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December 31st, 2012
When I was about twelve years old, like any other kid, I had several posters decorating my bedroom walls. In retrospect, some of the posters that I owned probably held an interesting prediction for my later adventures with the shamans of the Shuar people in the rainforest of Ecuador, or they may subconsciously have been the cause of me going there. The largest poster I owned was a huge map of the world, printed by National Geographic, with the borders between the countries lushly coloured. Another was a World Wildlife Fund poster that called for saving the rainforest and thus the 'lungs of the world' from destruction, with all kinds of jungle animals posing in front of a rainforest.

More than twenty-five years later and the National Geographic map from the early Eighties would have been more than obsolete. If the demographic changes that started at the end of that decade with the fall of the Soviet Union and continued with the war in Yugoslavia had all been incorporated into that colourful original map, it would probably have resembled a two year olds drawing rather than a National Geographic map. Unfortunately the message of the World Wildlife Fund poster is still true today.

This obsoleteness can be witnessed in several parts of the world that I happen to have visited in past years. When you travel to the north of Vietnam to visit the Hmong people you can see many hilltops that have been cleared of trees by logging in an attempt to satisfy demand in prospering China. In Rwanda and Uganda you can easily see how encroaching populations seriously endanger the habitat of the last mountain gorillas on Earth. On Sumatra you will have to drive through miles and miles of palm oil plantations before you get to the last pieces of forest that house the orangutans, one of the great apes. Are these things happening in remote places that are hard to find? Not really, especially if you are prepared to put in a little bit more effort than the general holiday maker would. The effect of growing populations and prosperity on nature's wellbeing stares at you right in the face.

Life unfolding

Another place were deforestation can easily be witnessed are the rainforests in the south east of Ecuador, historically the homeland of the Shuar people who have dwelled there for millennia. As in many other forested areas, the main culprit of deforestation is again an increasing population combined with growing prosperity which enlarges the need for agricultural land to grow crops and to raise cattle, at the expense of the forest. It is a difficult puzzle to solve as there are many socio-economic factors involved. It is a puzzle with asymmetric pieces in which the desire of the Shuar to keep to their traditional ways of life clashes with contemporary reality. These traditional ways include 'slash and burn' techniques that were sustainable several decades ago but are now rapidly pushing back the edge of the forest.

In this already vulnerable area another threat has risen on the horizon in recent years. It is not a secret that Mother Earth hides loads of precious treasures beneath the plants and trees of the rainforest. These treasures come both in liquid and solid form. The liquid form is oil and the indigenous people in north east Ecuador have already had thirty years of an unfortunate privilege to experience the devastating effects of Chevron Texaco sucking it dry. The other, the solid form, comes as gold, silver and copper. Each of these minerals per definition requires mining techniques that seriously rough up the area above the ground and everything that depends on it for living and for culture; but the high financial value that they have on the international markets represents the demand for them. Rising metal prices will makes those hidden treasures shine even more in the eyes of those who would like to mine them.

The three years old Nantu preparing himself for a Natemamu ceremony

Mining for minerals in the rainforest on a small scale has already been happening for many years in the south east corner of Ecuador. Its damaging effects can readily be experienced at a local level, but what is starting to appear is even more disastrous for the region. The Ecuadorian Government has approved the "Mirador" mining project in the Cordillera del Cóndor, a 150 kilometer long stretch of mountains, one of the most bio-diverse areas in South America. It is the first in a series of initiatives to mine the riches beneath the Ecuadorian rainforest in massive quantities. One cannot deny the irony in the naming of the project because "Mirador" means "Look-out" in Spanish. If the project continues, in twenty years from now the indigenous people living in the area will indeed be looking into a one kilometer deep pit occupying 115 hectares of previously pristine forest and next to it will be a 180 million ton mountain of mining spoils occupying another 500 hectares which has been reserved for dumping and processing facilities. And that will be the first of many such projects.

It would be hypocritical to take a stance against the mining of precious minerals in general. Gold, silver and copper are great conductors of electricity and are widely used in electronics. The laptop that I am using to write this article contains about US$5 worth of precious metals. The network components that collectively constitute the Internet through which you browsed to this article and through which you access your favourite websites contain an amount of gold that would probably occupy the largest room in Fort Knox if collectively stored there. But as for mining these precious minerals, it seems to make more sense to extract them from less vulnerable areas than from a rainforest that is already under strain.

When the sun is out, an abundance of butterflies appears

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa does not really agree with this viewpoint, because he has made it very clear that he is in favour of mining in the Amazon rainforest. Blasphemers would probably argue wickedly that the President needs the money and that it will be siphoned towards his Government as royalties; either to pay for his massive public spending programs or to pay back an estimated US$ 8.3 billion debt that Ecuador owes to Chinese banks. The President's views seem to be more entrenched in ideology than that. Rafael Correa regards the mining boom as essential to bringing prosperity to Ecuador, including prosperity to its indigenous population. Correa defines this prosperity within the framework of his education. Unfortunately for those that are dependent on the rainforest for their culture and their wellbeing, the President has a PhD in economics and not a PhD in anthropology or conservation. He is apparently not ready to enrich his views with the latter areas of knowledge.

