LIMA -- Many of Peru's grittiest slums can only dream of access to water. But thanks to a German NGO, simple technology, and hard work, some humble homes are the first to use plastic netting to harvest water from the fog cloaking the night sky.

In sprawling settlements like Bellavista del Paraiso -- a dusty clutch of streets on Lima's south end named "Beautiful View of Paradise" with some eye-popping optimism -- there is no running water.

There is no well.

Buying water, trucked in by resellers, costs nine times what it does in richer urban areas, precisely in places where no one can afford it.

And Bellavista's more than 200 residents are used to making do without water; they are among the stunning 1.3 million of Lima's eight million people who have no access to water.

"Really, it just seemed like it would be impossible to catch fog with plastic netting, and that it would turn into drops of water," said Noe Neira Tocto, the mayor of the slum which lies just inland from the Pacific.

"We are the very first to have fog-catchers in Lima's poor neighborhoods," he said, proudly showing off a system that works with a net that looks a lot like volleyball netting.

"We have five panels that are eight meters by four meters (26 by 13 feet)," perched on the mountaintop above, he explained. "With them we are able to collect up to 60 liters (16 gallons) per night in wintertime."

Each single panel costs the equivalent of $800, added the 37-year-old Neira.

When the netting traps the fog, water droplets run down it into a small aluminum gutter on the panel's edge. Water keeps collecting until it runs -- aided by gravity and drain canals -- down to cement storage tanks that lie halfway down the local hill.

The benefits are huge and multifaceted.

Part of the water is channeled to a vegetable garden where vegetables and spices are grown.

Most, though, is kept in ground-level storage tanks for residents to use at home for cooking, cleaning, and bathing.

Local Olga Arce is in charge of popping water-purifying pills into the tanks mainly to keep out mosquitos because they can spread dengue fever.

The idea stems back to German biologists Anne Lummerich and Kai Tiedemann, with the German NGO Alimon, recalled Neira. When the two arrived in Bellavista in 2006, they were surprised how dense the fog was and encouraged locals to see if they might be able to tap the fog to improve their lives.

They helped with the system's construction and installation and stayed a few months teaching locals how to run it before heading home.

They called it a Green Desert experiment, and even after one day running, it looked like a success. Some were disappointed at having to use purifying tablets, though.

And it is not all simple going: locals have to trudge up the mountain at least twice a week to check on the state of the nets.

It is a steep and slippery path. At 5:00 a.m., time for one recent outing, visibility was near zero at the hilltop, 600 meters (almost 2,000 feet) above sea-level.

But it's worth the work, said Olga Cajahuaman. She said she grows radishes, greens, and spices "with the fog water." The water and food supplies are heaven sent for families earning under $200 a month.

French hydrologist Alain Gioda said the fog-catching actually recalls an ancient Inca technique in which plants and trees -- not nets -- were used to gather water here, collected at the base of the tree or plant.

"But what was possible with those techniques and an (Inca) empire of eight million is not possible on a current scale of a country of 28 million people," he added.

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In “The Limits of Science Diplomacy,” SciDev.net Director David Dickson argues that scientific collaboration can achieve only very limited diplomatic victories. A conference hosted by the Royal Society in London earlier this month, entitled “New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy” (agenda), seems to have arrived at a similar conclusion.

But this view of science diplomacy is overly pessimistic. It sets unrealistically high expectations such dialogue could never hope to achieve. Science diplomacy is not meant to solve all aspects of conflicts or distrustful relationships, so setting such a high bar is a bit of a straw man. Science, as well as dialogue on the management of shared natural resources, remains an under-utilized and under-studied tool for trust-building, so it is premature to declare it a failure before we have sufficient evidence for evaluation.

Veterans of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and other Cold War-era scientific dialogues might suggest we are neglecting some rich experiences from this era. It bears remembering that Pugwash was awarded the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize (and current U.S. Science Adviser John Holdren delivered the acceptance speech as then executive director of Pugwash).

