FEATURE - Oil fever casts pall over Amazon eco-paradise
Date: 10-Jan-03
Country: ECUADOR
Author: Robert Evans
On the Capahuari River beyond, a gaggle of green turtles slide off a half-submerged trunk as a battery-powered canoe approaches and a sudden eddy signals that a fresh-water dolphin has dived out of sight.
On the boardwalk of the Kapawi Ecolodge, plastic water bags to provide day-end warm showers for the 40 paying guests in 20 neat timber cabins lie heating in the sun while indigenous Achuar cooks peel manioc roots for the evening meal.
The scene is almost idyllic in this corner of Ecuador's part of Amazonia, a 14-day jungle trek from the nearest road and so remote from the rest of the country that the local store is a houseboat that comes up-river from Peru.
But in the surrounding Achuar villages, whose people have little more than 30 years experience in dealing with the outsiders they still call "the white man," there is fear that radical change may be coming whether they like it or not.
"We will fight it every way we can," says 30-year-old Froilan Tutrik, headman of the 40-member community at Kusutkau, just 45 minutes upstream from the lodge - a flagship for Guayaquil-based ecological tour company Canodros.
Ecuador, whose biggest export is crude oil, hopes to expand oil production and is looking to the remote southeastern swath of the Amazon where the Achuar live.
In mid-December, Achuar Indians seized eight workers for an Argentine oil company for nine days to protest their exploration work in the jungle. Firm CGC agreed to halt its work until the two sides agree on drilling plans.
Some Achuar live in oil block No. 24, where Burlington Resources holds exploration rights. The firm has not moved ahead with exploration because of the opposition.
"Tell the world we don't want the oil companies here. It would mean the end of everything we live by," Tutrik said.
His words echo in every conversation with Achuar - the some 3,500 "people of the water palm" spread across 2 million (810,000) pristine forest acres (hectares) with an amazing variety of plant and animal life straddling Ecuador's south-eastern border with Peru.
NIGHTMARE PREDICTED
"It would be a nightmare," says Cristobal Vargas, a 42-year-old guide who steers foreign tourists from the Kapawi lodge along jungle trails and river backwaters while explaining his native culture's lore and beliefs.
"We know what has happened to the Indian nations in the north who agreed to let the oil firms in," he tells visitors from Europe as he sips a soft drink in the lodge's spacious meeting room that also serves as library and bar.
"The animals and birds died or fled, the butterflies and insects were burned in the gas flares, and oil spills flooded the land. Many of the men became drunks and women turned to prostitution."
In Ecuador's heavily developed northern jungle, Indians sued Texaco alleging toxic dumping devastated the environment and exposed local residents to cancer-causing pollutants.
The dark vision is contested by the oil companies and the state company Petroecuador which assigns the exploration contracts and itself produces half the cash-strapped country's economically vital 420,000 barrels a day.
"The human face of petroleum," is how many bill themselves today, arguing that mistakes made in the early oil boom years - graphically detailed by a photo exhibit in the Ecuadorean capital Quito's Amazonia Museum - have been corrected.
But for Canodros, which also operates a top-of-the-market cruise vessel around Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, tailored eco-tourism offers a way to keep out big oil.
"Our type of project can help bring the amenities of modern life - like health and schooling - to the peoples of the Amazon without destroying a lifestyle they don't want to lose," said the company's general manager, Andre Barona.
"Our goal," says a Canadros mission statement, "is to work with the Achuar indigenous community to provide a successful alternative to the traditional destruction created by enterprises in the Amazon Rain Fo
