aided and abetted by the government is not benefitting the Mayas or the economy of Belize. If the Ministry of Natural Resources believes that based on the economic needs of Toledo they decided to make the concession more favorable to Atlantic Industries Ltd. then they must be 'nuts', because only the Asiatic conglomerate will reap the millions from Toledo's resources.
All the Asiatic loggers are doing is creating an irreversible ecological nightmare for the Mayas. At the same time disorienting Mayas' environmental concepts which centers on the preservation of the Maya Culture. The Mayas are fighting back by strongly opposing the logging concessions. For now this is the only means by which the Mayas are defending their habitat against the drastic changes associated with commercial logging to ensure free access to the natural resources in Toledo upon which the Maya Culture depends. Through their various organizations they are demanding to have more political input into decisions made about developments in Toledo. Their organizations are working hard and in many ways to foster the survival of the Maya Culture.
The Mayas are endangered by the exploitation of the resources of their land. Can the Mayan People survive this attack or will they become part of the statistics as another victim of ethnocide in the world today? The government, by consistently justifying its position is indicating that the Mayan People are too poor to contribute anything worthwhile to the Belizean economy and are a worthless ethnic burden. Li Kawa chi iloc re xbehen li ka tyuam.

Since 2008, SATIIM has been piloting community-based forest management in Q'eqchi' Maya communities of southern Belize. In 2009, SATIIM won the World Bank Development Marketplace Award for it's work in the communities. Funding was provided for a third initiative in the community of Crique Sarco.

2010-12-06T14:14:00.000-08:00

______________________________________________________________________

Press Release

______________________________________________________________________
December 6, 2010

On Monday December 6, 2010, the Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM) with funding from the Global Environmental Facility Trust Fund, which supports the Development Marketplace 2009 Global Competition, launched a project in Toledo entitled “ Building Q'eqchi' Maya Capacity, Flexibility, and Adaption to Climate Change through Community-based Sustainable Forest Management" in Belize.

The launching was held at the Father Ring Parish Hall and included the participation of stakeholders from the buffer communities of the Sarstoon Temash National Park, local NGO’s and representatives from the Government. The guest speaker for the event was Minister Peter Eden Martinez. Other speakers includedSATIIM’s executive Director, Gregory Ch’oc; Mr. Marcelo Windsor from the Forest Department, Ministry of Natural Resources; the Alcalde of Crique Sarco; Luis Cho, the Chairperson of the Community-Based Sustainable Forest Enterprise (CBSFE) in Conejo;Chairman of CBSFE in Santa Teresa xxxxxx; John Makin; and a presentation of the project was given by SATIIM’s Programs Manager,Lynette Gomez.

The objective of the project is to “diminish the effects of poverty and environmental degradation afflicting rural indigenous Maya communities by promoting community-based sustainable forest management enterprise.” SATIIM believes that stimulating communities for community-based sustainable enterprises that are linked to conservation, environment and forest management provide a long term solution for communities and also mitigates climate change. As a part of the project, SATIIM will:

Assist the community organization;
Facilitate technical and administrative trainings;
Assist in Forestry planning and the development of Forest management plans and annual plans of operations for sustainable forestry;
Facilitate sustainable harvesting utilizing reduced impact logging techniques, a key element of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) which maintains economically viable log yields, improves the condition of regenerating forests and alleviates negative environmental effects; and
Pursuing equitable and competitive commercialization of products.

International community supports Maya rights

2010-07-21T19:18:00.000-07:00

Intercontinental Cry published an article about the affirmation of Maya land in Belize and published a video from the celebration, urging Belize's government to accept the court's decision.

So did First People in an article that quotes Gregory Ch'oc, SATIIM's Executive Director saying: "It is very unfortunate when we have come this far to vindicate our human rights, that the government will challenge these human rights."

These leading indigenous rights organizations agree supporting - together with SATIIM a petition to "Urge Belize to Support Maya Land Rights", which we ask all supporters to sign.

Government of Belize decided to appeal Maya Land case

2010-07-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

The Maya of southern Belize recently obtained judicial recognition of communal land titles for 38 villages in the Toledo district, a legal victory with international precedence for all indigenous peoples.
In 2007, Dean Barrow, then an opposition leader, has been outspokenly in favor of Maya communal land rights, but now, as a prime minister, he wants to appeal the recent landmark decision, because, he claims, it is "injurious to the public interest, injurious to national unity and it is injurious to the development of the Maya community" .

Prime Minister Barrow, the Maya children pictured here are waiting for your explanations.
They are confused. They do not understand what you mean. And neither do we...
How can communal land rights be right for some villages (that you supported) but not for the others? Where is logic? And where is justice?

Help avert ecological disaster threatening Belize!

2010-06-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

A picture of Gulf oil spill by Time magazine

We need oil, it's true... but there are places in this world, where oil drilling should never be considered, much less permitted, because the risk of damage to a unique and very vulnerable environment is just too big, consequences of the spill too awfull to even think of!

