The reactivation of oceanographic research and the search for alternatives to mining are on the list of pending challenges for the year.
What to do about oil spills at sea? What will happen to the environmental policy at a time when two parliaments declare themselves legitimate?
During 2020, Venezuela’s chronic environmental problems only got worse. The bad news came in the form of waves of dark oil along the Venezuelan coasts, as a result of the oil spills that affected, especially in the second half of the year, the Morrocoy National Park and the Cuare Wildlife Refuge, an important Latin American wetland that was already in check by authorized developments for tourism that threaten to dry it up. In 2021, biologists and environmentalists do not plan to sit idly in the face of the threat and aim to measure the damage and appeal to international agreements to get the government to respond effectively.
In the south of the country, the gold rush also raged. In Canaima National Park – the same park that inspired the scenes of the animated film ‘Up’ and which is home to the Angel Falls, the highest waterfall on the planet – the number of mineral extraction sites grew by 78% in just two years and scientists confirmed that illegal mining tripled deforestation figures, from 400 to 1,200 square kilometers. For this reason, the defense of these territories combines both urgent actions of an international nature and the planning of alternative economic activities that prevent more miners from arriving in the area every day.
Political changes in the country affect all areas, and the environment is no exception. Given the installation of two parliaments with parallel agendas and decisions, the question remains as to how this will affect the already battered national parks and protected areas. On the other hand, the Venezuelan academy needs to receive the support of the State so as not to be left out of the Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) proposed by the UN, a program that starts this year and promises to train a whole generation of oceanographers and experts for a country plunged into a serious “brain drain.”
1. International action against oil spills
Although the name of the Morrocoy National Park was widely mentioned in the media during the oil spills of July and August 2020, another protected site was seriously affected: the Cuare Wildlife Refuge, classified in Venezuela as an Area Under Special Administration Regime (ABRAE) and home to nearly 300 species of birds that share their habitat with reptiles and mammals in danger of extinction.
Cuare, in the state of Falcón and neighboring Morrocoy, was the first place in the country to enter the list of areas protected by the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, also known as the Ramsar Convention by the Iranian city where it was signed in 1971. The area entered the classification on November 23, 1988, and since then only four more places in Venezuela have done so in Venezuela. Under this Convention, scientists, activists and citizens will demand action from the Venezuelan state oil company (PDVSA) regarding oil spills
As a member state of the agreement, Venezuela is committed to making rational use of this space, but instead, it has allowed constructions in the area causing it to begin to dry out, all besides the impact of a large oil spill in 2020.
The biologist and president of the Venezuelan Ecology Society, Vilisa Morón, assures that activists and residents of the area are currently looking for partners to appeal to the Ramsar Convention, but have not yet obtained the necessary support.
There is still much to do The study of what happened with the oil leaks is essential so that the most accurate and adequate sanitation activities can be carried out this year. “The work of NGOs, universities and citizens is to monitor and press for a response. One of the actions we can all support is mapping [the spills and affected areas], ”says Morón.
Eduardo Klein, biologist, university professor and coordinator of the Center for Marine Biodiversity at Simón Bolívar University, supports the idea because it is precisely the lack of monitoring that has caused the spills. He maintains that the absence of a damage assessment, due to the lack of trained personnel in the state oil company, has prevented accidents from being avoided and their effects from being prolonged over time.
Klein assures that all these events have demonstrated over and over again the inability of PDVSA to stop the leaks that used to be addressed with special units and contingency plans. “Today, on the other hand, the cleaning up of environmental damage done by the industry depends to a great extent on the concern and insistence of the communities surrounding the park,” says the academic.
According to Klein, months after the spill, the mangroves continue to be affected and fishermen must go further to get a catch because the residues affected the marine flora and fauna. For the biologist, a pending task for 2021 is that the calls of civil society “resonate even louder in a State that fails to comply with basic responsibilities to maintain environmental balance.”
2. The environmental future with two parliaments
2021 marks the beginning of the constitutional term of a new National Assembly, a public power that for the last five years had been kept under the command of the opposition, even though the Supreme Tribunal of Justice declared it in contempt in 2017 and invalidated all its decisions and statements from then on. However, the renewal of the parliament was disappointing to many.
The opposition leaders refused to go to the polls to be reelected as deputies because the conditions of the elections imposed by the Executive branch put them at a clear disadvantage and, according to them, did not guarantee the transparency of the process. For this reason, Chavismo carried out last December elections that were marked, both by their opponents and by several countries of the international community, as fraudulent. Thanks to those elections, the ruling party now occupies more than 90% of the seats, paving the way for any order emanating from the Presidential palace to find green light in the legislative body.
