Pioneer gas project in Latin America fails indigenous peoples
Pioneer gas project in Latin America fails indigenous peoples
Huge revenues generated by the Camisea project in Peru’s Amazon, but locals suffer from health epidemics and lack of clean water
David Hill
Thursday 2 June 2016 20.35 EDT
Every year a group of experts called the South Peru Panel issues a report on the country’s largest ever energy development which extracts natural gas and natural gas liquids from the Amazon and pipes them all the way across the Andes to Peru’s Pacific coast. The conclusions of its latest report? “Very positive macroeconomic benefits” and “without precedent in Peru’s modern economic history”, but pathetic, if not disastrous, for the indigenous people living near where the gas is extracted.
The South Peru Panel was established in 2009 as a condition of a US$458.6 million loan by the Export-Import Bank of the United States to the Peru Liquified Natural Gas Project (Peru LNG), run by US company Hunt Oil, to build a 408 km pipeline, a gas liquefaction plant on the coast, and a marine terminal. The total cost is reported to have been almost US$4 billion - making it at the time the largest foreign direct investment in Peru’s history, according to the Panel, and the first and to date only LNG export project in Latin America.
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But what about what the Panel calls the “social aspects” of Camisea? How have the lives of the indigenous peoples living near where the gas is extracted changed over the years, for better or worse? Has any of the billions of dollars earned by the project trickled down and enabled them to improve their lives?
Water and sanitation projects in Matsigenka communities in the region are “grossly inadequate”, the Panel states, with current systems “at best” delivering untreated river or stream water “with moderate to high degrees of fecal coliform contamination straight to households.”
“The sorry, declining state of indigenous health and community sanitation structures in the Lower Urubamba is simply not acceptable given the wealth that Camisea has generated in all sectors of the Peruvian economy, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that have entered local and regional government’s coffers over the past ten years,” the report reads. “The problem is no longer a matter of money or even technology or expertise, but mostly of adequate planning and oversight.”
On the Matsigenkas’ health the Panel claims to have “arrived at a snapshot of the evolution of basic health indicators over the course of recent decades. Some patterns clearly emerged: chronic infant malnutrition remains high.”
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2016/jun/02/pioneer-gas-latin-america-indigenous-peoples
