Adrian Gonzalez Phd Thesis
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Access, engagement, suppression, and empowerment: a political ecology of voice (PEV) study into Peruvian citizen ability and willingness to report Petroperu environmental pollution incidents Adrian Gonzalez PhD Geography, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London Declaration of Authorship I Adrian Gonzalez hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed:______________________Date: _____________________ 2 They [indigenous people] know they have their rights and nobody can ignore them without being punished. They know they have a voice and it is being heard (Defensoria del Pueblo (Office of the Ombudsman) (DDP) representative) (NSI4R1) If I could make a call to … Petro[peru] and the state, to come see this problem, because they have put information on [the] internet saying that the problem is over but we know it [isn]’t and we see things coming down from the gorge and we want them to come again even if only to visit us and explain why they left us behind. That’s what I want to ask you, that you … could make this call from … Cuninico town, that some state organisation come to give us a hand because we haven’t heard from them. Why did they leave us? They abandoned us (Cuninico resident IRC13). Brothers, I ask you … please make this reach the government. Make them concerned about us. Pity us. That they’ll have a Christian heart. So that we can survive. We don’t want to die, we want to live. We have our lands here to cultivate. When the mothers and the fathers die, who is going to look [after] it? Do they want the kids to suffer? (Cuninico resident IRC9). 3 Photograph 0.1: ‘Pluspetrol = murder’ Graffiti in Iquitos1 Photograph 0.2: Cuninico indigenous emergency workers at the remediation site (summer 2014).2 1 Source: see Acknowledgements Footnote 3. 2 Source: see Acknowledgements Footnote 3. 4 Acknowledgements This thesis owes a debt of tremendous gratitude to several individuals who provided intellectual support and encouragement. Firstly, to my supervisor Professor David Simon, whose guidance, patience and support during my time at Royal Holloway made this research possible. I also wish to thank here the editor and two reviewers from the Journal of Political Ecology who provided me with valuable feedback on an early draft of PEV that helped to crystallise my thinking. Special thanks must go to a great many people who supported me during my fieldwork including my wonderful hospedaje family, the Domper Gonzales family (Carlos snr., Mercedes, Carlos, Rafael, Benjamin and Torro the dog) who made me part of their family, Joe Plumb, Carmen Rosa Arévalo Salos, and especially my two extremely dedicated interpreters, Carlos and Benjamin, without whom the interviews would not have been possible. Equally, I am enormously grateful to all the interviewees who agreed to speak to me during my fieldwork and my team of translators, Ana, Daniella, Jessica, Maria, Miranda, Sarah, Sjamme and Vanessa. On a personal note, I owe an immense amount of gratitude to my family, particularly my parents, whose love, encouragement and support has been ever-present throughout my research and who made this degree possible, but also to my brothers, Oscar and Edwin, my sister, Lydia and our greyhounds Lucy and Quirky. I especially want to thank my girlfriend Ellie for her love, encouragement and support throughout my PhD and patient listening to early ideas that coalesced into this thesis. Lastly, I wish to dedicate this thesis to my grandfather Stanley Brice and my auntie, Linda Hemming.3 3 Photograph 0.1: Photograph taken by researcher. Note; all thesis photographs are taken by the researcher (dated April-May 2015) aside from Photograph 6.6 which was taken by one of my interpreters (in June 2015) and used with his permission and Photograph 7.1 which is from a website (Infoamazonia no date). Photograph 0.2: This Photograph alongside Chapter 3, Section 3.4, Photographs 3.1 and 3.2 and Chapter 7, Section 7.2, Photographs 7.4, 7.5, 7.7, 7.8, 7.10.1 and 7.11.1/2 were given to me by a Cuninico resident and have been used with his permission. Although another resident (IRC13) confirmed that they took pictures of the spill which were given to the Catholic Church for the subsequent legal process (discussed in Chapter 8, Section 8.3), these photographs were taken by a Petroperu worker in summer 2014 who gave them to the community member in the belief that they would be useful. 5 Abstract This thesis has explored how effectively citizens and other stakeholders (community-based organisations (CBOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)) in Peru’s Loreto Region have been able to hold the oil company Petroperu accountable for environmental pollution. To do this, a theoretical framework called the political ecology of voice (PEV) has been developed which can be defined as an investigation into a specific temporal political, economic, social, and geographical environment in which citizens and other stakeholders voice over an environmental issue. Semi- structured interviews were concentrated predominantly on two oil-based communities; Barrio Florido adjacent to the Iquitos refinery, and Cuninico situated near the North Peruvian oil pipeline. The PEV theoretical framework has revealed many fascinating issues within the Loreto Region. Poor rural development, economic poverty, political disinterest and racialised class consciousness mean that both communities lack access to state institutions or their representatives to voice. Meanwhile, Petroperu strictly controls their access and relationship which resulted in no means of communication for Cuninico prior to a 2014 oil spill and limited dialogue for Barrio Florido. Citizen poverty and their economic dependency on Petroperu has also strengthened its power and influence over these communities allowing them to establish a climate of fear thus weakening citizen willingness to voice. For CBO/NGO state/resource extraction industry (REI) access and engagement, this can be positively co-operative (stemming from the former’s mutual aims and/or conciliatory support) or negatively obstructive (resulting from the former’s scrutiny-based voice) with those in the latter affected through state-orchestrated anti-NGO rhetoric and REI fragmentation of indigenous federations. Despite this, these actors perform many useful educational and accountability based roles which strengthen citizen voice. However, their involvement does not always guarantee success due to their own visions which can impact their representation of citizen voice. Overall, the PEV environment for Loreton stakeholders can be described as restrictive, intolerant and suppressive, particularly for citizens who must rely on the support of collective voice actors to hold REIs accountable for pollution. 6 Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 5 Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 6 List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... 11 List of Photographs ................................................................................................................. 12 List of Tables............................................................................................................................ 14 Acronyms ................................................................................................................................. 15 Glossary of Spanish terms ...................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 1 Introduction............................................................................................................... 23 1.1 Research problem: The inequality of environmental pollution between nations and citizens ................................................................................................................................................... 23 1.2 Research aims, questions and study originality .................................................................. 28 1.3 Research methodology ........................................................................................................ 30 1.4 Reasons for undertaking this research ................................................................................. 31 1.5 Summary and structure of the thesis ................................................................................... 32 Chapter 2 Sustaining the unsustainable; the causes of environmental pollution ................. 36 2.1 Power inequality and the dominance of western socio-economic processes ...................... 37 2.2 Environmental governance .................................................................................................. 43 2.3 Summarising the situation and the political ecology of voice (PEV) ................................. 48 2.4 Citizens and environmental management ........................................................................... 49 2.5 Situating voice within political ecology .............................................................................. 52 2.6 Albert Hirschman’s exit and voice, and reconceptualisation with an environmental scenario ..................................................................................................................................................