What are the environmental impacts of oil exploration in Ecuador?
Palmer: Dead fish, contaminated water, noise contamination just getting the equipment in where it is frightening and disruptive to indigenous peoples and the animals in the forests. By just putting a road in, they are disrupting the migratory patterns of animals. Once a road exists, not only can the oil company get in there, but people can get in there and hunt what shouldn’t be hunted for their meat, feathers and skin. Poachers immediately appear on the scene when a road is cut into a new area. And then logging operations will follow immediately too. If you can get machinery in for oil development, you can get logging machinery in. It just opens a Pandora’s box. GVN: What are the social impacts on a community? Palmer: Oil companies themselves send in fairly young, single, male workers into a traditional society that is primarily hunter/gathers or live in small clans or villages and have a very traditional social structure that has been theirs for many centuries. In that setting, when