A distinct but related arena for further policy attempts and research inquiries is environmental peacebuilding, where mutual interdependence around natural resources provides pathways for dialogue in the midst of conflict. The establishment of the Cordillera del Condor Transboundary Protected Area between Ecuador and Peru was a result of integrating joint environmental management structures in the 1998 peace agreement that ended a long-festering border conflict. Negotiation over shared resources, such as water, can be a diplomatic lifeline for otherwise-hostile countries, such as Israel and Jordan, which held secret “picnic table” talks to manage the Jordan River while they were officially at war. And the U.S. military has successfully uses environmental cooperation to engage both friends and adversaries.

Collaboration on scientific and environmental issues won’t solve all our problems. And defining and identifying success remains a fundamental challenge when success is the absence of something (conflict). But let’s not retreat to the common church-and-state division where scientists fear being “contaminated” by participating in policy-relevant dialogues. And let’s certainly not declare science diplomacy a failure—and stop trying to make it a success—based on unrealistic expectations for the benefits such efforts might produce.

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Peru's government warned this week that when the rainy season arrives, tailing ponds housing tons of mining waste will likely be destabilized and pour contaminated waste into a nearby river that's a main source of drinking water for the country's capital.

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In a bid to preserve some of Peru's biologically diverse rainforests, the United States agreed this week to a $25 million debt-for-nature swap with the country, Peru's second since 2002. Over the next seven years, in exchange for erasing millions of their debt, Peru will fund local non-governmental organizations dedicated to protecting tropical rain forests of the southwestern Amazon Basin and dry forests of the central Andes. "This agreement will build on the success of previous U.S. government debt swaps with Peru and will further the cause of environmental conservation in a country with one of the highest levels of biodiversity on the planet," said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Other debt-for-nature agreements have already been brokered with Bangladesh, Belize, Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, and the Philippines. This week's swap makes Peru the largest beneficiary of such deals with the U.S., with more than $35 million dedicated to environmental conservation in the country.

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Peru is in deep shit. No, seriously: thanks to an exceptionally dry climate, islands off the Peruvian coast are awash in preserved bird guano, which the country has long exported as non-chemical fertilizer. But while 60 million seabirds were pooping on Peru in the 19th century, the birds now number 4 million; with synthetic-fertilizer costs and interest in organic food rising, the Peruvian government is concerned that guano supply will be depleted by high demand. Guano collection has been restricted to two islands per year, lizards have been introduced to eat seabird-bothering ticks, and armed guards have been posted to ward off threats to birds. But guano preservationists despair of keeping commercial fisherfolk from depleting the anchoveta, a fish that's both the seabirds' favorite food and in high demand for factory-farm-bound fishmeal. Without fishing restrictions, biologists estimate that the anchoveta, the seabirds, and the guano could be gone by 2030.

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There's no better way to start off a Monday than with depressing news from the Peruvian Amazon, which is under threat from both fossil-fuel development and illegal logging. Despite protests from environmental and human rights groups, Peru's government plans to auction off dozens of parcels of remote rainforest for oil and gas companies to explore. And in even more somber news, Peruvian community leader Julio García Agapito was recently shot to death after trying to report illegal logging in the Amazon, a murder sadly reminiscent of the past deaths of anti-logging activists Chico Mendes and Dorothy Stang.

sources:

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Big Mineral has made big investments in Peru, where the government has leased some 45,000 square miles of Andean highlands for mining. But Peruvians are getting fed up. When residents of a town called Rio Blanco took an unofficial vote on Monterrico Metals' plans for a $1.4 billion copper mine in their backyard, 95 percent voted against it, arguing that mining brings them polluted rivers instead of jobs and community development. Environmental regulation of the industry is deservedly suspect in the country, as it comes not from an environmental agency, but from Peru's mining ministry. Monterrico is awaiting results of an environmental-impact study; the Peruvian government said the results of Rio Blanco's vote were unrepresentative and denounced its organizers as "communists."

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Indigenous tribe sues oil company over pollution in Peru

A group of indigenous tribe members from Peru has filed suit against Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum in a U.S. court, claiming that the company's operations in the Amazon from 1975 to 1999 contaminated their food and water supplies, hurt their health, and led to the death of a child. The company -- known as Oxy to friends and foes alike -- "engaged in irresponsible, reckless, immoral, and illegal practices in and around the ancestral and current territory of the Achuar indigenous people," reads the complaint. Oxy handed its operations in the area to Argentina-based Pluspetrol in 2000, and says Pluspetrol assumed all obligations; an Oxy spokesperson said the suit contains "inflammatory statements, unfounded allegations, and unsupported conclusions." But residents and human-rights groups disagree. "My people are sick and dying because of Oxy," says one tribe member. "The water in our streams is not fit to drink and we can no longer eat the fish in our rivers or the animals in our forests."

