Urge Pacific E&P to pull out of Matsés territory
In 2012, Canadian oil company Pacific E&P began to explore for oil on land inhabited by the Matsés and neighboring uncontacted Indians.
Though the Matsés have repeatedly opposed the company’s work on their land, their protests have been ignored.
Please email the company’s CEO, urging him to pull out of the Matsés’ territory before their lives are destroyed forever.
Emails sent: 4,060 Help us reach 5,000!
I am writing to ask Pacific E&P to pull out of block 135 in the north Peruvian Amazon. The area is inhabited by uncontacted Matsés Indians who rely on the forest for their survival. Contacted Matsés have made it clear to your company that they do not want you working in the area. Oil exploration activities threaten the forest, animals, river and fish essential to the Matsés and their neighbors.
Canadian companies have a duty to uphold national and international laws created to protect the rights of indigenous peoples. Your work threatens to wipe out some of the last remaining uncontacted tribes in the world and ignores the wishes of Peru and Brazil’s indigenous inhabitants. Please stop now, before the Indians’ lives are destroyed forever.
Survival International
Conservation at a crossroads
There’s been a wave of articles recently exposing the devastating impacts of conservation policies which fail to respect tribal peoples’ rights. They echo Survival’s call for a new approach. If you’re interested in conservation, you really should take a look:
The BBC reported on conservation tourism in Uganda leading to illegal evictions of “Pygmy” tribespeople: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-37034248
The Guardian’s environment editor John Vidal published a detailed article examining the impact of conservation projects on tribal peoples and their rights: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/28/exiles-human-cost-of-conservation-indigenous-peoples-eco-tourism
Marine Gauthier and Riccardo Pravettoni investigated how conservation laws have had terrible effects for Dukha reindeer herders in Mongolia: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/28/reindeer-conservation-threatens-ruination-mongolia-dukha
… and also how Mbuti “Pygmies” faced an illegal ban from their ancestral lands but are now working with conservationists to protect their lands: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/30/clashing-conservation-saving-democratic-republic-congo-forest-pygmies-drc
Conservationist Margi Prideaux called for a new conservation model that respects local communities in Open Democracy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/margi-prideaux/wildlife-conservationists-need-to-break-out-of-their-stockholm-syndrom
The tide is turning. More and more people are raising their voices and demanding that tribal peoples be at the forefront of the environmental movement.
If you haven’t already had the chance to, please sign Survival’s “Their land, our future” declaration: http://www.survivalinternational.org/petitions/tribal-people-the-best-conservationists