Faced with such a scenario, most of the opposition members of the National Assembly elected in 2015 decided to continue in their positions and constituted a delegated commission under the argument that the December 2020 elections were illegitimate and they “cannot allow a power vacuum”. Meanwhile, the Chavistas also assumed their new responsibilities.
With two legislative bodies, it remains to be seen how decisions that directly impact national parks and protected areas will be affected. Juan Manuel Raffalli, a constitutional lawyer, assures that the coexistence of two parliaments has no place because there is no “two-headed republic.” “That goes against reason and the very operational capacity of the State,” says the expert. Despite the opposition’s nonconformity, Rafalli assures that Nicolás Maduro’s Assembly will govern all matters, including the environment. “If it decides to enact laws on environmental content, no one within the country is going to say no, because it holds coercive power,” he adds.
But everything changed in the international arena. The lawyer explains that it is at this level where Venezuela has signed treaties and agreements with other countries and these will have to decide which of the two parliaments they support.
“From a political point of view, support of these countries is relevant for the opposition from two perspectives: the first has to do with bilateral agreements and conventions on environmental matters because those States recognize Guaidó as their interlocutor. But there is a second point and that is that these agreements involve commitments between States to protect the environment, but they cannot enforce them because, in practice, the opposition does not have legislative powers ”, adds Raffalli.
Some people think the worst is yet to come. “I envision the short-term deepening of the disaster,” opposition parliamentarian Américo De Grazia tells Mongabay Latam, convinced that the environment will be one of the most affected issues by the new political scenario. “They will stimulate and exponentiate all environmental ills to unimaginable levels,” he assures, adding that the ecological disasters promoted in the Orinoco Mining Arc will expand and it will be impossible to protect national parks.
De Grazia comments that “anyone who does not have a power counterweight will always sin more” and that is why the opposition chose to declare constitutional continuity, a decision that has already received the approval of countries such as the United States, Japan, Canada, Colombia, Chile and Brazil.
3. Protecting Canaima Park
For more than five years, organizations, tourists, environmentalists, journalists and activists have denounced the presence of mining activities within the Canaima National Park, in the southern state of Bolívar. In 1994 this protected natural area was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and, over time, the problem of illegal mining has worsened to the point that the 33 mining fields that had been identified by the non-governmental organization SOS Orinoco in 2018 increased to 59 in 2020. In just a couple of years, the number of gold mining fields within the park grew by 78%.
The inaction of the Nicolás Maduro government to counteract extractive activity and the support of the State for projects such as the Orinoco Mining Arc – which has facilitated the transit of tools and machinery for mining to neighboring protected areas – constituted an alarm for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which assesses natural heritage in danger. In 2017, Canaima entered the list of sites that represent a “significant concern” and was classified with an orange alert, just one notch down from the red alert, which is the most worrying assessment.
“This gold rush has been made worse by the complex humanitarian crisis in which Venezuela is mired. Future scenarios for Canaima are not very encouraging as there is no environmental authority on the ground capable of, or interested in, responding effectively to this problem. There is no political will or governance to deal with mining operations, so it is expected that the devastation will increase, bringing serious damage to the Pemón indigenous culture, whose ancestral territory is largely located within the national park, ”wrote SOS Orinoco last year in a statement urging UNESCO to recognize that the problem of extractive activity within the park is much more serious than contemplated.
For this reason, according to SOS Orinoco, it is “urgent and necessary” to re-categorize Canaima National Park as a “Critically Endangered” area according to the criteria of the IUCN, which is UNESCO’s technical advisory body. This would activate a red alert that could promote urgent action from the Venezuelan central government in favor of conservation.
“Taking into account the complex humanitarian crisis that Venezuela is going through, and state policies openly favorable to mining and neglectful of environmental laws, it is necessary for UNESCO to include Canaima in the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger, as a political action that push the authorities to act decisively and assertively to achieve the cessation of mining operations, offering economically and ecologically sustainable alternatives to the resident population of the national park, “said SOS Orinoco in a letter published last June to mark 58 years since Canaima was classified as a protected natural area.
For the environmental consultant and president in charge of the La Salle Natural Sciences Society, Isabel Novo, the incorporation of Canaima to the Red List “would open the possibility, among other things, of receiving international support to help find solutions that allow addressing the current situation”. Novo believes that this is an essential step to stimulate conservation measures within the scope of the World Heritage Convention before the situation becomes more serious and the status of World Heritage Site is lost.
“Ideally, this challenge should have the support of the institutions in charge of the administration and management of the Canaima National Park, including the National Parks Institute (INPARQUES),” says the expert.