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Julio Cusurichi Palacios.

Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize.

The Peruvian Amazon is one of the most remote places in the world. In its wildest corners, in the Madre de Dios region along the Brazilian border, some indigenous communities continue to live far from modern society. But their solitude is eroding: Loggers are pushing deeper into the forest, searching for increasingly rare stands of big-leaf mahogany, and oil development is on the rise.

Julio Cusurichi Palacios, an indigenous leader in the region, has allied himself with these "uncontacted" groups. For many years, he fought for the establishment of a forest reserve in the Madre de Dios -- but when he succeeded, he found that his battle had just begun. He's now training local people to guard the boundaries of the reserve, where they monitor and document the illegal logging that still occurs.

Cusurichi and his allies have also turned their attention to the United States, the main market for Peruvian mahogany. They've sued three U.S. timber importers and several government agencies, charging that the timber imports violate the Endangered Species Act and international law.

Cusurichi, 36, was awarded one of six 2007 Goldman Environmental Prizes at a ceremony in San Francisco on April 23. He spoke to Grist through a translator.

What are the most serious threats to the Peruvian Amazon?

The illegal logging and also the oil concessions, which overlap with the indigenous territories. The loggers come in, without any permission, and work in the territories of our indigenous brothers, who aren't in contact with external society. This has caused confrontations and even deaths. When there are confrontations with these isolated indigenous groups, we never know how many of the indigenous peoples have been killed -- we only hear about the loggers, because they're the ones that come back.

With fellow indigenous leaders in the field.

Photo: Tom Dusenbery

These indigenous peoples are also very vulnerable to any type of disease, so when thousands of loggers come into their territory, they can bring diseases that these tribes have never seen before.

The loggers are going in and looking for mahogany, and they cut down lots of other trees to get to the mahogany. They make roads, and the animals in there flee. So these illegal loggers are hurting not just the indigenous peoples but the animals in the jungle as well. The oil activity in our area also doesn't comply with the laws. Our government gives oil concessions right on top of our territories. The companies are contaminating the environment, contaminating our rivers with oil spills, and this causes serious [health] problems for our indigenous people. People come in and give them some medicines, but that's not enough -- the water is contaminated, the jungle is contaminated, there are no fish left, the helicopters fly overhead, and the oil pipelines pass through our land.

What was the community like where you grew up? Was it extremely isolated?

No, no, my community has been in contact with the outside world for a long time, because we were exploited by the rubber tappers. My grandparents were moved from the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were never able to return to the area where they came from, so my parents were born in this area, in the Amazonian province of Madre de Dios.

When and why did you decide to speak out on behalf of indigenous communities?

When I was very young, 10 or 11 years old, I began to understand how we were marginalized, how the way we were treated was not normal. Even as a youth I was working and organizing and making proposals with my people. Later I became a leader of my community, El Pilar, and then I became part of a regional organization, FENAMAD [Federation of Natives of the Madre de Dios River and its Tributaries]. There I got to know a different reality. I met different indigenous people in the area, and I realized that we were all confronting the same problems. Then I became really dedicated to this struggle to defend our rights. It became clear that we needed to find a way to get our problems resolved, to work with our government. But the truth is that they never seem to want to resolve our problems. They seem to want us to just disappear.

How has this reserve changed life for those who live within it?

Using today's technology to protect ancient forests.

Photo: Tom Dusenbery

In the year 2002, after a long struggle, the reserve was created. In some ways we thought this was going to be a resolution, but the reserve was just created on paper. In reality thousands of loggers continued to go into the reserve. So we had to continue the struggle, to try and help the communities near the reserve, so they can make sure that none of the loggers are allowed into this territory. We're constructing guard posts along all the entrances to the reserve, and working with the communities so that they can be vigilant.

Many of the leaders of these communities have been threatened. The loggers have written with graffiti on their homes, saying that they're going to cut their necks, that they're going to burn their villages to the ground. So there are threats, serious threats, to these communities.

