Earth Stewardship and the Biocultural Ethic: Latin American Perspectives - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 94

Box 8.2. Global Responsibility to Respect Amazonian Life
South American regions have been subjected to recurrent illegal deforestation
and mining pollution, entailing multiple-scale processes that override the will
of rural and indigenous populations and violate national laws (Ceccon and
Miramontes 1999 ; Neugebauer 2003 ). The cases of the U'wa people in
Colombia opposing oil companies and the decision by the Ecuadorian govern-
ment to open the Yasuní National Park for oil exploitation, are emblematic.
The U'wa people inhabit the foothills and cloud forests of the Andes in north-
east Colombia, and had almost no contact with the outside world until the 1960s
(Fig. 8.3 ). In 1991, the oil company Oxy (Occidental) signed an exploration
permit with the Ministry of the Environment (Tobasura-Acuña 2006 ). However
the U'wa believe that oil is the blood of the mother Earth, and when faced with
oil drilling against their wishes, in 1995 the U'wa threatened to commit collec-
tive suicide. Although in May 1998 Oxy announced that it was moving off of
lands that were claimed under Colombian law by the U'wa ( http://www.goldma-
nprize.org/1998/southcentralamerica ), the disputes have continued for over a
decade. The government militarized the zone and confl icts with the U'wa have
been violent, including the murder of several U'wa children in 2000. Colombian
environmental sociologist Isaías Tobasura Acuña ( 2006 ) concludes that the U'wa
case demonstrates that the stated Colombian national environmental policy is
continuously overridden by national and international economic power.
Fig. 8.3 An U'wa child holds
a sacred shell, evoking the
conception of his culture:
“The U'wa territory is the
heart of the world, run by the
veins that feed the universe, if
it is destroyed, then the world
bleeds” (Photograph Terry
Freitas, courtesy Project
Underground, www.moles.org )