‘Dark, fat grease stuck to the leaves’: oil and gas encroach on Peru’s uncontacted peoples
Above the canopy of the tallest trees that vie for sunlight in the depths of the Peruvian Amazon, gas flares shoot into the sky. Below, Julio Cusurichi, 53, can see the thick, dark grease that clings to the leaves and the toxins leaking into the streams.
“Oil and gas projects are coming closer and closer. They are expanding into new lands,” says Cusurichi, a member of the Shipibo-Conibo people, a Goldman prize winner and one of Peru’s foremost Indigenous leaders. “Our territory is our life, but the government is auctioning off plots. It is a great invasion with a grave impact.”
Oil and gas have been extracted from some of Peru’s most biologically diverse territories for decades. Now, researchers warn, companies are expanding further into the lands of some of the last uncontacted Indigenous peoples.
Peru is home to one of the world’s largest populations of “peoples in isolation and initial contact” (Piaci), estimated at 7,500 by the government. Their territories comprise some of the most intact areas of the Amazon. Yet, recent analysis by Earth Insight has found that Peru’s current and proposed oil and gas blocks overlap with 20% – or 1.6m hectares (3.95m acres) – of reserves for these communities.