What gives you and the people you work with the courage to continue?

These are our communities. We stand with our indigenous brothers and sisters, and we have to continue the struggle. We now know there are friends in other countries who can help us with our struggle -- people who care about human rights, and protecting the jungle so that it can provide for us -- and it helps us to have the solidarity of these other groups in other places.

What challenges remain?

We need to find a way to do sustainable activities in the forest. If we don't actually do sustainable activities we're going to have serious problems. The oil is going to run out, the trees will be gone, the gold will be gone. We could harvest Brazil nuts, we could have well-managed, sustainable logging, or we could have fish farming. We need an overall plan of management for the entire river basin, so that we can promote this kind of sustainable development and help future generations of our society.

What does this prize mean to you?

For me, it is a grand significance. I certainly didn't expect it, but it's great that there is some recognition of our work. It helps me understand and recognize that I've been doing the right thing. It means that I'm not going to be intimidated by economic interests or threats, and that I will be able to continue with my head held high until the last day of my life.

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A logger drives his freshly cut mahogany logs upriver toward Ivochote, a scratchy, low-slung jungle town in Peru's eastern Amazon. Hoping to convert his illegal revenues into some weekend lovin', he takes maca, a traditional Peruvian libido enhancer. He heads to a nearby brothel, but its employees are too busy protesting pollution caused by a foreign mining company to entertain him. Frustrated and ready for action of any kind, he gives up and joins an angry crowd marching to Lima to oppose the 2006 U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, signed in April.

Far-fetched, maybe -- but mahogany, maca, mining, and frustrated movements are all part of this controversial agreement, which lawmakers in Washington and Lima are preparing to ratify in coming weeks.

Bush with trade buddies in late 2005:
Presidents Alejandro Toledo of Peru and
Vincente Fox of Mexico, and former
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Photo: Whitehouse.gov/Eric Draper.

What are the environmental impacts of the Peruvian free-trade agreement? Besides ramping up international trade and investment -- which can directly boost environmental damage -- critics say the deal peels away social and environmental safeguards, expands corporate power, and endangers biodiversity.

It's the same chorus of criticism that surrounded NAFTA and CAFTA. Washington's plan for taking those models into South America was the proposed (and politically stagnant) Free Trade Area of the Americas, which attracted public ire in 2001 and has yet to be resuscitated. Rather than deal with a unified front of nations, U.S. trade negotiators have recently pushed to ink separate agreements with Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.

Activists are concerned about all of the deals, but in Peru the stakes are enormous. When it comes to trade worries, says Margrete Strand, a Sierra Club official in Washington, D.C., "environmentalists are unified that Peru is one of the most important countries."

Like Ecuador -- a poor country dependent on its exploitable natural resources -- Peru has become a friend to extractive industries over the years. High oil and ore prices mean governments are willing to put their countries on the selling block, and their land and people suffer for it. Critics say U.S. trade policy should help ensure that resource extraction makes as little ecological footprint as possible. The new agreement, they say, does not require parties to respect international environmental accords.

Case in point: Swietenia macrophylla, or big-leaf mahogany. Though it's covered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species -- a voluntary species-protection treaty between 169 governments, including the U.S. and Peru -- activists say Peruvian officials look the other way, granting logging permits without a baseline understanding of the mahogany population and failing to enforce regulations. The secretariat of CITES has criticized Peru for failing to live up to its promises. Meanwhile, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Defenders of Wildlife estimate that most of Peru's big-leaf mahogany exports are logged illegally, and that 80 percent of that tainted harvest winds up in the United States.

A copper mine in Tintaya, Peru.

Photo: Oxfam America.

The failure of the Peruvian free-trade agreement to force its parties to adhere to CITES or other multinational environmental accords irks greens and some lawmakers, including Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas). He has taken trade representatives to task in congressional hearings, a fact cheered by mainstream greens who say good trade law should, at the least, require adherence to environmental standards. Even better, they say, it should help build technical expertise in poor nations, so something like a mahogany count would be feasible.

