Agro-exporter Ecuador was transformed by the discovery of large petroleum reserves in the pristine Amazon rainforest of the Oriente by Texaco in 1968. The development of these oilfields spurred an economic boom in the 1970s – helped by a dramatic rise in world oil prices – but also resulted in profound damage to the rivers, rainforest, and the indigenous way of life. The government quadrupled its budget in three years, and public spending on social services was proportionally higher than in any other country in Latin America. Investments were made in education, health, and infrastructure that improved the lives of most Ecuadorians.
Oil pipes in the Amazon.
Nathalie Weemaels/Corbis
Oriente, the oil province
While oil money was raked in in Quito, in the Amazon settlers, large oil corporations, and indigenous peoples competed for land and resources. Little thought was given to the potential impact on the environment, and the native contingent had no concept of ownership, allowing oil companies to build roads and drill in exchange for gifts.
Settlers were awarded plots of land if they were willing to “improve” it, which meant clearing it for agriculture or pasture. As their land was usurped by settlers, the indigenous peoples in the Lago Agrio area were forced to enter the new Ecuadorian society, often at the lowest social rung as laborers, domestic workers, or prostitutes. Or they fled deeper into the rainforest, coming into conflict with other tribes. Additionally, thousands of Colombian refugees entered from the war-torn north.
With the support of the environmental lobby in the 1980s, however, native groups began to raise awareness in Ecuador and abroad through protests, putting pressure on the government to recognize their land rights, and for the oil companies to clean up their act. Initially, oil production was solely in the hands of US company Texaco, that dumped 16 billion gallons of highly poisonous wastewater in a swathe of the northeast Amazon from 1972 to 1992, now the object of what was then the biggest lawsuit in history .
Today, road construction continues, aiding the influx of settlers into remote regions and destroying the forest. However, settlers demand more roads as they provide access to basic healthcare and schools.
Huaorani protesters at trial proceedings in the Chevron/Texaco lawsuit.
Reuters/Corbis
Oil, agriculture, and development
The oil industry provides crucial income but few of the steady jobs Ecuador so desperately needs. The boom years of the early 21st century provided some $30 billion in revenue, and before President Correa refused to continue payments on a third of its foreign debt, Ecuador’s debt levels were already among the lowest in Latin America. Oil accounted for more than 60 percent of Ecuador’s exports at its peak price in July 2008, and it will remain a crucial source of foreign income in the foreseeable future.
Pressured by some international shareholders, oil companies have begun to improve their act. The Correa administration has promised to beef up environmental standards, which currently are generally higher in the foreign oil industry than at state-owned PetroEcuador. The glaring exception to this is the devastation purportedly caused by Chevron for oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon between 1972 and 1992, with an Ecuadorian court’s decision to uphold the ruling that Chevron should pay $18.2 billion in damages upheld in early 2012. It was a landmark date in a legal battle that had been raging for over two decades, but the case continues, with Chevron seeking adjudication elsewhere.
The development of rainforest is difficult to manage and the threat from companies who, illegally and llegally, extract its resources for profit, is almost constant. Most recently, Ecuador’s largest national park, Parque Nacional Yasuní, was only saved from oil development after an international alliance raised $60 million to compensate the government. However, when done well, oil development is less damaging than the rampant illegal logging, which governments have done little to stop. Exotic hardwoods are smuggled to Colombia, Peru, and the US. Wide tracts of rainforest on both sides of the Andes are being cleared at an annual rate among the highest in Latin America (around 300,000 hectares/750,000 acres each year). Both subsistence farmers trying to eke out a meager living, clearing land for grazing and planting, and large companies cutting down trees around Esmeraldas on the coast and in the Oriente to make way for a monoculture of African palms, are to blame. Agriculture accounts for 20 percent of foreign earnings, just behind petroleum in importance, and pesticides are used extensively to maximize production. The laws regulating pesticide use and residues on food are strict, but rarely enforced; most farmers have no training or protective equipment. The proper management of water is an important issue, too, and doubts about the country’s reliability from a business perspective have slowed private foreign investment.
