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Ever since Sting brought it to world attention the plight of the Amazonian rainforest has been an international concern. Logging by big businesses in Latin American countries and the deforestation of areas for beef production are campaigned against vigorously. Private individuals have banded together to buy tracts of forest to protect them. The public awareness of the importance of this region to the health of the world's ecosystem is high.

There is now a new threat, oil, black gold, the substance that makes the world goes around, and definitely controls the American economy. Companies are desperate to find new reserves of oil and exploit them. The newest gold rush is to the Amazon region. Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and Bolivia are sitting on vast natural resources. In Peru and Ecuador the problem is especially serious, with over half of Peru's pristine rainforest and up to eighty percent of Ecuador' s up for grabs. Governments in these regions are notoriously fragile and it is thought that the big oil companies have bought their way into a prime position to exploit the oil. These countries need money, we think we need oil, but at what cost.

It is unlikely that the governments of these countries are going to police environmental issues during exploration and drilling, so who is going to police the lungs of the world. It is important that if the oil industry is going to be allowed to continue to exploit the region then some one is paying attention to the environmental consequences. A big profit for the oil companies depends on as small an outlay as possible, saving trees and animals is not something they will do unless the publicity payoff is worth it.

The Camisea natural gas project in Peru demonstrates this, they have a website with pictures of smiling children, and button to press to prove they are monitoring biodiversity. Not mentioned is the fact that the pipeline ruptured four times in the first eighteen months of operation, and a massive explosion has occurred since then. Not mentioned is the fact that despite an international agreement banning this, the indigenous peoples of the region have been pressured into leaving their lands. Their gas processing plant has been built on another area of natural importance.

The finance for this project can be traced to the United States, Amazon watch announced on December 11th 2007 that they have evidence that "The World bank, The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) would be breaching their own social and environmental safeguards if they approve more than $1 billion in public financing to a controversial gas project in the Peruvian Amazon," They are already financing this project.

But the Camisea project is not the only one causing problems. Pluspetrol has an appalling environmental track record. Pluspetrol has been responsible for oil spills into rivers and protected areas such as the Pacay-samiria reserve and the Northern Peruvian Amazon. They are actually dumping the waste from their drilling straight into the local rivers, killing the local Indian population and the wildlife.

Stopping finance to these projects is not the answer. The oil companies still want the oil, and the governments still want the money. What are required are stringent international guidelines with real oversight and real powers to make sure that where this exploitation seems inevitable it is done with minimum impact on the rainforest and its fragile ecology. Environmental standards need to be set and, more importantly, effectively policed.

http://www.camisea.com .pe/
http://www.amazonwatch.org /amazon/PE/camisea/

Learn more about this author, Eve Redstone.
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