A second concern is intellectual-property rights, the legal privilege granted over the products of human brain power. The new agreement is less lenient in this area -- but to the benefit of the U.S., critics say. That's where our imaginary logger's (very real) aphrodisiac enters the picture. The plant species known as maca, Lepidum meyenii, is a member of the radish family, and a poster child for biopiracy. It grows in the harsh and lonely altitudes of the Andes and is said to boost sex drive -- a fact our logger might have learned from his native Quechua ancestors. In 2001, this Andean treasure became a U.S. patent belonging to PureWorld Botanicals, Inc., a company said to have "unlocked maca's chemical secrets."

The Peruvian Coalition Against Biopiracy has called for the World Intellectual Property Organization to look into the matter, claiming the company violated international norms covering sustainable use of biodiversity. Marcos A. Orellana of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for International Environmental Law says the Convention on Biological Diversity -- an international treaty adopted in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit -- ensures "the rights of indigenous communities to their traditional knowledge in areas such as medicines and seeds." It also mandates that they share the economic payoffs, which could steer profits from products like maca back into biodiversity programs.

The third major concern might be the most troubling. Were our logger's imaginary brothel town anything like Cajamarca, home to Latin America's largest gold mine, its residents would be smart to fear the aftershocks of the new trade agreement. That's because of a provision embedded within its pages -- an under-the-radar tool of U.S. trade negotiators that critics say lets foreign investors attack legitimate public-health and environmental protections.

It's known as the investor-state provision. And for a glimpse of what could happen if the agreement goes through, we need to rewind.

Life without lemons? A
protest poster warns of
mining's effects on local
farmers.

Photo: Earthworks.

For years, shoddy enforcement of Peru's already-lax environmental laws, combined with accidents, has meant big messes -- and increasing outrage on the part of residents. In 2004, Cajamarca's citizens protested plans by U.S.-based Newmont Mining to open another mine on Cerro Quilish, a nearby mountain. They said it would pollute a major watershed that feeds Cajamarca and a nearby farming valley, and took to the streets, fighting mad. Eventually Newmont, perhaps sensing that public anger would not dissipate, backed down.

Had the trade agreement been in place, says Miguel Palacin of CONACAMI -- a network of Peruvian communities that lobbies for stronger mining laws -- it would have put the kibosh on that kind of civil action. Investor-state provisions help protect corporations by letting them sue countries -- in secret, international arbitration -- for losses in anticipated revenues. In theory, Newmont could have sued the Peruvian government for untold amounts of cash for having had to abandon its plans.

In a poor country like Peru, says Palacin, such fines -- or even the threat of them -- could scare the government away from passing strong public-health or environmental laws that could jeopardize corporate profits. "Unbeknownst to many people, buried inside these kinds of trade agreements is a new and dramatic legal restriction on governments' ability to function," agrees John Echeverria, director of Georgetown University's Environmental Law and Policy Institute. (Neither the U.S. Trade Representative nor representatives of the Peruvian government responded to interview requests.)

Like snowballs rolling downhill, the investor-state and intellectual-property rights provisions have swelled as they moved south from NAFTA, Echeverria and other trade-law experts say. Expanded thresholds in one deal become new baselines for negotiating future deals. Mainstream greens in Washington point out, for instance, that Peru's investor-state provision is more corporate-friendly than its predecessors. A March letter [PDF] to Congress from groups including Friends of the Earth, Earthjustice, and the Sierra Club said the agreement provides foreign investors even greater rights to challenge environmental laws than does highly controversial CAFTA, approved last year.

"CAFTA gave investors the right to file suit against alleged breaches of natural resources contracts," the letter reads. "The U.S.-Peru FTA expands these rights by broadly defining natural resources contracts to include every aspect of the extractive, productive, and marketing processes. These new rights would enable multinational corporations to attack legitimate attempts by communities to protect their health and environment even if their activities are only tangentially related to natural resource extraction."

Critics also say the agreement makes it harder to get companies to avoid or account for mistakes, and Palacin says the deal will solidify a status quo that prefers corporate to community interests. Instead, he says, the deal should hold companies from the developed world to the more advanced environmental standards of their home countries.

With half of Peru's people living below the poverty line, and nearly 20 percent in extreme poverty, few Peruvians have the time to worry about such issues. Even if they do, it's hard to spot the facts in the current cloud of confusion. "I don't know it," a weathered Machiguenga Indian near the jungle village of Camisea said recently, when asked about the deal. "They talk about it, but nobody tells me what it is." His sentiment was echoed by others in the community.

