Impact of the Gulf Spill Felt Around the World

PHOTO: Mark Lewis

The waters off Belize are still pristine.  Meanwhile, oil companies have petroleum contracts for most of the sea floor.

Around the world, people are watching the impacts of the BP/Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.  They are concerned about how a similar incident might unfold along their shores.  In Belize, for example, a color-coded petroleum contracts map reveals that nearly every inch offshore is already charted for oil development.

In the midst of the economic recession, governments such as Belize are desperate for revenue to provide basic services, and natural resource exploitation is a “cheap fix” in the short-term.  Oil consumption by the developed world is driving multinationals to explore for oil under every rock and reef.

The good news is that ELAW partners in Belize have captured the moment and joined an alliance of more than 40 organizations seeking a moratorium on oil drilling offshore and in protected areas.  The Belize Coalition to Save Our Natural Heritage will draw lessons from Costa Rica and other places where public interest lawyers have effectively deterred oil development in fragile marine ecosystems.

“Right now, Belize lacks the regulatory and emergency response infrastructure to manage oil development on this scale,” says Lori Maddox, ELAW Associate Director.  “When regulatory systems fail, everyone suffers.  We see this unfolding now in the Gulf of Mexico.  In Belize, an oil spill would paralyze the economy and destroy the country’s only real hope for building a solid revenue stream for the future - locally-based, sustainable tourism.”

Natural resource management agencies in Belize are weak because they lack adequate funding to monitor and enforce environmental laws.  ELAW has made an intensive investment of training, organizational development, and legal and scientific support to help public interest lawyers and citizens across Mesoamerica do their part to force accountability and more responsible development.

Communities in Belize are now learning about plans for large-scale oil development in their country, and about their rights to object.  “Stand Up Speak Up,” a community participation handbook produced by ELAW partners, will be a vital tool in oil workshops across Belize.

In Ecuador, ELAW partner Pablo Fajardo has been fighting for decades to force the clean up of damage by ChevronTexaco – an oil disaster of even larger magnitude than that unfolding in the Gulf.  At the end of June, Ecuadorian leaders went to the Gulf Coast to meet with Native American elders.  They toured the coastal communities impacted by the BP disaster and shared stories and ideas about how to hold oil companies accountable.

In The Guardian (June 19, 2010), award-winning journalist Naomi Klein writes:

The experience of following the oil’s progress through the ecosystem is a kind of crash course in deep ecology.  Every day we learn more about how what seems to be a terrible problem in one isolated part of the world actually radiates out in ways most of us could never have imagined. One day we learn that the oil could reach Cuba – then Europe.  Next we hear that fishermen all the way up the Atlantic in Prince Edward Island, Canada, are worried because the Bluefin tuna they catch off their shores are born thousands of miles away in those oil-stained Gulf waters.  And we learn, too, that for birds, the Gulf coast wetlands are the equivalent of a busy airport hub – everyone seems to have a stopover: 110 species of migratory songbirds and 75% of all migratory US waterfowl.

It is this interconnectedness of the world’s environment and ecology that binds ELAW’s partners.  “We work together as friends and colleagues, and ensure that when environmental degradation happens in one area of the world, advocates in other areas are aware of, and can work to stop, disastrous impacts in their communities,” says Lori.

ELAW partners are not just discussing the worldwide implications of the Gulf catastrophe, but working in solidarity to ensure that oil companies like BP and Chevron are held accountable for the damage caused by their business of oil extraction, and that the environment is restored.