Ecuador, Unimaginable.

In my last post, I shared some thoughts and pictures of what I had seen on a recent trip to Ecuador. Glass-like bodies of water, colourful and elusive birds, rain forest so thick and verdant that you cannot tell where one plant or tree ends and another begins.

Such lush and beautiful terrain can hide a multitude of sins.

Photo by Rachel Warden.

Rachel, George, and I went to Ecuador to witness the impacts of 30 years of oil exploration on the people and communities of the Amazonian region. Rachel and I have a interest in this because of our jobs as educators and advocates for human rights and ecological justice. George has an interest as a community leader in Fort Chipewyan's struggle for justice with the oil companies working the tar sands of Northern Alberta.

We traveled by overnight bus to Lago Agrio, a town in Sucumbios province, the heart of Ecuador's oil industry. When oil was discovered in the 1960s, the Ecuadoran government and corporations such as Texaco and Gulf supported the establishment of towns and drill sites in this supposedly empty area. Empty, except that the area was populated by many Indigenous communities, like the Cofan community in which these children live.


So for 40 years, Indigenous peoples and the settler community have been living in the middle of an industrial zone in the middle of the jungle. After some negotiation, this farmer (middle) allowed us to pass through his land to see what such living looks like.


His conversation with Jorge, from Argentina, and Wilson, the guide that our partner organization Accion Ecologica had hired to take us through Lago Agrio, was slow and serious. The oil company would see us traversing his land. They would see our big bus parked outside his farm. The sudden appearance of this pig, however, provided some levity and helped us reach a resolution.


This farm is sited right in the middle of an extraction zone, and is literally surrounded by tailings ponds, where contaminated water was dumped. Some ponds are man-made; this one is a natural pond that has been contaminated.


This sluice comes directly from an oil production facility, and filters out into the forest and eventually the pond above. It is no longer supposed to be used for dumping contaminated water but the farmer told us it is still done at night.


So it's no surprise that people are worried about the quality of their water... for themselves, their livestock, and their crops.


The land is crisscrossed by the oleoducto -- the pipeline. Not even the jungle can get in the way of the pipeline.


And there, rising through the trees, a gas flare.


This flare was situated at one of the manufactured tailings ponds.


The ground there was thick and hard with years of dumping: layer upon layer of tar and petroleum.


One youth member of our group scooped up waste from one of the open pits. Another gives you a sense of the smell.

Photo by Rachel Warden.

Yet nature persisted in trying to overcome what humans had done to it.


That will be a rough road.


A few miles further on, we stopped at another, similar facility, though this one was much more easily accessible.


It also featured a flare and tailings pond.


And people lived nearby:


While we were there, an oil truck backed up to the pond and began preparations to dump.


Suddenly aware of 30 people with cameras, there was a change in plans and the truck got a good scrubbing. Well, the front of it did.


These pictures tell the terrible story of a land destroyed and people harmed by our thirst for oil, and our failure to take responsibility for its costs. It's not as if I think we could stop using oil tomorrow. Hello! I flew to Ecuador in a Boeing jet! But what I do wonder is, can we use less? And can we pay the price for what we do use?

Perhaps if Texaco, Gulf, and PetroEcuador had disposed of waste responsibly 30 years ago --and if PetroEcuador would do so now-- then perhaps we wouldn't have had to have a meeting with this community whose water wells are all poisoned.


This community is full of people who were relocated 20 years ago because their land was contaminated. And now they are facing the same situation again.


Perhaps these people would not be washing laundry in a dirty river beneath a pipeline.


Perhaps this man, also dislocated from his original land, would not be part of an entire community living next to a dump that's full of industrial waste and is poisoning the water on which he depends.



I saw one of my two toucans while visiting this site. And hundreds of vultures.




Had Texaco (now Chevron) behaved responsibly, it probably would not have had an $8 billion judgment made against it in a class action law suit led by a young Ecuadoran lawyer, Pablo Fajardo, who grew up in the region, the son of settlers. Had Chevron apologized, it might have avoided seeing that judgment double in size.

More importantly, this child might have a healthier future.


But these are the signs of the times in Ecuador.


The oleoducto rolls through Sucumbios, and it rolls through Napo province, which we also visited and where a Canadian company is getting ready to dig for heavy oil. It even rolls down the Napo River ...



... towards the beauty of the Yasuni Natural Reserve, one of the world's more abundant and biodiverse areas, and home to Indigenous peoples such as the Huaroni.



They've already licenced one area for exploration and extraction but through the SOS Yasuni campaign, Ecuadorans are fighting back, unwilling to let what happened in Lago Agrio happen here.

Maybe it's time for us to think about what our part in this is as well.