But things may be changing. From Ecuador to Peru to Bolivia, indigenous groups that have historically been discriminated against are becoming more sophisticated and organized. They are rising up against traditional oligarchies and corporate thievery. And in Peru, the new trade agreement is emerging as a political condensation point, one that lassos disparate groups under the same cause. In fact, CONACAMI is organizing a march on the capital later this month to ask that the deal be put to a referendum.

Their proposal is backed by Ollanta Humala, a retired military colonel jockeying to become Peru's next president in runoff elections slated for early June. Like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who opposes trade links with the U.S. (except for his country's oil sales), Humala is against the trade deal. Meanwhile, his center-left opponent, former Peruvian President Alan Garcia, is warmer to it, but reportedly favors renegotiation. At the grassroots level, the anti-trade agreement front -- which has united labor unions, agriculture groups, students, small businesses, and transportation unions -- feels Humala is the candidate most on their side, says Palacin. But he stresses that the former military colonel is a political unknown whose party lacks history and organization.

And what if the Peruvian Congress doesn't listen to the people it represents? Will Peruvians shut down highways or pipelines like poor protestors have recently in neighboring Ecuador, where that Congress is considering a similar trade agreement with Washington? "Peruvians aren't like Ecuadorians," says a 56-year-old cab driver in Lima. "We don't make as many problems when we don't like something. But at some point the people will be tired enough to do something. Maybe this is the point."

If there is an uprising, Palacin admits there may be a government crackdown just as in Ecuador, where officials ordered troops to knock back protestors. "There is a risk for us," he says. "But we accept it. We don't have any other roads to take."

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Roger Mustalish.

With what environmental organization are you affiliated?

I'm president of the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research Foundation, a U.S. nonprofit with offices in West Chester, Penn., and in Iquitos and Puerto Maldonado, Peru.

What does your organization do?

ACEER's mission is to promote environmental conservation by being a catalyst for awareness, understanding, action, and transformation. We achieve this by creating learning centers in globally significant ecosystems -- such as the Amazon rainforest and the Andean cloud forest -- from which we conduct environmental education programs, support basic and applied research, and protect unique habitats.

What are you working on at the moment? Any major projects?

An existing canopy walkway.

Photo: ACEER.

Later this summer, in partnership with the Amazon Conservation Association, we will begin construction of the world's first canopy walkway in a cloud forest. It will be an engineering marvel with a unique classroom/laboratory; when completed, faculty, students, and visitors will be able to literally walk among the treetops of the cloud forest. And then -- if they are truly adventurous -- they can travel downriver to our Los Amigos and Tambopata field stations, crossing seven ecological zones in the process. It will be like visiting all of the ecosystems from the North Pole to the equator!

How do you get to work?

I drive a pickup truck on my 17-minute commute to ACEER's office on the campus of West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

What long and winding road led you to your current position?

My formal training has been in environmental science and public health. In 1993, while dean of health sciences at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, I traveled to the Peruvian Amazon and ACEER on a World Wildlife Fund workshop. I was so blown away by that experience that I resigned my dean's position to go back into the faculty and promote rainforest conservation. Shortly thereafter, I met with someone at ACEER to see how I could help. It turns out the ACEER board of directors was meeting and I was invited to speak with them. I came away with $145,000 for a research project, and within one year of that meeting was named president of ACEER.

Trekking along a rainforest trail.

Photo: ACEER.

A pivotal moment for ACEER came in 1999 when, during an expedition with the JASON Foundation for Education, I literally ran into the chief financial officer of the National Geographic Society on a rainforest trail. That moment has led to a long-term investment in ACEER by NGS. Their support -- nearly $1 million to date -- has catapulted ACEER into the dynamic organization we now are. It has been quite a ride!

Where were you born? Where do you live now?

I was born in Newark, N.J., but now live on a small farm in rural Chester County, Penn., west of Philadelphia.

What environmental offense has infuriated you the most?

I wouldn't use the word "infuriated," but rather a source for me of deep compassion is our systematic destruction of global habitat that is triggering a mass extinction of species, and even human cultures, on this planet. For so many, the driving force is staggering poverty; for others, simple greed. But in either case, it will come to haunt us and succeeding generations, unless we consider a different path.

