"Their lawsuit demands protection for the Marañón River from Lot1AB, an oilfield carved into the Amazon Rainforest with nearly 2,000 contaminated sites."
"In Peru’s northern Amazon rainforest, across a million acres known as Lot 1AB, a parade of foreign oil companies have for over 50 years drilled, spilled crude and dumped billions of gallons of toxic “production water” on the once pristine land.
Throughout that time, the firms have largely evaded responsibility for cleaning up the mess or compensating Indigenous communities harmed by the devastation, leveraging a global patchwork of advantageous laws that emphasize economic growth and what lawyers for those communities call the “commodification” of nature.
Now, a federation of Kukama Indigenous women in Peru, the Huaynakana Kamatahuara kana, are fighting back by shifting the legal paradigm, demanding in a September lawsuit that the Peruvian government grant and recognize the legal rights of nature by ensuring that the Marañón River, downstream from Lot 1AB, is able to exist, to flow, to live free from contamination, to feed and be fed by its tributaries and to be protected, preserved and restored."
Katie Surma reports for Inside Climate News November 5, 2021.
Advertisement 
