Amazon Uprising More Urgent Than Iran's: The Planet Depends on It
A Fight for the Amazon that Should Inspire the World

by Johann Hari

While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed - yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.

In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of the ecosystem none of us can live without. They had nothing but wooden spears and moral force to defeat the oil companies - and, for today, they have won.

Here's the story of how it happened - and how we all need to pick up this fight. Earlier this year, Peru's right-wing President, Alan Garcia, sold the rights to explore, log and drill 70 per cent of his country's swathe of the Amazon to a slew of international oil companies. Garcia seems to see rainforest as a waste of good resources, saying of the Amazon's trees: "There are millions of hectares of timber there lying idle."

There was only one pesky flaw in Garcia's plan: the indigenous people who live in the Amazon. They are the first people of the Americas, subject to wave after wave of genocide since the arrival of the Conquistadors. They are weak. They have no guns. They barely have electricity. The government didn't bother to consult them: what are a bunch of Indians going to do anyway?

But the indigenous people have seen what has happened elsewhere in the Amazon when the oil companies arrive. Occidental Petroleum are facing charges in US courts of dumping an estimated nine billion barrels of toxic waste in the regions of the Amazon where they operated from 1972 to 2000. Andres Sandi Mucushua, the spiritual leader of the area known to the oil companies as Block (12A)B, said in 2007: "My people are sick and dying because of Oxy. The water in our streams is not fit to drink and we can no longer eat the fish in our rivers or the animals in our forests." The company denies liability, saying they are "aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts".

In the Ecuadorian Amazon, according to an independent report, toxic waste allegedly dumped after Chevron-Texaco's drilling has been blamed by an independent scientific investigation for 1,401 deaths, mostly of children from cancer. When the BBC investigator Greg Palast put these charges to Chevron's lawyer, he replied: "And it's the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States?... They have to prove it's our crude, [which] is absolutely impossible."

The people of the Amazon do not want to see their forests felled and their lands poisoned. And here, the need of the indigenous peoples to preserve their habitat has collided with your need to preserve your habitat. The rainforests inhale massive amounts of warming gases and keep them stored away from the atmosphere. Already, we are chopping them down so fast that it is causing 25 per cent of man-made carbon emissions every year - more than planes, trains and automobiles combined. But it is doubly destructive to cut them down to get to fossil fuels, which then cook the planet yet more. Garcia's plan was to turn the Amazon from the planet's air con into its fireplace.

Why is he doing this? He was responding to intense pressure from the US, whose new Free Trade Pact requires this "opening up", and from the International Monetary Fund, paid for by our taxes. In Peru, it has also been alleged that the ruling party, APRA, is motivated by oil bribes. Some of Garcia's associates have been caught on tape talking about how to sell off the Amazon to their cronies. The head of the parliamentary committee investigating the affair, Rep. Daniel Abugattas, says: "The government has been giving away our natural resources to the lowest bidders. This has not benefited Peru, but the administration's friends."

So the indigenous peoples acted in their own self-defence, and ours. Using their own bodies and weapons made from wood, they blockaded the rivers and roads to stop the oil companies getting anything in or out. They captured two valves of Peru's sole pipeline between the country's gas field and the coast, which could have led to fuel-rationing. Their leaders issued a statement explaining: "We will fight together with our parents and children to take care of the forest, to save the life of the equator and the entire world."

Garcia responded by sending in the military. He declared a "state of emergency" in the Amazon, suspending almost all constitutional rights. Army helicopters opened fire on the protesters with live ammunition and stun-grenades. More than a dozen were killed. But the indigenous peoples did not run away. Even though they were risking their lives, they stood their ground. One of their leaders, Davi Yanomami, said simply: "The earth has no price. It cannot be bought, or sold or exchanged. It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the earth. If we don't fight together, what will our future be?"

And then something extraordinary happened. The indigenous peoples won. The Peruvian Congress repealed the laws that allowed oil company drilling, by a margin of 82 votes to 12. Garcia was forced to apologise for his "serious errors and exaggerations". The protesters have celebrated and returned to their homes deep in the Amazon.

Of course, the oil companies will regroup and return - but this is an inspirational victory for the forces of sanity that will be hard to reverse.

Human beings need to make far more decisions like this: to leave fossil fuels in the ground, and to leave rainforests standing. In microcosm, this rumble in the jungle is the fight we all face now. Will we allow a small number of rich people to make a short-term profit from seizing and burning resources, at the expense of our collective ability to survive?

If this sounds like hyperbole, listen to Professor Jim Hansen, the world's leading climatologist, whose predictions have consistently turned out to be correct. He says: "Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with a sea level 75 metres higher. Coastal disasters would occur continually. The only uncertainty is the time it would take for complete ice sheet disintegration."

Of course, fossil fools will argue that the only alternative to burning up our remaining oil and gas supplies is for us all to live like the indigenous peoples in the Amazon. But next door to Peru, you can see a very different, environmentally sane model to lift up the poor emerging - if only we will grasp it.

