Ecuador, Texaco sign weak cleanup pact

Umbrella groups like the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENAIE) and the Amazon Defense Front emphatically denounced the settlement terms in Ecuador's major media. They charged that Texaco and the Ecuadorian government have failed to deal with the concerns of the very populations so negatively affected by their operations.

Local leaders say the planned cleanup will not effectively remedy the profoundly negative impacts of Texaco's operations, which include deforestation of more than two million acres of rainforest, displacement of indigenous communities, and extensive water pollution which has created a regional health crisis.

The agreement's main points include:

• Oil waste pits will be covered.
• Covered pits, drill sites, and abandoned facilities will be revegetated.
• Produced waters (containing toxic compounds and heavy metals) will meet Ecuadorian environmental regulations before release to larger bodies of water or injection into the ground.
• Abandoned facilities will be examined to determine if they require restoration.
• Contaminated soils will be remedied.
• Local organizations will receive $1 million for recovery projects.
• Four medical centers, four educational centers, two river ambulances, and one small airplane will be provided to the region.

In addition, Texaco and the government of Ecuador are named as sole parties responsible for running the restoration project. This is an obvious conflict of interest, since they collaborated as an oil consortium until 1992 and are responsible for the damage in the first place.

Ecuadorian indigenous and environmental leaders have told Texaco and the Ecuadorian government that this "partial solution" is unacceptable. CONFENAIE, the Amazon Defense Front, and the Campaign Amazon for Life are calling on their government to include two critical points they have insisted on since negotiations began last year:

Any remediation and social plan must be based on an environmental and social audit of the impacts of Texaco's former concession.

An independent monitoring committee must be established to oversee and guarantee the plan's full implementation using state-of-theart technology.

Without these guarantees, the organizations are demanding the "greenwash" agreement be annulled, and the international campaign to hold Texaco fully responsible for its rainforest destruction will continue.

1995 Rainforest Action Network. Commercial reproduction prohibited. Students, teachers, and activists may copy articles for limited distribution.

Rainforest Action Network works to protect the Earth's rainforests and support the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action.

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