Environment < Side

Health, Environment and Social Justice Activists Monitor Impacts of Oil in Ecuador's Amazon

"The study showed that the environmental, health and social impacts of oil drilling were inextricably tied."

An international collaboration between medical professionals, environmental activists and popular-education promoters is bringing aid to a remote region of Ecuador's Amazon scarred by three decades of oil drilling and colonization.

Representatives from Berkeley-based Hesperian Foundation joined a team of health workers led by Dr. Adolfo Maldonado and the Ecuadorian environmental group Accion Ecologica to conduct a follow-up to a 1992 study of the health effects of oil drilling in the region.

Results of the original study, conducted by Dr. Maldonado, showed incidences of cancer, stillbirths, malnutrition and other health problems two to four times higher than the national average. They also showed that the environmental, health and social impacts of oil drilling were inextricably tied.

Doctor Maldonado used the books "Where There is No Doctor" and "Helping Health Workers Learn," developed and published by Hesperian, to train health promoters for the initial study. Hesperian is accompanying the team on the current study in order to document it as part of Hesperian's work on environmental health education, including an upcoming book, "A Community Guide to Environmental Health."

On the first 10-day leg of the ongoing study, which initiated at Accion Ecologica's research station near Lago Agrio, the study team conducted house-to-house interviews, photographed oil spills and environmental impacts, and documented personal interviews on video.

The researchers found that the situation was much worse than they had expected. The level of illness and despair among the people of the region was overwhelming. At the same time, residents of this remote area were excited to receive the visit of an international team and to feel that someone was finally paying attention to their plight.

Hesperian will assemble information from the study in an easy-to-read report to aid the villages in the work of consciousness-raising. Action on behalf of the local people is being carried out through a class-action suit against Texaco, one of the main oil companies in the area, and Accion Ecologica's fight against the construction of a new oil pipeline.

But popular education focusing on health and human rights, water- and air-quality monitoring, and community-based action is an emerging front that will empower people to take action on their own.

The Hesperian Foundation is a nonprofit publisher of books and newsletters for community-based health care. Its upcoming "Community Guide to Environmental Health," due out in 2005, will use experience gained in Ecuador to give communities in other oil-impacted areas the resources to make decisions that will protect the environment and save lives. For more information on the current study or the forthcoming book, contact Jeff Conant at jeff@hesperian.org.