Ecuador is a poor country with large oil resources underneath its rainforests - but its president, Rafael Correa, is offering us the opposite of Garcia's plan. He has announced that he is willing to leave his country's largest oil reserve under the soil, if the rest of the world will match the $9.2bn in revenues it would provide.

If we don't start reaching for these alternatives, we will render this month's victory in the Amazon meaningless. The Hadley Centre in Exeter, one of the most sophisticated scientific centres for studying the impacts of global warming, has warned that if we carry on belching out greenhouse gases at the current rate, the humid Amazon will dry up and burn down - and soon.

Their study earlier this year explained: "The Amazonian rainforest is likely to suffer catastrophic damage even with the lowest temperature rises forecast under climate change. Up to 40 per cent of the rainforest will be lost if temperature rises are restricted to C, which most climatologists regard as the least that can be expected by 2050. A 3C rise is likely to result in 75 per cent of the forest disappearing while a 4C rise, regarded as the most likely increase this century unless greenhouse gas emissions are slashed, will kill off 85 per cent of the forest." That would send gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere - making the world even more inhabitable.

There is something thrilling about the fight in the Amazon, yet also something shaming. These people had nothing, but they stood up to the oil companies. We have everything, yet too many of us sit limp and passive, filling up our tanks with stolen oil without a thought for tomorrow. The people of the Amazon have shown they are up for the fight to save our ecosystem. Are we?
© 2009 The Independent

Johann Hari is a columnist for the London Independent. He has reported from Iraq, Israel/Palestine, the Congo, the Central African Republic, Venezuela, Peru and the US, and his journalism has appeared in publications all over the world.

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Posted in amazon, Latin America, Peru
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Alex Catgirl June 24th, 2009 4:07 pm

While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed - yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.

Because indigenous Amazonians don't tweet? People empathise with others like them - middle class Iranians yearning to be free to live the AmeriKKKan dream... while simultaneously taking down the west's/christianity's biggest rivals in the region.

Indigenous Amazonians are "backward people", not like Joe and Susie Sixpack, and they share similarities to "Ecoterrorists" and tree huggers, *real* AmeriKKKians hate ecoterrorists.

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AVE_fan June 24th, 2009 2:07 pm

It is reported that in Ecuador, Germany may be stepping forward to take the Government up on its plan to *leave the oil in the ground* in exchange for assistance.

IMO, part of this money should go to remediation of any areas in the region that have been stripped bare of their rain forest canopy, which are now producing carbon dioxide instead of sequestering it as biomass.

The key to this operation is the building of inexpensive "artificial trees" around the "bare spots". This would consist of small sized Vortex Ventilators (vortexengine.ca) which would provide enough cooling and cloud cover to create climatic conditions necessary to allow the forest to quickly re-invade the damaged area.

The abundant warm water supplies would be used to "energize" the devices and allow the necessary evaporation to occur.

Sufficient power could be easily extracted from the ventilators to cover the small pumping requirements.

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Horrified June 24th, 2009 12:49 pm

There is no oil or gas in the Amazon so the US does not care.

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keepthechange June 24th, 2009 1:03 pm

Lots of oil and gas and WATER in the Amazon region.

That's why the US companies are there destroying the environment.

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Cee Miracles June 24th, 2009 12:32 pm

"One of [the native Amazon protestors'] leaders, Davi Yanomami, said simply: 'The earth has no price. It cannot be bought, or sold or exchanged. It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the earth. If we don't fight together, what will our future be?'"

Just reading this morning's articles on various sites regarding all kinds of new insanities cooked up, implemented and offered by the predominantly male, "civilized" leadership such as secret recruitment of college/ university students to be spies under a government-funded program [& colleges & universities love new funding]; the continuing obstructions of trials of innocent prisoners who have spent years now in GITMO or Bagram or other dark holes, tortured mercilessly and until recently without recourse; the newest figures for the "necessary" weapons of mass destruction in the Pentagon budget and the various plans to use them; and over-all, the absolute illogic, unreason ... INSANITY of those whose lives are about ANTI-LIFE in their quest to secure territories and resources for their ANTI-LIFE "national ... read also 'personal, self-serving' interests."

It seems like a huge kindergarten of psychopathic children has gained the upperhand on the rest of us, and it's just a matter of time when the little darlings pull out all the stops so they can see the BIG FIREWORKS around the earth. Are we all becoming Dubya's frogs? ... Obyssmalot's frogs?

Among the characteristics of psychopaths, very intelligent to truly stupid, is the inability to project or understand the consequences of their personal fantasies or actual actions. They are totally unable to imagine walking in the other fella's mocassins. Their internalized reality is THE REALITY, and thus all advice or reason to the contrary cannot be heard.

Ever noticed the glitter in Richard Cheney's eyes when he talks about torture? He loves the idea of it and the power rush he feels. You can see it and hear it in that remorseless, well-modulated voice. Standard variety psychopath.

We are in a nightmare, and for the first time in my fairly long life, I cannot see the end of it, short of some enormous natural or human-made global calamities and emergencies that threaten ALL of our lives just like that.

