Ecuador To Sell A Third Of Its Amazon Rainforest To Chinese Oil Companies
Ecuador is planning to auction off three million of the country’s 8.1 million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, Jonathan Kaiman of The Guardian reports.
The report comes as oil pollution forced neighbouring Peru to declare an environmental state of emergency in its northern Amazon rainforest.
Ecuador owed China more than $7 billion — more than a tenth of its GDP — as of last summer.
In 2009 China began loaning Ecuador billions of dollars in exchange
for oil shipments. It also helped fund two of the country’s biggest
hydroelectric infrastructure projects, and China National Petroleum
Corp may soon have a 30 per cent stake in a $10 billion oil refinery in Ecuador.
“My understanding is that this is more of a debt issue – it’s because
the Ecuadoreans are so dependent on the Chinese to finance their
development that they’re willing to compromise in other areas such as
social and environmental regulations,” Adam Zuckerman, environmental and
human rights campaigner at California-based NGO Amazon Watch, told the
Guardian.
The seven indigenous groups who live on the land are not happy, especially because last year a court ruled that
governments must obtain “free, prior, and informed consent” from native
groups before approving oil activities on their indigenous land.
“They have not consulted us, and we’re here to tell the big investors
that they don’t have our permission to exploit our land,” Narcisa
Mashienta, a leader of Ecuador’s Shuar people, said in a report.
