Community Environmental Monitoring

The current round of oil exploration in Secoya territory began in 2000 with the building of two platforms and drilling of two exploratory wells. From the start, Secoya monitors and ISIS advisors were present. Several problems related to the platform construction were identified and either corrected or sanctioned: Unauthorized cutting of access trails (top left) and failure to bring workers in by helicopter (right) stopped after a site visit by the team. Trees cut outside the platform area for trail construction (top center), or for no clear reason (top right, tree shown by Gonzalo Payaguaje, President of the San Pablo community), are not easily replaced, so OXY paid a penalty to the community and pledged to prevent repetition of such actions.

Even under the best circumstances, a drilling platform (below) has a major impact on the rainforest. A central goal for monitoring in the coming years is to ensure that as oil work ends the wells are properly closed and platforms are returned as closely as possible to their original condition.