Tourism is one development option currently in vogue with the government. Supervision is still shaky, however, and travelers will do well to seek out eco-lodges meeting internationally recognized standards. Numerous high-quality lodges have sprung up in the Andean foothills northwest of Quito, all along the Andean chain, and in Oriente around places like Tena and east of Coca. The most famous of these is Kapawi on the jungle border with Peru, which established milestones for co-operative management with local communities, rewarding them for the protection of their environment and heritage.
Logging roads cut deep into the heart of the country’s Choco rainforest.
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Climate change
Since the early 1900s, annual rainfall has significantly decreased and glaciers have retreated on average 300 meters (950ft). In 1995–6 electricity was rationed because the Paute hydroelectric plant that provides 65 percent of the country’s electricity was dry due to lack of rain as well as deforestation, which causes soil to absorb water less efficiently. Recurring El Niño weather patterns, however, have caused periodic widespread flooding and destruction, driving up prices for the poor and saddling the government with infrastructure costs.
Ecuador has large, undeveloped hydropower reserves, and several new hydroelectric plants are under construction. Planned, massive further investment faces controversy due to financing rather than environmental issues. However, more hydroelectric electricity will release Ecuador from the ridiculous amounts of money it spends to import and subsidize diesel and gasoline.
National Parks
While protection on paper is better than nothing, much needs to be done to save Ecuador’s hugely diverse ecology from destruction.
Ecuador’s Ministry of the Environment currently manages and protects 32 national parks and protected areas that cover 28 percent of the total area of the country, concentrated in the Galápagos, the northeast Oriente, and the eastern slopes of the Andes.
The entrance fees to the most popular national parks (Galápagos, Cotopaxi, and Cotocachi-Cayapas) help subsidize some of the less visited and more threatened reserves. For instance, many coastal mangrove swamps, which are vital breeding grounds for marine fish species, have been destroyed in the past 20 years by the construction of expansive pools for “shrimp-ranching.” The Cayapas-Mataje and the Manglares-Churute reserves were created to protect a small portion of these rapidly disappearing mangroves, but many locals are unaware that these reserves exist. There is a great need for community education on sustainable use of fish resources within these reserves.
The value of untouched forests
Cloud forests were being cleared from the Andean central valley long before the Spanish conquered Ecuador in the first half of the 16th century, but the Andean eastern slope has never been cut because it is so wet, rugged, and inaccessible. However, as more roads encroach into the Oriente and colonists begin to fell the old-growth mahoganies and alders, protected areas such as Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve, Llanganates and Sangay national parks become important refuges for rare species such as the Andean spectacled bear, wooly mountain tapir, and Andean condor. One of the latest additions to the park system is the bi-national Parque Nacional Cordillera del Cóndor, which escaped deforestation and development because it was located along the disputed border with Peru. Although it is still mined and not yet set up for tourism, scientists are beginning to catalog its biological diversity.
Yasuní National Park in the Oriente is considered the most biologically diverse place in the world, where over 900 different species of trees have been identified in a single 2-hectare (5-acre) plot. Even with Unesco Biosphere Reserve status, however, the howler monkeys and jaguars of Yasuní still have to share their habitat with oil companies and aggressively colonizing indigenous groups. Conservationists are extremely wary of this experiment, since the nearby Cuyabeno Reserve had its western half lopped off and the area is now filled with colonists and oil wells.
Mediating land-use conflicts perhaps presents the greatest challenge to the environmental protection offices. Multiple and often environmentally damaging activities such as homesteading, lumber harvest, grazing, water projects, mining, and oil production are permitted by other government agencies in the protected areas. The Correa administration is trying to reorganize the warren of overlapping authorities, and schemes such as the plan to protect parts of the Yasuní by selling carbon bonds may provide some much-needed funding.
Cynics often refer to Ecuadorian protected areas as “paper parks” since essential environmental policing is still lacking, but it is remarkable that a country with limited resources has had the foresight to sketch out so many natural areas that are worth saving in the future.
In the Parque Nacional Machalilla.
Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications