| Ecological EvaluationOne of the main focus points of the class was to provide ecological, economic and social welfare evaluations associated with the construction and maintenance of gas pipelines through remote areas. This section provides a summary of the issues involved, maps of the affected areas, and an ecosystem valuation of the environmental damage that could be created from ineffective monitoring of the pipeline area. |
Conflict Dynamics Another of our goals was to explore theories of conflict and cooperation from various disciplinary perspectives to glean common lessons, as well as focus on the practice of conflict resolution and various approaches to resolving conflicts within the context of their applicability in the Camisea case. This secion provides a summary of the issues surrounding the debate as well the opinion of the major stakeholders on each issue. |
| Documentary Additionally the class wanted to create a documentary to bring these issues to the attention of the general population. While creating a documentary in one semester is an impossible task, we used our time to lay the groundwork on the themes that will be covered and a trip to Peru was used to interview many of the stakeholders involved with the Camisea pipeline. Valerie Esposito will be continuing work on the documentary as part of her dissertation. |
Class Speakers Throughout the semester a wide variety of speakers made themselves available to the class via conference all or video conference to share the views of their organization on the Camisea project. They ranged from NGOs to industry representatives to financiers of the project, and each brought a unique perspective on the issues faced. Here is a brief summary of all of the groups who took the time to speak with us. |
| ResourcesTheir is a large amount of information available about the project, here is a collection of the documents and sites that we have found to be the most useful and relevant for our analysis. |
About Us You are reading our story of the Camisea pipeline, now here is a little bit of information about who we are and how we got involved. |
The Journey Begins
As natural gas becomes a scarce commodity arround the world, the search for new souces intensifies. Deep within the Peruvian Amazon lies a new pipeline that could provide a much needed source of energy and development money for the people of Peru. However, it could also endanger local communitites and the environment. Our hope is to create a resource about the Camisea pipeline that presents all sides of the conflict. We offer a set of tools, framed within ecological economics, for interested persons to evaluate the current situation and hopefully look to the future to develop a new paradigm for companies interested in oil and gas exploration.
Background
The Lower Urubamba and Camisea region of eastern Peru is at once a place of magnificent biodiversity and rainforest beauty, and a source of fossil fuel for Peru and international companies seeking to extract the natural gas found under the jungle. The project threatens the livelihoods of indigenous people in the project area by contaminating their sources of clean water and other natural resources, deforestation and erosion, opening rainforest areas for destructive colonization, and forcing contact between vulnerable populations of isolated peoples and outsiders.
The Camisea project is not unique. For example, the Yadana project intends to transport natural gas from Burma's Gulf of Martaban through Kanchanaburi province to a Thai power plant in Ratchaburi. The Yadana project has resulted in documented human rights violations and environmental degradation. Local peoples in Thailand and Burma, local and international environmental and human rights groups as well as democracy advocates oppose the project. Additionally, oil industry partners are pushing ahead with controversial plans to build a $350 million gas pipeline from the Urucu field across the Amazon rainforest, despite environmental groups criticizing the project and taking their fight to the courts.
These areas, if left intact, would provide important ecological, economic and social benefits. Yet all too often the services imparted by ecosystems are not factored into critical decisions on land use, and ‘bottom-line’ decisions become the guiding precept. However, Herman Daly (1992) has identified at least 3 broad goals as significant to managing economic systems within the context of the planet’s ecological life-support system 1) ensuring that the scale of human activities within the biosphere is ecologically sustainable; 2) distributing resources and property rights fairly with the current generation of human, between this and future generations, and between humans and other species; and 3) efficiently allocating resources as constrained and defined by 1 and 2, including both market and nonmarket resources, especially ecosystem services.
The valuation of these services is critical to properly determining the best use of the area, taking factors beyond economics into account. However, the ensuing conflict does not allow the space for thorough consideration of viable alternatives. Yet these types of disputes, although initially they may be sources of disagreement, do not always have to end in controversy. In fact, the emerging field of environmental conflict resolution explores the causes of conflicts involving environmental concerns, without presuming that environmental disputes are necessarily a cause of conflict, they in fact may be part of the solution of wider regional conflicts. Derived from various disciplines such as political science, economic game theory, systems analysis, sociology and anthropology, as well being rooted in natural science, particularly evolutionary biology and ethology, the study of conflict versus cooperation presents a more holistic, transdisciplinary approach to resolving environmental conflicts in the 21st century.
The specific products developed by the class are discussed briefly below, and in more depth on the pages that they are linked to.