Novo explains that entering the maximum alert would be reversible in the future because the World Heritage Committee can remove Canaima from the Red List “once it has met the criteria established in the ‘Desired State of Conservation for Removal from the List of World Heritage in Danger ‘and their natural values have been restored ”.
For Novo, it is inconceivable that mining activity takes place within Canaima National Park and even much so if this area is protected. “Many of the effects of this activity are irreversible and affect both the biodiversity of the park and its inhabitants. The great tourist potential of this area is an alternative that has been evaluated as an important source of income in the region if it is carried out in a controlled manner, but it is being lost to mining ”, she insists.
4. Alternatives to mining
In 2020, mining continued to gain ground in Venezuela. Not only in the Canaima Park the extraction sites multiplied but, according to the study ‘Undermining Rights: indigenous lands and mining in the Amazon’ by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Amazon Geo-referenced Socio-environmental Information Network (RAISG), in just one year, the area affected by illegal mining in the Venezuelan Amazon went from 400 square kilometers to 1200. This adds up to the almost 112,000 square kilometers that the Orinoco Mining Arc occupies – as a legal mining area—, including the exploitation of gold in six of the largest rivers in the area that has greatly affected the indigenous population.
María Teresa Quispe, strategic director of the Wataniba Amazon Socio-environmental Work Group, an organization that participated in the study, knows how much this activity has impacted the indigenous territories. The same document determined that mining affects 31% of the lands of native communities in the Amazon region. Therefore, when referring to a solution to the problem, she immediately alludes to the need to create economic alternatives to extractivism.
In a country going through a humanitarian emergency that has expelled at least five million people, working in the gold mines in the south of the nation – at the mercy of irregular armed groups and criminal gangs that control access to the different sites – has become a desperate measure to make money. Amid the situation, thousands of indigenous people have been forced to become miners in order to survive. Many of them, who made a living from tourism and worked as guides or in restaurants and inns, were left without any source of income with the abrupt drop in the number of travelers to the area.
“Mining is by no means ecological, there is no way to sustain it,” Quispe says, opposing the argument with which the government of Nicolás Maduro justified the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc. In fact, the department in charge of the sector is the Ministry of Ecological Mining Development, which for Quispe is a contradiction in itself.
“I believe that mining cannot be considered the only way out in an oil-rich country […] The creation of homegrown productive projects from the traditional knowledge and culture of the indigenous peoples is something that must be supported, explored and promoted. This government, or the one that comes after, should contemplate that possibility ”, indicates the director of Wataniba. For Quispe, the search for alternatives to mining must begin now, even though Latin America, in general, is betting on extractivism.
Mongabay Latam sought out the Ministry of Ecological Mining Development for comments but no statement has been obtained so far.
5. Venezuela requires scientists to study the ocean
2021 begins with a celebration to which Venezuela is not invited. Despite having 2,700 kilometers of coastline, the country will not have any representative in the first activities planned for the commemoration of the Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), a period proclaimed by the United Nations to bring together scientists, politicians, companies and civil society around the world under a common framework that ensures that ocean science can fully support countries in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 14: Marine life.
Biologist Eduardo Klein sees in the event an opportunity to study the oceans and understand their current situation; recognize and face their changes and create and apply a global methodology that helps preserve them. He says Venezuela is going to miss out on this and the country’s absence is due to the continuous decline in investment that, year after year, worsens in environmental matters. This has been a debt of the government to researchers, professionals and monitoring experts for over a decade.
“Venezuela has to get on the bus of the global movement. The country must remain integrated to global projects through organizations linked to the marine field ”, warns Klein, who recalls that the country was always at the forefront in the region in this type of event. He insists that the State must open the doors for non-governmental environmental groups to establish relationships with their peers in other nations. In other words, the State needs to promote this integration, “but any proposal fades out if there is no money to support it,” emphasizes Klein.
One of the goals of the Decade is to establish a new generation of oceanographers and technicians who, through new research networks and improved monitoring systems, facilities and infrastructure, will help countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
“With the miserable salaries of researchers and professors, how can you offer them to participate in this event and showcase their research if they barely have enough money to eat and they have to look for other ways to make ends meet? ”, ponders Klein. For him, the reactivation of academic research is vital to avoid having scientists desert and leave the country or dedicate themselves to more lucrative activities. Klein is convinced that this is an urgent need that the State must address in 2021.
Mongabay Latam requested information regarding the support of the State on this issue, but until the time of publication of this report, no response was obtained from the Ministry of Ecosocialism.
Translated by José Rafael Medina
