Oil Palm Plantations Threaten Amazon Forest

An ECOLEX workshop in the Choco region.

Ecuador is home to more species than almost any other nation on earth. This small country, straddling the equator in the Andean highlands, is home to the Galapagos Islands, alpine grasslands, coastal swamps, snow-swept volcanoes, and nearly impenetrable Amazonian jungle.

E-LAW U.S. is working with grassroots advocates at the Corporacion de Gestion y Derecho Ambiental (ECOLEX), based in Quito, to promote sustainable management of these unique ecosystems.

Manolo Morales, Executive Director of ECOLEX, traveled to Eugene early this year to work with E-LAW U.S. and participate in the 2005 E-LAW Annual Meeting and the 23rd Annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference.

While in Eugene, Manolo collaborated with E-LAW U.S. on his organization`s efforts to protect the Choco forests (near the Colombia border) and Ecuador`s coastal ecosystems. In May, E-LAW U.S. Environmental Research Scientist, Meche Lu, traveled to Ecuador to work with ECOLEX.

Choco forests

In 2002, the Government of Ecuador authorized the conversion of 50,000 hectares of tropical forest in the Choco region of western Ecuador into oil palm plantations. Clearing forests for this monoculture crop has threatened thousands of endemic species and introduced dangerous pesticides to local ecosystems. Manolo is working with E-LAW U.S. to ensure that oil palm plantations and their associated palm oil processing plants in the Choco region do not harm local ecosystems and the health of local communities.

As this issue of the E-LAW Advocate goes to press, Meche is in Ecuador working with Manolo and his colleagues at ECOLEX. She is conducting site visits to oil palm plantations and factories in San Lorenzo, Esmeraldas, and educating local communities there about the results of local water quality analysis and the impacts of intensive pesticide use. The following is an excerpt from a field report she e-mailed from Quito.

E-LAW U.S. thanks the Overbrook Foundation and the Leo Model Foundation for their valuable support of our work in Ecuador.

Subject: Ecuador Trip Report
From: Meche Lu
Date: Fri. 20 May 2005
To: elawus@elaw.org

We crossed half the territory of the country in four days, from Quito, in the Andes, at about 6,000 feet, to the tropical forest of the Choco. We met with the people of San Lorenzo in Esmeraldas, the most remote place you can imagine. This is an area of African-Ecuadorian communities totally forgotten, with no electricity or running water.

We had an excellent workshop with the communities affected by the oil palm plantations. There were approximately 25 community representatives from the surrounding villages. This is an area where 36,000 hectares of oil palm plantations use pesticides intensively. The people complain about the pesticides and the effluents from the processing plants.

We visited La Chiquita, a 35 family village of African -Ecuadorian subsistence farmers in the middle of the forest, who subsist totally on the forest. The people were great, and offered us huarapo, fruits, sugar cane, and sugar cane juice. They were very happy, but live in poverty.

We exchanged information and I explained the impacts of oil palm plantations, pesticide use and the pollution from the processing plants. Manolo and Silvana are well-known by this community because both of them worked in the area for about 10 years before they started ECOLEX.