4 Maya villages join SATIIM and APAMO in court action against GOB

US Capital Energy has indicated to our newspaper that they hope to begin drilling for oil in Southern Belize this year; however, four Maya villages in Toledo – in the area where US Capital hopes to drill – have joined the Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM) and the Association of Protected Areas Management Organizations (APAMO) in seeking a court order to stop the project.

Firstly, APAMO, which has joined as an interested party in the matter, asserts that drilling inside a national park is strictly prohibited under Belizean law; however, the second bone of contention, as expressed by Maya leaders at a press conference held in Punta Gorda today, is that the Government and the company are pressing ahead with the project on what they maintain is Maya ancestral land, while disregarding their right to be meaningful partners in the development.

The communities surrounding the national park are five Q’eqchi’ Maya villages – Crique Sarco, Conejo, Graham Creek, Sunday Wood and Midway – and a Garifuna Village: Barranco. (Sunday Wood and Barranco are not a part of the action.)

The village leaders all spoke in Maya, and Greg Ch’oc, SATIIM’s executive director, translated for the press.

Andres Bo of Crique Sarco was quoted as saying that: “I want to be clear here that, we have never said that we don’t want development. We want development, but we recognize that development will not occur if we do not alter and change how the benefit from the resources of our land is going to be distributed. We want to ensure that we have a say. We want to ensure that as landowners, as people living off the land, that we have a say…

“We want agreements; we want contracts [with] ourselves and our communities so that we can hold them accountable. Words are too cheap, words are too easy to say and we have learned from experiences in the past that it doesn’t mean anything in the end.”

Enrique Makin, of Conejo, was quoted as saying: “They have already begun to violate their words to us, because they came telling us we are going to get money, there is going to be a lot of employment, what we realize is happening in the community is that there are only a handful of people [getting jobs]. And there are some that they are using to intimidate the community. They are only employing certain people in the community and that should not be the case. The community must have a say in how that employment should occur.”

Makin indicated that while they are bound collectively as four communities in the lawsuit filed this Monday, Conejo has a separate claim it plans to pursue against US Capital Energy.

Ch’oc also translated the comments made by Juan Ico of Midway, who pointed out that while Government has barred them from exploiting the national park – it has put no such fetters on US Capital:

“The Government stopped us from using the resources of the national park—and we have done that, we have made the sacrifice—but we also note that US Capital is not being stopped. US Capital is engaging in the very activities that the Government tells us that we should not do. We need to take this into account, brothers and sisters. Is it because we are poor and US Capital is rich? It has to come to an end; we must stand together. We have to demonstrate that together we can influence and change the course of development among our communities and for our communities,” Ico was quoted as saying.

Why the big fuss about the park? Cordelia Requeña, SATIIM’s Environmental Stewardship and Human Rights Program Manager, gave a presentation outlining the ecological importance as well as the international fame of the park; and she furthermore highlighted concerns that the proposed location of the drill sites have been substantially changed.

According to Requeña, the Sarstoon Temash National Park, the second largest national park in Belize next to the Chiquibul National Park, is a wetland of international importance, declared by the RAMSAR Convention to be so in 2005. (The Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary is the only other wetland in Belize internationally recognized under Ramsar.)

Requeña also noted that the STNP is the only known lowland sphagnum moss bog in all of Central America. Ramsar documents that the STNP, which is home to 1,100 hectares of lowland sphagnum moss bog unique to the region, supports vulnerable wildlife species.

Spanning almost 42,000 acres, the park, which is rich with 14 different types of ecosystems, is a haven for 226 species of birds, 46 species of insects (including butterflies), 42 fish species, 24 mammal species and 22 reptile species, Requeña detailed.

She said that villagers began reporting the presence of US Capital Energy in the national park back in September 2011. They observed that the company had surveyed seismic lines along the Temash River.

One major concern she raised is that the drill sites that were originally mapped out in the EIA, presented October 25, 2011 in Sunday Wood, have since been changed; and one particular change that concerns them is the shifting of one of those drill sites to a location very near to the Temash River.

The Environmental Compliance Plan documented four drill sites, rather than five proposed in the EIA.

“We have the location for the first drill site known as Well A-1; [which] was moved from outside the boundary of the national park and moved approximately 300 meters [328 yards] from the Temash River…. The second drill site known as Salt Creek is on the road to Crique Sarco; then we have the remaining two in the vicinity of Graham Creek Village – those drill sites are called Black Creek and Graham Creek,” she noted.

Requeña said that all the points that were first considered with the EIA have changed. Well A-1, which she said had been moved into the park, 300 meters from Temash, was initially 1,160 meters from the river and outside the park. Another drill site (B-1) has been moved across the road in the quarry area, while the ones in Graham Creek have moved even closer to the community.

“Another infraction that was noticed within the national park was the construction of an access road with the national park from the Sunday Wood junction all the way to site A-1, as indicated in the ECP. The entire length of the road is 4.8 miles, starting from Sunday Wood junction, leading up to a 2-acre drill pad within the national park,” she detailed.

Edilberto Romero, chairman of APAMO, said “The National Parks Systems Act says that in national parks you should not allow extractive activities – it’s only research and education that should be carried out there; and that’s the reason why we’ve joined SATIIM in taking this case to the court; to make sure that this is deleted and to make sure that the Government and US Capital adheres to it, because it is not only US Capital, it is the Government of Belize. If the Government does not give permission to do drilling, to do exploration in the national park, in your communities, US Capital wouldn’t be here. But they are here because the Government has given them permission and so it’s the Government and US Capital that has to be taken to court.”

He also said that the natural water supply is being put at risk, so the communities should have a say in where drilling should occur.

“Oil drilling, oil development, are extractive activities that require opening of roads, clearing of forests and it brings a lot more things. Now if you’re going to sacrifice your protected areas, you’re going to sacrifice your water, if you’re going to sacrifice your way of living, then you should have a say!” Romero added.

Romero said that it is “very wrong” that the Government has denied the Maya use of the park resources, yet it later turned around and gave permits to the developers of US Capital to do the same things that they don’t want the communities to do.

According to Ch’oc, the Sarstoon Temash National Park was established in 1994 without the consent of the Maya people. He said that those lands were never Government-owned lands. He commented that their constitutional rights to property, to life, and to not be discriminated against seems to have no meaning to the Government.

“We have concluded that the Government as duty-bearers has abandoned its obligation to protect and safeguard our constitutional rights and instead has chosen to protect the interest of US Capital Energy,” said Ch’oc.

“We refuse to become victims of corporate greed and political corruption. We reject the notion of national interest appropriating community interest. This idea is no longer viable. We have seen that ordinary people are not the ones that benefit when national interest is invoked. We refuse to have the Government continue to violate and undermine our hard-earned rights to our land and resources. We refuse to have the Government compromise our future and the future of our children,” he added.

According to Ch’oc, the court action is borne out of necessity, in line with their obligations as Belizeans to preserve the rule of law and most importantly their inalienable rights.