NYC People's Referendum on Free Trade
PO
Box 344, New York, NY 10108
(347) 905-7334
info@tradejustice.net
* www.tradejustice.net
Pelosi's
Support for Anti-Environmental, Anti-Indigenous Peru Free Trade Agreement Financed with Oil Dollars from Occidental
Petroleum
The New York City People's Referendum on Free
Trade sent the following statement to every member of Congress today:
Among the companies with a vested interest in using
NAFTA-style investor state provisions to undermine environmental laws in the
Peruvian Amazon is Occidental Petroleum. Occidental has an ugly history
of human rights abuse and environmental destruction in Peru, Ecuador,
and Colombia.
Facing a lawsuit and calls for accountability in Peru
and still smarting from contract cancellation in Ecuador,
and a public relations disaster in 2000 when the U'wa indigenous
community threatened mass suicide over Occidental encroachment on their
ancestral land in the Colombian Andean cloudforest,
Occidental stated its intentions last year to pull out of the Peruvian Amazon). Yet they've since reversed that position.
What lead to their change of heart? A buyer pullout for one thing, in tandem with
heavy lobbying by the Peruvian government. But was Nancy Pelosi's election as Speaker of
the House also a consideration? Absent
from the debate on the Peru
Free Trade Agreement is one glaring fact:
Occidental Petroleum was Nancy
Pelosi's #1 campaign contributor in the 2006 election cycle.
Occidental purchased a Speaker of the House will who would deliver a
NAFTA-style trade deal for Peru,
betraying the will of a US public that voted for a fair trade Congress in
November and the interests of Freshmen Democrats who's capacity to deliver a
new trade agenda will influence their chances at reelection in 2008. And
to listen to Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), chairman of the House Trade Working
Group, Pelosi may be jeopardizing the Democrats chance at winning back the
White House: "Democrats could lose the presidency because of trade. The American people feel there is no
difference between a Democrat and Republican. [President Bill] Clinton
brought us NAFTA and now a Democratic Congress will bring us Peru.",.
"
The benefits of the FTA to Occidental—and the potential harm to rainforests and
indigenous people—is all too apparent to Peru's indigenous people. On October 30th, the Interethnic
Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP), a
"federation representing 350,000 indigenous people in [the] Amazon region"
issued a letter to the members of the US Congress, urging them to vote against
the FTA. They argued, " the
Peru FTA, if approved, would threaten every aspect of our livelihoods and
sustainable development program. … President Alan García is auctioning off Peru’s Amazon
at a breakneck speed to foreign firms ranging from Hunt Oil to Occidental
Petroleum and beyond. Already by 2004, as the FTA was just being negotiated,
only 15 percent of Peru’s
Amazon was zoned for oil, gas and mining – today, that figure is near 70
percent…. Provisions contained
in the Peru FTA are directly incentivizing this massive takeover that is
threatening our livelihoods and leading to irreversible destruction of virgin
rainforest. For example, the Peru FTA’s Chapter 10
establishes investor rights provisions that would help lock in our
government’s destructive anti-indigenous and anti-environment policies. The FTA
explicitly gives foreign oil, gas and mining companies the right to
skirt Peruvian laws and courts and challenge the Peruvian government in
foreign tribunals for changes to their licenses, authorizations, permits and
other investment agreements. This provision goes even beyond NAFTA and CAFTA,
and opens up a wide range of
policies and future reforms to challenge in foreign trade tribunals. ..Thus,
for instance, if a future government decided that oil and gas companies must
not pollute local waterways, the corporations could demand compensation because
such a policy would undermine their future profits."
Rewarding
Nancy Pelosi's campaign contributors should not take precedence over human
rights and the environment. Members of
Congress should vote NO on the Peru
Free Trade Agreement.