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Project Overview In June 2003, the Peruvian government took the unprecedented step of opening up the entire Peruvian Amazon region to oil and gas development studies, placing the last refuges of indigenous peoples living with little or no contact with the outside world in remote Amazon headwater regions within the reach of the international oil industry. U.S. oil companies such as Hunt Oil and Occidental Petroleum, seeking backing from international financiers from the public and private sectors, are moving to take advantage of this extraordinary carte blanche for the oil industry.
In violation of internationally recognized indigenous rights, the Peruvian government neither consulted nor informed the region's indigenous organizations. Many indigenous groups including the national indigenous organization AIDESEP demand an end to extractive industry operations within the lands of isolated indigenous peoples and promote an alternative vision of sustainable community development.
International law grants indigenous peoples the right to decide their own development and to have their cultures respected. Yet, traditional Amazonian communities who depend on the forest for subsistence stand to loose their way of life as oil development brings environmental degradation, an influx of migrants and illegal loggers, and the spread of introduced illnesses. Pressures from oil development could displace nomadic indigenous groups producing conflict between them over land and forest resources.
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