• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Rainforest Fund

  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • What We Do
    • Reports
  • Projects
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia
    • Funding Information
  • Get Involved
  • Blog
  • Donate
    • Individual Contributions
    • Corporate Partnerships
  • Contact

Supporting Community Led Environmental Monitoring in the Wake of An Oil Spill

July 18, 2014 By Mitch Anderson Leave a Comment

Rainforest Fund partner organization ClearWater and Indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon are working hard in the wake of the latest oil spill to ensure that families have clean water.

This post appeared originally here.

It started as a rainbow sheen on the surface of the turbid waters of the mighty Aguarico River, but within hours it turned into a thick layer of crude oil that stuck to the bottom of canoes, accumulated in stagnant inlets, and smeared the rocky shores of indigenous villages for miles downriver.

It was July 2nd, and a Petroamazonas pipeline had ruptured, spewing thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Aguarico River. When would the company stop the spill? How poisoned is our water? When will it be safe to bathe, wash clothes, and fish in our river?   Will the company clean up the spill? These were the questions on the minds of many of the Cofán, Siona and Secoya people who live downriver from the ruptured pipeline.

But there was silence.

According to community members, neither the state oil company, Petroamazonas, nor the Ecuadorian government sent health officials to visit the downriver villages in the wake of the spill. Rather than provide critical information about the quality of the water that the indigenous communities depend on for their basic needs, the state oil company equivocated about the extent of the spill. Official pronouncements capped the spill at 100,000 gallons, of which the majority, they said, had been “contained”; however, a confidential source at Petroamazonas leaked information to the civil society collective, Yasunidos, that more than 785,000 gallons of oil had been spilled. You can read more information from Yasunidos here.

So what kind of emergency response measures did Petroamazonas and the Ecuadorian Government enact in the wake of the spill?

On July 7th representatives from Petroamazonas delivered a bag of groceries to each affected family as compensation for the “inconvenience”: one 10 lb. bag of rice, one 4 lb. bag of sugar, oatmeal, noodles, a bag of salt, five cans of tuna fish, and two bottles of cooking oil, likely totaling under $20. Community members from Cofán Dureno, Playas de Cuyabeno, and Sábalo say that company officials claim that “social compensation” will come in the form of jobs: cleaning up the spill.

Fortunately, over the past years, the majority of indigenous communities downriver from the spill have built their own rainwater catchment systems, which provided them with clean drinking, cooking and bathing water during this difficult time. You can see the communities with rainwater catchment systems on ClearWater’s interactive map.

In the wake of the spill ClearWater is raising urgent funds, which will go directly to community led water quality monitoring efforts in the region, as well as to ramping up the construction of rainwater catchment systems in downriver indigenous communities, such as the Cofan community of Sabalo (approximately 100 kilometers downriver from the ruptured pipeline, yet still observing the effects of the oil contamination).

Next week in Secoya territory, a team of young water quality monitors and mappers from the Cofan, Siona, Secoya and Waorani peoples will document ongoing effects of the oil spill; collect testimony from affected community members; as well as engage in a broader monitoring project designed to provide community members with information about the sources of contamination affecting the river water that sustains their lives, such as oil industry pollution, African palm pesticides, industrial waste, and sewage from nearby oil boom towns. Data results gathered during this program will be shared locally with all community members, and included on our interactive map.

Please support the indigenous peoples of Ecuador’s northern Amazon in their efforts to monitor the quality of water that sustains their life, and in doing so, build the critical skills and tools needed to demand an end to the poisoning of their ancestral waterways.

Visit https://www.giveclearwater.org/urgent-spill-response/ to support water quality monitoring and urgent rainwater catchment system construction in the indigenous communities affected by the recent oil spill.

_____________________________________________________________________________

To help the indigenous peoples defend their human rights and lands, please visit www.rainforestfund.org/donate and consider making a contribution.                  100% OF YOUR DONATION GOES TO THE FIELD.

______________________________________________________________________________

Want to blog with us?  Contact Madeleine at rffund@rainforestfund.org for more information!

Share this:

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Human rights Tagged With: Empowerment, ethics, indigenous & tribal populations, Water rights

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Find us on our social networks!

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Donate to Rainforest Fund

Donate Today

Blog Topics

  • Amazon
  • Brazil
  • Culture
  • Deforestation
  • Economic rights
  • Education
  • Empowerment
  • Environment
  • Ethics
  • Human rights
  • Indigenous & tribal populations
  • Indigenous rights
  • International organizations
  • Land rights
  • Politics
  • Rainforest Fund
  • Sustainability and Climate Change
  • Technology
  • UN conventions
  • Uncategorized
  • Water access

Footer

Subscribe to our Mailing List

Find us on our social networks!

  • Facebook
  • YouTube

Download our latest one-pager for some fast facts!

Make a Donation

Donate Now

Past Projects (PDF)

2017-2018 Projects Report
2016 Projects Report

Copyright © 2023 · Rainforest Fund · 420 Lexington Avenue, Suite 1710 New York, NY 10170 · (T) 212-677-6045 · (F) 212-460-5609 · Contact Us

Online Privacy Policy · Conflict of Interest Policy

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.