Although Correa gets high approval ratings in the rest of Ecuador, mainly due to his social spending programs, most Shuar people that actually live in the area would like to drink his blood. The majority of the estimated 120.000 indigenous people that live in the affected area are strongly against the mining projects and for several years there have been regular protests against them. Protests have been carried out by both indigenous and non-indigenous communities and usually come in the form of roadblocks, strikes and mass protest gatherings. The main objection that the protesters have is that the mining will seriously pollute the environment that they live in. They are not only talking about felling the forest and ploughing the uncovered earth. There is a widespread fear that the massive amounts of water necessary to refine the ores will affect the quantity available for the indigenous population. The other and more deeply rooted fear is that the water used in the mining process will be so contaminated that it will affect the quality of the water, in an area that extends greatly beyond the mining area, with contamination trickling down into drinking water supplies and the food chain. This fear is not particularly reduced by the fact that both the Government and the company opting to mine the riches, Ecuacorriente, remain notoriously vague on the extraction methods used in the mining processes and the impact of those on the environment. Most famously missing from reports is the specification of the explosives used to excavate rock and the chemicals that will reside in the earth after they have been detonated, and whether the expected and extremely polluting cyanide will be used in the processing of gold.

Keeping animals for food teaches Shuar children about animal life

The outcry of the Shuar is even more understandable if one looks closely at their culture and how it is connected to the rainforest. In past decades many of the Shuar have shed their semi-nomadic lives in the forest in exchange for living in community centres in or near the forest. Relentlessly targeted in the past by missionaries, many of them have turned to Christianity and abolished their original beliefs that were rooted in a connection with the forest and with shamanism. What most of them have managed is to keep a healthy lifestyle in which they eat homegrown crops and animals raised without growth hormones. Anyone venturing into Shuar territory can easily experience this and is treated to a world without food additives such as preservatives, flavour enhancers, acidity regulators and antibiotics. The world of the Shuar is one where clean air can be inhaled, coming directly from the abundance of trees next to their homes. How different this world is from our own was made clear to me when I started to invite Shuar to come to Europe and talk about their way of life and have people experience their way of living. These indigenous people quickly become sick if they start eating food with E-numbers and if they do not keep to a very strict diet of biologically produced food. The volume of the outcry of the Shuar substantiates the claim that these people are simply more interested in clean air, clean water and clean crops than they are in the wealth that comes with the mining of the minerals beneath the forest.

Camouflage

Correa makes it clear that with the wealth that the mining will bring he is planning to raise the standard of living of the indigenous population. His reasoning is that an indigenous that lives prosperously does not feel the need to cut down trees to make way for farmland; and that those who allow the indigenous to stay in poverty by denying the mining are the true evil doers. That sounds reasonable and empathic. Yet, the truth is that most of the indigenous do not want the mining and this makes Correa's stance on mining in the Amazon somewhat paternalistic. Whether his arguments hold true also depends on the way through which raising their standard of living is pursued. To prevent a poor family living next to a dirt road would, in the new situation, be a poor family living next to an asphalt road. Of course the Shuar would like to see their standard of living raised, but such a scheme might wisely begin by actually respecting the rights of the indigenous by the rest of the country.

There are some, even within the Shuar community, who argue that a better strategy is to team up with the mining industry and the Government in an 'if you cannot beat them then join them' strategy. I do have some sympathy towards this way of thinking as enabling the local populations to having a say on the mining in their area will also mean that they have a degree of influence and control. However, supporters of this view forget that once large-scale mining in the Ecuadorian rainforest becomes a vested business through the "Mirador" beachhead project it will be difficult to close Pandora's Box again. With the lid off, mining in the Amazon region has a large chance of finding itself on an unpredictable sliding scale with resulting ethical questions. What will happen if metal prices start to decline and only the cheapest and most polluting methods of extraction make it viable to mine the ore? What if it turns out that, as predicted, the mining activities are devastatingly damaging to the environment and the Government cannot close them up as the royalties resulting from the mining are essential to keep the national budget balanced? What message will a 'Yea' to mining in this region, or in this case a more aptly 'Si', send out to supporters of other activities that carry a potential damage for the forest, if it can be interpreted as the forest being declared an outlaw? Thus in a way the Shuar are not only protesting against the "Mirador" project but also against future threats to a rainforest which is intrinsically connected to their culture and way of life.

