Abstract
Orta-Martínez, M., L. Pellegrini, and M. Arsel. 2018. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease”? The conflict imperative and the slow fight against environmental injustice in northern Peruvian Amazon. Ecology and Society 23(3):7. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10098-230307
Highlights
On 10 October 2006, more than 800 indigenous people from the Achuar community of the northern Peruvian Amazon occupied the facilities of the country’s longest operating and most productive oil project
In addition to documenting what is an especially important case of socio-environmental conflict in the Peruvian Amazon, we go beyond the dominant approach in the literature, which sees dialogue as inherently desirable and conflict as necessarily unwelcome, and describe the Achuar decision to engage in open conflict with the oil company as one that testifies to the existence of a conflict imperative
Denouncing “the mockery of the Ministry of Energy and Mines [MEM]” and the “malicious way” in which a commission that was set up to deal with the issue of oil-related pollution was operating, they demanded that the authorities begin “a serious dialogue [...] with our indigenous authorities that legitimately represent us, take immediate measures to stop pollution and attend to indigenous people ill from lead, cadmium and other oil-related pollutants.”
Summary
INTRODUCTION On 10 October 2006, more than 800 indigenous people from the Achuar community of the northern Peruvian Amazon occupied the facilities of the country’s longest operating and most productive oil project (blocks 8 and 1AB/192). In 2013, as a consequence of the striking results of the environmental analysis conducted by different governmental agencies within the framework of the investigation of oil pollution agreed in the Topal Accords, the Peruvian government declared a state of environmental emergency in the whole Pastaza, Corrientes, Tigre, and Marañón river basins (see Ministerial Resolution 094-2013-MINAM, Ministerial Resolution 263-2013-MINAM, and Ministerial Resolution 370-2013-MINAM).
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