Belize is blessed with an abundance of pristine, biodiversity rich natural areas: rain forests, mangroves, wetlands and a unique Mesoamerican barrier reef - the second largest in the world.

All of it is a global legacy, sheltered for centuries by Belize's indigenous people.

Now government of Belize recklessly jeopardizes the nation's natural resources, giving away oil exploration concessions over practically the entire area of Belize, including its national parks, the barrier reef and atolls!

These areas are awfully vulnerable to even a small oil spill, much less a spill similar to the one created in April of this year by BP in the Gulf of Mexico.

Whether you are a birder, wanting to protect wetlands, environmentalist wanting to protect rain forests, snorkeler or diver wanting to protect the barrier reef and the atolls along the coast of Belize, whether you are an eco-tourist, wanting to enjoy the natural treasures of Belize, an expat or tourist wanting to enjoy sandy beaches and clear azure waters of the Caribbean ...

Please help Belize's indigenous people, and its civic society organizations, like SATIIM, to avert an ecological disaster in Belize NOW by:

Posting a comment here, supporting the fight against oil drilling in Belize's protected areas and offshore!

Donating - urgently and generously - to SATIIM's anti-oil campaign by linking to its project (# 5763) on Global Giving's Open Challenge starting July 5, 2010!

Spreading the word to all birders, environmentalists, snorkelers, divers, eco-tourists and others, who care about this planet and its natural treasures and want to preserve them!

Toledo Mayas win landmark case!

2010-06-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

On Monday, June 28 Belize's supreme court affirmed Maya's communal property rights in a landmark case.

Greg Ch'oc, SATIIM's executive director and a prominent Maya leader since 1994, commented:

"Words can't describe my emotions. Fifteen years of work, it's an overwhelming joy to know that the justice system in this country finally begins to render the justice that those seek and I can only be extremely happy that a group like the Maya community have mustered the courage to seek justice, to seek a space, to seek a voice, in their future and the future of this country."

" I want to start off with the word that the chief justice used today in court: this is the time for reconciliation , this is the time to put the issues that have divided us apart and to sit with our government and pave a way to concretize the fundamental values that every Belizean in this country ought to enjoy. I believe that the honorable prime minister believes in those fundamental values as well and we are hoping, as the Chief Justice articulated today, that a process is established to begin to identify and develop a legislation for the protection of these lands."

GOB choking SATIIM?

2010-06-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

--This article appeared in The Amandala Press on June 24, 2010.

GOB choking SATIIM?

“The government has been engaged in a vicious campaign to discredit and choke SATIIM’s funding – the lifeline of SATIIM’s existence,” Greg Ch’oc tells World Bank

by Adele Ramos (Amandala newspaper)

adelescribe@gmail.com

BELIZE CITY, Mon. June 21, 2010

The Sarstoon-Temash Institute of Indigenous Management (SATIIM) is the only entity to so far challenge the Government of Belize in court – and successfully so – over a petroleum concession, getting the court to demand that US Capital Energy conduct an Environmental Impact Assessment before undertaking exploratory works in Toledo.

SATIIM was also among the groups that went to court to get the Government of Belize to recognize Maya customary land rights.

Executive Director of SATIIM, Gregory Ch’oc, believes that because of the stance that SATIIM has taken on these and other related issues, the Government is spitefully stifling the NGO’s funding, the current contention being a 6-month delay in getting the Government of Belize to issue a simple endorsement letter for a US$200,000 grant SATIIM won back in 2009 under Project 1401 – a sustainable forestry initiative.

Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Natural Resources, Beverly Castillo, told Amandala that one of the concerns that the Government has, is that the administrative expenses total about 70% of the grant, leaving very little for community work on the ground.

“That’s ridiculous,” Ch’oc responded, saying that the organization has met all the World Bank’s requirements, including keeping the administrative costs within the 20% limit of the total budget.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment is the GEF Focal Point, but the Chief Environmental Officer, Martin Alegria, has been designated as the point person, said Castillo, who added that the Government has to undertake a proper review before issuing an endorsement letter.

Alegria told us that only 30% of the funds go to the community, as the World Bank consultants would use up 40 to 50% of funds and local salaries would use up roughly 20 to 30%. That is against the way we manage, said Alegria, adding that at least 50% of funds should go into the community or be spent locally in Belize.

Castillo said that she knew nothing of the request for an endorsement letter for the SATIIM project until three weeks ago. Since then, said Castillo, she has met with Alegria and Chief Forest Officer, Wilber Sabido, and she knew of a draft letter last Friday, which would shortly be sent to SATIIM.

This, however, is not the endorsement letter SATIIM contends it has been waiting for, for the past 6 months. It is a letter with concerns the ministry wants SATIIM to address.

Ch’oc, who said that he does not want to be contentious with Government, is of the view that GOB will never issue an endorsement letter for SATIIM: “…we knew that this would have been the way the government would treat us.”

