Deforestation, Pollution, Utter Indifference To Human Rights Mark China's Search For Oil In Bolivia
For Adamo Diego Cusi, a search for oil in the Bolivian Amazon by the Chinese-backed company BGP Bolivia has been a terrible ordeal. His work as coordinator of environmental and social monitoring for the village of Tacana provided him with direct knowledge of how the company operated. Over the course of a year, it carried out seismic exploration for hydrocarbons in the Nueva Esperanza area, located in the basin of the Madre de Dios River and within Tacanan indigenous territory.
Half-truths, unfulfilled commitments, environmental harm and legal persecution marred the project, its critics say. Adamo faced criminal persecution after being denounced by the company for exposing the effects of the seismic exploration in the La Paz district of the northern Amazon. “I practically spent two months in hiding,” Adamo said in a telephone conversation with Mongabay Latam, describing his ordeal toward the end of 2016.
He said the company’s operations had had a negative impact on the Bolivian rainforest, and it had failed to fulfill commitments to obtain permission to carry out exploration in indigenous territory. “In the Amazon, nothing is known about hydrocarbon prospecting. Oil had never crossed our minds,” Adamo said. That changed in 2015, when state-owned energy company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) appeared before a Tacana village assembly to explain its impending investment project.
At this first meeting, the villagers rejected the proposal. But the government ordered that exploration should go ahead regardless. Following a preliminary consultation process, Adamo said, the company obtained the consent of the Tacana village on condition that it would ensure minimum impact on the forests and biodiversity, as well as protect indigenous villages in voluntary isolation that occupy this territory. “It is very difficult for a village to accept being a part of the forest’s destruction,” Adamo said of the skepticism that greeted this $57 million investment proposal.
EDIT
https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/environment-and-rights-founder-in-the-wake-of-chinese-funding-in-bolivia/