Indigenous efforts to save Peru’s Marañon River could spell trouble for big oil

Living deep in the Peruvian Amazon, the Kukama Kukamiria Indigenous community have spent generations with their feet in the Marañón, the river emerging from the Andes that provides the main source of water for the Amazon River. They depend on the river to drink, bathe, fish and plant crops. They also believe family members who have drowned or disappeared continue living under its waters, a core part of their spirituality.

But as oil companies flocked to the region, the once-clear river has become tainted by oil spills. Worse, community members have suffered for decades from an array of unexplained illnesses, including fevers, headaches, diarrhea, skin rashes and even miscarriages.

“We have always lived off the water, but now it’s slowly killing us,” community leader Mariluz Canaquiri Murayari, 55, told Mongabay. “It’s damaging not only our drinking water and food but also our economy, health and way of life.”

After decades of denouncing oil companies’ harmful practices in the region to little effect, the Federation of Kukama Indigenous Women living in the community and led by Murayari has recently made a breakthrough.

In March, the Mixed Court in the nearby city of Nauta ruled that state-owned oil company Petroperú and the local government of Loreto must take concrete action to clean up and protect the Marañon River. In an unprecedented decision, the judge also named the Kukama women guardians of the Marañon and declared the river and its tributaries as having “the right to be free of pollution,” among other rights.

The ruling has kicked off a legal battle between the Kukama women and the defendants that could last years. But if the decision stands in the higher Peruvian courts, it could open a legal precedent for similar lawsuits, forcing oil and gas companies in the Peruvian Amazon to answer for decades of harmful pollution.

A long history of oil spills

The Marañon River and its tributaries — including the Corrientes, Pastaza and Tigre rivers — stretch across northern Peru’s Amazon forest. The region is one of the most biodiverse in the country and home to hundreds of Indigenous communities. But it also has some of the country’s richest oil and gas reserves.

In the 1970s, the government of Peru began leasing drilling concessions in the area (blocks 8 and 1AB/192) while building the Northern Peruvian Oil Pipeline to transport oil to the coast. Over time, the drilling sites became some of the country’s most productive, reaching 1.032 billion oil barrels in 2014, almost 40% of the country’s total.

But from the very beginning, the Kukama, Achuar, Kichwa and Quechua Indigenous peoples who live along the rivers reported cases of oil-related poisoning. These communities spent decades demanding action from oil companies and the Peruvian government, with little success.

Prompted by their plight to investigate, Martí Orta-Martínez, a researcher from the University of Barcelona, traveled to the region in 2004 to study the water quality. The scientist was shocked by what he encountered.

“There was no need to analyze the river to determine whether there were hydrocarbons in the water,” he told Mongabay. “The oil was sitting there abandoned, from spills that had occurred decades ago and were never remedied.”

According to Orta-Martínez, the main source of pollution was the discharge of produced waters, a byproduct of oil extraction illegally dumped straight into the rivers. This wastewater typically contains large amounts of heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium.

It wasn’t until 2010, after Indigenous groups staged violent protests occupying local drilling facilities, that oil companies committed to reinjecting produced waters back into the oil reservoirs, in line with a 1993 Peruvian law and standard procedures for fossil fuel drilling.

There was some improvement in the water quality, but the area remained largely polluted. “The reinjection process is very complex, and it’s not clear that it’s being carried out correctly,” said Orta-Martínez. “To my knowledge, there is no monitoring of the reinjection of produced waters, and the scientific community is very worried for the potential pollution of groundwater.”

What’s more, as the Northern Peruvian Oil Pipeline has aged and lacked proper maintenance, oil spills and leaks have become increasingly common. Between 1997 and 2019, more than 60 oil spills were recorded in the Marañon River alone, according to Osinergmin, the Peruvian state agency supervising the hydrocarbon sector.

Even a few barrels can contaminate the drinking water of local communities.

Recent blood and urine samples provided by around 1,000 Indigenous people living in 39 villages in the oil extraction area revealed high levels of lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium. The results were published by Orta-Martínez and colleagues in 2021 and 2023. “The severe environmental and health consequences of oil pollution in the area are still very high,” the researcher told Mongabay. “Now imagine the health impact of 50 years of exposure to these toxic and carcinogenic substances.”

Petroperú and the government of Loreto did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for interviews.

A groundbreaking decision

The Nauta court’s recent ruling in favor of the Kukama women could be a turning point.

The judge ordered Petroperú to conduct maintenance on the Northern Peruvian Oil Pipeline and update their 60-year-old environmental management plan for the Marañon River. At the same time, the court instructed the regional government of Loreto to consult Indigenous communities about the management of its waters.

For Javier Ruiz, an environmental policy and climate change expert with the nonprofit organization Earth Law Center, the sentence was groundbreaking. It not only demanded action from the defendants but also recognized the rights of nature at the constitutional level in Peru, following the examples of Ecuador, Bolivia and Panama.

“The decision marks a before-and-after for Peruvian environmental law,” said Ruiz, who provided technical recommendations in the case. “The ruling could lead to an influx of other lawsuits against oil pollution.”

The first cases would likely attempt to protect the Marañon River’s tributaries. Since the sentence does not specify which affluents are being granted rights, there’s legal room to argue that oil companies should not be polluting any of the river’s dozens of affluents.

Challenges ahead

While the historic ruling could lead to cleaner waters, Maritza Quispe Mamani, the attorney representing the Kukama community, knows there is a long road ahead.

The lawyer is preparing for the upcoming appeal hearing, which will take place in the larger city of Iquitos, in the Belén district. If they lose the appeal, the case will be sent to the Constitutional Court of Peru, the country’s highest court. But it could take months, even years, before a final decision.

Even if the Kukama women succeed in their legal fight, Mamani recognizes that implementing the sentence will be the hardest part. In 2016, the Atrato River in Colombia was granted similar rights, and local community members were named its guardians. But to this day, mining companies continue to pollute the river, and local government agencies have offered little support.

Mamani remains optimistic. “The courts can’t force oil companies to make changes, but they can fine them repeatedly for lack of compliance,” she said. “They can also trigger a deeper investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office into their harmful practices.”

As the legal process crawls along, Kukama community member Celia Fasab, 38, continues to drink water from and bathe in the Marañon River daily. “I wish the oil companies understood that we no longer want pollution. We want the river to flow freely. We want to be clean,” she said. “To the government, I would say we are tired of being abused.”

Citations:

Orta-Martínez, M., Pellegrini, L., & Arsel, M. (2018). “The squeaky wheel gets the grease”? The conflict imperative and the slow fight against environmental injustice in northern Peruvian Amazon. Ecology and Society, 23(3). doi:10.5751/es-10098-230307

O’Callaghan-Gordo, C., Rosales, J., Lizárraga, P., Barclay, F., Okamoto, T., Papoulias, D. M., … Astete, J. (2021). Blood lead levels in Indigenous Peoples living close to oil extraction areas in the Peruvian Amazon. Environment International, 154, 106639. doi:10.1016/j.envint.2021.106639

O’Callaghan-Gordo, C., Rosales, J., Lizárraga, P., Barclay, F., Okamoto, T., Papoulias, D. M., … Astete, J. (2023). Levels of arsenic, cadmium, and mercury in urine of Indigenous People living close to oil extraction areas in the Peruvian Amazon. Environmental Health Perspectives, 131(5). doi:10.1289/ehp11932

Banner image: The Marañon River emerges from the Andes and provides the main source of water for the Amazon River. Image courtesy of Miguel Araoz Cartagena/Quisca.

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