The dinosaurs disappeared almost in an eye-blink of time. Explanations include a meteorite hurtling through space and hitting the earth and every natural pattern of climate and life forms were immediately affected and transformed.

But this is more like a faucet dripping, dripping, dripping a little faster everyday with all the "civilized" plumbers wearing heavy mittens and balls of "cotton, hay and rags*" stuffed in their brains and in the lower, front part of their underwear.

*The absolutely egotistical Professor Henry Higgins of "My Fair Lady," said/sang that FEMALE brains were made of "cotton, hay and rags." I would suggest since MALES have predominated in leadership positions for thousands and thousands of years, and considering the position we are in at this moment, as we teeter on the brink of self-destruction, that ol' Henry was quite mistaken about the gender, with the exception of males like Peru's Amazon rainforest resident, Davi Yanomami, who are as close to and knowledgeable about the earth as any human could be. I'll take sensibilities like his over the degrees held by the educated idiots from Harvard or Yale, et al., who "govern" us.

A feeling of sustained, but growing, RAGE is new to me. And I'm having a hard time with managing it. And there are all kinds of booby-trapped mazes and boxes with heavy lids now that activists have to negotiate for what they say or do to have any effect at all, and the lids seem to be getting heavier and the effectiveness of what is done, seems to be less and less.

And it didn't help that last evening I discovered that the newest highway department mowerman of our little rural area mowed down my just blooming hollyhocks and exotic blossoms from bulbs I planted in the Fall. Fourth year in a row even though I've transplanted and moved them back each year. This guy obviously went at the whole road with a gusto. Gone are all the blue, purple, bright yellow, white and pink wildflowers ... and my multi-colored hollyhocks to be. Left are tufts of dry grass and bald, brown patches of earth with broken and shredded stalks.

What is it with men and the powerful machines they mount? Raping and beating up the earth is their specialty it seems with lots of camaradarie as they do it. But too many now seem not to be able to see at all.

Where are we? ... I don't know anymore, and I can't even find a dream to believe in. It's the first time in my nearly 73 years. A brilliant, artistic, poet friend of mine who is 82 tells me by telephone of her months' long malaise and depression, since about mid-March. She feels the same as I do and has said the same thing --"I can't seem to find a dream anymore."

I suppose a steady and decades'-long diet of lies, hypocrisy and brutalities with no end in sight other than THE END might have something to do with it.

Drip ... Drip ... Drip ...

/cm

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mustbefree June 24th, 2009 11:43 am

It may be problematic and yet in the time frame of our lives Iran still pales in the face of the Amazon's desruction which would affect the whole world including Iran.If a butterfly fall in the rainforest do we not know it?We are interconnected.Tony

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cyrus ptolemon June 24th, 2009 11:16 am

Important article, wrong headline.

To pit the Amazonian indigenous people's struggle for social justice and ecological integrity against the Iranian people's struggle against election fraud and a theocratic dictatorship is deeply problematic.

Johann Hari and perhaps Common Dreams should know and do better.

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Lupita June 24th, 2009 1:09 pm

I also agree; however, I would add that one cannot but help notice how widely the Iranian revolt is being publicized in the western media in comparison to other hugely significant events happening at the same time, such as the Amazonian revolt and the killer drone. It is the MSM that pits events against one another and finds some worthy of 24 hour coverage while ignoring others.

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keepthechange June 24th, 2009 1:29 pm

Three years ago in Mexico (a close neighbor, after all) there was massive electoral fraud. Protests are STILL going on about it.

The US didn't utter one critical word--because they gave a lot of money and "technical assistance" to Felipe Calderon--and helped impose him as president to head a military/fascist/narco government similar to Colombia's--with the consequent massive human rights abuses.

Just goes to show that if the sonuvabitch is the US's sonuvabitch everything is just hunky dory.

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lord_buckley June 24th, 2009 11:34 am

Noted. Agree.

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Matangicita June 24th, 2009 10:05 am

right on, johann!! thanks for the reminder. to any usans who have a telephone, call your reps and ask them to please support/co-sponsor mcgovern's (dang, but that guy's been busy trying to put the brakes on the violence machine!---why can't more 'representatives' REPRESENT PEOPLE before lobbyist profiteers???!!) attempts (HR 2404 to urge an actual exit strategy from afghanistan & also his amendment to the defense authorization bill, HR2647 as well as his amendment demanding transparency & accountability at WHINSEC, formerly known as the infamous school of the americas) to bring some sanity to the congress that passed that hideous war/imf supplemental. and stop shopping, driving and feeding the oil companies! bike to work! quit your job if it's part of the problem and find a livelihood that cooperates with nature rather than seeks to dominate/control it. viva la libertad!!!!

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Gail June 24th, 2009 9:58 am

In addition to the climate changes issue, let's not forget that many of our medications are developed from ingredients that come from the rain forests.

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keepthechange June 24th, 2009 1:13 pm

And let's not forget that folks who patented those remedies ripped them off without permission from the indigenous peoples and spirited them out of the country.

Now those remedies are only available if you pay a fortune for them--despite the fact that they are YOURS.

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