He contends that, “The challenges that SATIIM confronts today are direct results of the actions we took in the past against the government and those we are taking today. The government has been engaged in a vicious campaign to discredit and choke SATIIM’s funding – the life line of SATIIM existence.”

On Thursday, June 17, Ch’oc pitched his appeal to the World Bank. He told us that he will persist with his appeals to the World Bank to either waive the requirement for an endorsement letter from the Government of Belize, or have the requirement dispensed with altogether.

He explains that there are approved projects that require government endorsement, and the trend for more than three years has been that the letters have not been forthcoming. One instance he cited was an $800,000 grant from PACT around 2006/2007; another is an FAO grant for which a letter has still not been sent three years later.

We may never be able to settle with the Government; this has to be settled with the Bank, Ch’oc said.

Below is a copy of Ch’oc’s appeal to the World Bank. At press time, he had not yet received a reply:

cla

June 17, 2010

Mr. Michael Corlett

Country Officer – Belize

World Bank

1818 H Street, NW

Washington, DC 20433,

USA

Dear Mr. Corlett,

Thank you very much for all your support to SATTIM. This letter is to formalize the request I made sent via email yesterday.

In November 2009, the indigenous communities in southern Belize were elated that their project 1401 was among the twenty six winners in the World Bank Development Marketplace competition; ‘100 ideas to save the planet’. That was almost 7 months ago and sadly we still have not been able to start the project.

Many of the great staff at the Bank knows about SATIIM. SATIIM worked with the Bank before in successfully implementing a medium GEF size grant in 2002-2005. Resulting from that support is a strong and vibrant indigenous organization that has given voice to the voiceless. SATIIM has brought on the national stage the plight of the indigenous people. We have been Engaged in innovative environmental stewardship and setting the foundation for indigenous communities future economic prosperity rooted in their vision and aspirations. Building the capacities and creating opportunities for indigenous people to engage in solving some of the chronic and intractable issues that are the causes of environmental degradation and poverty in their communities and the region. It has not been an easy process, but our communities are fortified in the conviction that we as a community have an obligation to make our contribution to save the planet.

This has meant taking concrete actions in challenging government environmental and developmental policies in the region -demanding good governance to ensure the deepening of our democracy. Government fragmented economic development agenda for the region is not consistent with the need to address climate change and moreover totally disregarding the aspiration of the Maya people.

You may be aware that in 2006 government granted oil exploration license in the region without requiring Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). After exhausting options to have government reconsider its permit so that it complies with the Environmental Protection Act (EPA), SATIIM file lawsuit in the Supreme of Belize. The result, the government’s permit squashed and the company forced to conduct an EIA as required by the EPA. In 2007 and after two decades of negotiations with government to resolve the land tenure insecurity of the Maya communities, SATIIM and other Maya organizations file land claims lawsuit in the Supreme Court of Belize. The precarious nature of the indigenous communities land tenure arrangement has significantly contributed to the environmental, economic and human rights concerns that we are addressing.

The challenges that SATIIM confronts today are direct results of the actions we took in the past against the government and those we are taking today. The government has been engaged in a vicious campaign to discredit and choke SATIIM’s funding – the life line of SATIIM existence. We have projects that have been approved to us that require government endorsement – some of these projects have been approved three years ago, and despite government agreeing to provide the endorsement letter to the donor, they have not done so. This is what is happening now in the case with the development marketplace project 1401.

We provided all documents to the government over 6 months ago. We have been calling them regularly and we get the run around. Last week the deputy environmental officer via a telephone call informed one of my staff, Lynette Gomez, that the government has some issues with budget allocation and others in the proposal. We requested from the government to send their concerns to us in writing and despite agreeing to send us, we have not received anything. Our efforts in trying to get the endorsement letter for over 6 months have not resulted in any letter. How much longer should we wait? The letter will never come.

This raises two fundamental questions:

1.) Why does the Bank place condition like this one after a project has been approved?

2.) Not that the Belize Government concerns are valid, I am positive they are not. My concern is how will the Bank reconcile issues raised by a third party, a party not involved in the initial process, that the Bank deliberately invite to have a say in the process at the end?

Considering the undue stress and the unfair condition made after the project approval, I am requesting that the Bank remove as a condition of the grant, the letter of endorsement from the GEF focal point of the Government of Belize, so that we proceed to sign the grant agreement quickly.

In concluding, we knew that this would have been the way the government would treat us. But we are guided by the conviction that our work is for no ordinary cause, it is a great cause, and a just cause. We would not have done our work any other way. Doing nothing would mean embracing the status quo – one of injustice, discrimination, poverty, and environmental degradation.

I hope you understand the situation we find ourselves in and reconsider removing the condition that could continue delaying our work with the communities in the region.

I thank you for your continued support.

Gregory Ch’oc

Executive Director