Environmental disaster in the rainforest

It's not just megadams which are threatening indigenous people and the Amazon.

As COP20 drags on inside the military compound which the Guardian newspaper refers to as a 'climate fortress,' there are human rights and environmental disasters happening in Peru. The Peruvian government is pursuing expansion of oil and gas operations in the Amazon.

Over the last few months, as the world was preparing for the COP, the North Peruvian Petroperú oil pipeline, which runs through the Amazon for 850 miles, has broken in five places. The spills have, to quote the Guardian: 'spewed thick black clots of crude across jungle and swamp and carpeted local fishing lagoons with dead fish.'

Two of the spills are clearly visible from the air: dark scars across the green forest. Indigenous communities nearby report illness in their children; dead fish and the corpses of small animals are clogging up the river.

Such activities by governments and corporations are egregious human rights violations. They cause irreparable and irreversible damage to the environment and accelerate climate change. Greg Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science found, in a report published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that "nearly a billion metric tons of above-ground carbon stocks in Peru are at imminent risk for emission into the atmosphere due to land uses such as fossil fuel oil exploration, cattle ranching, oil palm plantations and gold mining."

Resistance to granting indigenous peoples rights to their ancestral land is motivated by profit. Many governments know that beneath indigenous lands lie great reserves of fossil fuels and minerals and they are willing to sacrifice lives and the environment to access them.

The Peruvian government is not the only one exploring for oil in the Amazon. The Biosphere of Yasuni National Park in Ecuador is home to a record number of animal and plant species, not to mention the Tagaeri and Taromenane clans of the Waorani, whose ancestral lands sit atop Ecuador's largest undeveloped oil reserves. 90% of the Ecuadorian population opposes the move to drill, but President Correa insists he has 'no choice.' By 2016, a subsidiary of the national oil company, Petroamazonas will be drilling in Yasuni Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputinin (ITT) block, an untouched swathe of primary rainforest covering around 100,000 hectares. The Guardian newspaperalleges that Ecuador has negotiated a secret deal with Chinese bank over ITT's oil.

The BJHRF and I also have been supporting the Mayangna people in their struggle to protect their ancestral land - the Biosphere Reserve of Bosawás in Nicaragua, the second largest rain forest in the western hemisphere, home to approximately 40,000 indigenous Mayangna. Bosawás is part of Nicaragua's national patrimony - a unique preserve of indigenous culture.

The lives of the Mayangna and Bosawás's unique ecosystems are threatened by invasions of illegal loggers and settlers. The Mayangna leader Charley Taylor was killed on April 24th 2013, trying to defend his lands from loggers, who had cleared 35 acres of precious hardwoods. These invaders have deforested around 150,000 hectares since 2009, are polluting the rivers and threatening the Mayangna people. If these illegal activities are allowed to continue, in ten years Bosawás may no longer exist.

I have appealed to President Daniel Ortega to declare a state of emergency in Bosawás.