Much has been covered in the press about the political and environmental impacts of oil. This article takes a look at the impact on the local communities in the Amazon rainforest and how they cope.

Oil companies haven’t had it particularly easy on the public relations front recently; a problem exacerbated by the revelations that Texaco have been treating Ecuador as its Latin American toxic dustbin. The oil giant was revealed to have dumped around 12bn gallons of crude oil into the Amazon river (a volume equivalent to the reservoir Grafam Water), and left around seven hundred open-air toxic waste pits.

Many environmentalists have always expressed doubts about the dangers of the oil industry, but this act is perhaps enough to convince all but the most vice-presidential of sceptics that this episode’s protagonists are on a moral index somewhere in-between Ian Huntley and Nicolae Ceauşescu. Yet, even when the oil companies do not appear to be wilfully engaging in such horrendous activities destroying the environment, their presence is having questionable social impacts on the communities which they invade.

The town of Arajuno in eastern Ecuador was built by the Shell Oil Company, an interest which ceased in 1948 when Shell discontinued their business in the country. Since then, other companies such as the Italian giant AGIP have moved in, and the impact has led to difficulties for the native Ecuadorians, in almost every area

Arajuno is, like many communities in the developing world, coming to terms with the ruthlessness, and failures of globalisation. The crude but necessary term ‘Westernisation’ is one which attempts to drag the community forward, which it does do, but at a huge social cost. Population growth is one of the most obvious. Ecuador is largely Catholic, and a situation familiar to many Bruce Parry fans has arisen, where there is simply not enough habitat left to support the Amazonian animals and plant life, with which the locals could otherwise be largely self-sufficient. The not-exactly-new problem of deforestation has become the way of life for many of the poorer residents; their only chance to make money is to sell planks of wood for a measly 50 cents each. Bearing in mind Ecuador has the largest proportional rate of deforestation in the entire Amazon region, alarm bells should start ringing.

This haphazard attempt to cash in on this cut-throat capitalism is creating confusion for many of the locals; they are encouraged to make the most of their assets, but are going about it in a way which mirrors that of the foreign oil companies; in a way which is wholly unsustainable. Concepts such as ownership of land are being confused by the banks which have swept in; some of the locals selling off the land as their only asset, receiving little in return.

What makes these stories so depressing is the lack of any real solution to them. It will remain impossible to halt the rise of globalisation, as the worldwide thirst for oil will ensure every last corner of the earth is searched and exploited. Even those Ecuadorians in charge of protecting their environment are not helping; one former police chief was found to have his own private zoo, containing many monkeys, of whom he had the duty to protect from kidnappers and poachers. Even if the oil companies were to leave tomorrow, the situation would remain impossible, as the locals would be deprived of the Western financial backing. It would be like resetting the clock, only with seven hundred toxic pits added to the starting point.