Hunting with a traditional blowpipe

The response of the Government to the protests has been eerily predictable. Next to Correa publicly calling the protesters "counter revolutionaries" and "childish leftists", many of their leaders and participants have been detained and several cases of abuse by police have been reported. More worrisome is that the Government tries to cripple protest movements by the use of Government policy. Many of the detained protesters and those still ''at large'' have been charged with the same umbrella label of "Acts of Sabotage and Terrorism" that in the past few years we have seen being used in other parts of the world. Journalists writing about these cases and criticizing Correa and his Government seriously risk being slapped in the face with a part of Ecuador's Criminal Code that makes "lack of respect for a Government official" punishable by law. On top of that, NGO's who criticize the Government's ecological policies and who support the indigenous protests against the mining risk being dissolved or expelled from the country.

It is precisely the joint effort between journalists and NGO's, both locally and from abroad, that is essential in the battle to keep the mining companies out of the Amazon rainforest. Their work raises awareness within and outside the country beyond the indigenous population and results in a cash flow that is necessary to fight the battles in court. Additionally, in the case of headstrong Governments, the pressure that is put on the mining companies from outside the countries where they have their home base might persuade them to change their policies. In this regard it does not really help that Ecuacorriente is a hundred percent Chinese owned company. With a virtually absent critical local press, a leadership that is focused on economic growth instead of wellbeing and a population that generally parries any outside critique as "Western interference out of jealousy of China's success", it is no surprise that the track record of Chinese mining companies abroad does not win a gold medal, let alone the track record of the mining companies within China itself.

Fluffy

It is a combination that has proven to be successful in other areas of interest and in other parts of the world. In Ecuador itself the indigenous Sarayaku community successfully protected its lands against invading oil companies. In neighboring Peru the indigenous Achuar reached a victory when oil companies Talisman Energy and ConocoPhillips announced that they would leave the country and thus would not exploit the oilfields in the Peruvian Amazon. In the US Supreme Court, Chevron Texaco recently lost its appeal after years of evading taking responsibility for cleaning up the damage that was done to the rainforest and the indigenous communities in the north east corner of Ecuador. And for now the Belo Monte dam construction, a huge new hydroelectric project in the Amazon rainforest has been suspended by a Brazilian court until local indigenous communities are properly consulted about the possible fallout of the dam. This gives hope that within an existing legal framework the rights of the indigenous Shuar can also be protected, as long as they have the help of foreign support.

A Shuar family at the edge of their endagered forest

Whether large scale mining projects in the Ecuadorian rainforest can be prevented will become clearer in the coming years. In the meantime an interesting side effect of the polarization induced by President Correa and his Government can readily be seen. Traditionally the Shuar have been wary of anyone controlling them, they themselves have historically lived in very small groups in the forest. Most famously they are one of the few peoples within the Americas that have successfully resisted the conquering Spaniards in their frantic search for gold. In 1599 they rebelled and managed to capture the Spanish Governor, pouring molten gold down his throat to symbolically quench his thirst. Some of that spirit still exists today and one could, without even having to exaggerate, characterize these people as the ultimate anarchists. In today's times of need these indigenous anarchists are learning how to organize themselves and form a block to defend their rights, including cleaning the leadership cadres in existing structures from those that merely represented their own interests towards the Government instead of truly representing their people. That movement comes with a renewed interest in their own culture, and a more widespread realization that the true treasure they own is not the riches beneath the rainforest, but the culture and the healthy life that they want to live in that forest.

So, what can you do if you want to help? You could help Protect Ecuador with their petition and with their efforts to spread maps of the affected territories to Shuar villages to keep them informed about the pollution that the mining will bring. Other organizations that work with the indigenous in the rainforest, such as Amazon Watch, the Pachamama Alliance and Amnesty International, can always use some cash to fund their activities. But even better would be to visit the Ecuadorian rainforest yourself and get a sense of the importance of protecting it against mining. And to then share with others the uniqueness of the rainforest and its inhabitants.

Warm regards,
Paul

Next time: Safari

Last time: 17,508 Islands

Chicha, made out of chewed and spitted out fermented pieces of yucca, is the breakfast of champions	President Rafael Correa, the eyes of Mother Nature are watching you!	Even without the Tungurahua erupting, the situation with mining in the Amazon stays explosive

If you can find a jungle flower, it usually has great colors	Up close and personal	Some jungle moths have wings the size of your hands

Wings of paper	The group that I took with me into the forest to participate in the traditional Natemamu ritual	The rainforest is filled with beautiful plant structures

Willman assisted with the Natemamu ritual	The golden rule in the jungle is that if it looks poisenous, than it probably is	Some insects look amazing but can really put some pain upon you

These eadible caterpillars will not	A spider swinging from tree to tree, Tarzan-style	This spider stays put

Playing around with an ancestral spear	Unless they accidently fall in a pan of hot water and are eaten, parrots have a great time with a Shuar family	Ever seen an insect with an elephant-like trunk?

Some of these insects seem to come straight from the movie Aliens	Feeling blue	The king and its subjects

A Shuar bracelet like this one takes about fourty hours to make