Who is your environmental hero?

I have two: sort of a "macro-scale" hero and a "micro-scale" hero. My global hero is the Vietnamese poet and monk Thich Nhat Hahn. In his elegant little book, Peace Is Every Step, he writes so clearly and poetically about "interbeing" (all things are interrelated and no thing would exist without other things). He takes the common expression used in environmental work that we need environmental advocacy because "we are all in this thing together" and expands it to a truer, more profound expression, "We are all this together." Thus, the violence we do to the planet we actually are doing to ourselves, since there is no way to separate us from anything else.

My local hero is Aura Murrieta, ACEER's director of Peru programs. Aura was born and raised in Amazonia. She beat the odds by finishing school (many Amazonian girls fail to go beyond fourth grade) and works tirelessly, carefully, mindfully, passionately in village after village, school after school, making life better for one child at a time, one teacher at a time, one village at a time. It is in-the-trenches work, but it is also the work of heroes.

What's your environmental vice?

My truck -- useful on the farm, but so poor in gas mileage.

How do you spend your free time? Read any good books lately?

In addition to my ACEER "job" which is essentially full time but strictly voluntary, my "day job" is chairperson of the Department of Health at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where I also teach courses in integrative health. So free time is at a premium! I enjoy work around the farm, play a bit of piano and guitar, and in general try to be as mindful and grateful as I can be in all aspects of my life.

The last book I read was Jon Kabat-Zinn's, Coming to Our Senses. He continues to offer effective advice and strategies for "waking up."

What's your favorite meal?

I love Indian curries, both to prepare and eat. As a vegetarian, the style offers so much variety.

Which stereotype about environmentalists most fits you?

Given my passion for the rainforest, cloud forest, and the woodlands on my own farm, I guess I'm a "tree hugger."

If you could institute by fiat one environmental reform, what would it be?

That all land-use decisions must respect the intrinsic carrying capacity of that particular habitat or ecosystem. It is not too much to expect that we all live within our "ecological means" so that we and all other species have the optimal opportunity to survive.

Who was your favorite musical artist when you were 18? How about now?

I grew up with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Moody Blues, and the various configurations of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Today, I have no particular favorite artist, but rather listen to a broad collection of world music.

What's your favorite TV show? Movie?

For TV, that's easy -- the best news show on television: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. My favorite movie is Smoke Signals.

Which actor would play you in the story of your life?

People tell me I have a resemblance to Art Garfunkel, but given all of my Amazon adventures -- and there have been a bunch -- in my mind's eye, I have to go with Harrison Ford.

If you could have every InterActivist reader do one thing, what would it be?

Of course, I'd like every InterActivist to consider joining an ACEER trip or making a donation in support of our work.

But in a broader vein, I would invite each reader to pause, if even briefly, to reflect on how they impact their world -- not just as consumers, but as individuals, parents, friends, partners, voters, workers, etc. And to make skillful decisions in all that they do so as to foster understanding, caring, and helpful action.

Roger Mustalish, head of ACEER.

The Artful Roger

Can you describe an animal from the Amazon ecosystem and another animal from the Andes ecosystem whose status illustrates a particular environmental threat to those regions?    -- Mark Stephen Caponigro, New York, N.Y.

Globally, including in the tropics, we are losing amphibians at an alarming rate; many species are headed to extinction. Other than habitat loss, a key factor may be a fungus that is killing frogs. Some research is suggesting that global warming may be a factor at work here by enhancing the proliferation of the fungus. In the Andes, the spectacled bear is in serious trouble due to rapid habitat loss as forests are cleared for agriculture.

How important is recycling to rainforest survival?    -- Nancy Spears, Bossier City, La.

There are so many good examples here ... I have seen magnificent trees being cut in the Amazon to be made into disposable chopsticks for fast-food restaurants in Asia. Did you know that when a large 150-foot-high tree like the kaypok is cut, it will often result in up to 1,000 other, smaller trees being felled as it falls? Yet these other 1,000 trees have no commercial value and are left to rot. Some studies have shown that even decades later, areas subjected to heavy timbering -- while appearing to have regrown -- are still devoid of the original biodiversity that characterized the forest prior to cutting. Imagine how important recycling becomes if we can reduce the number of wild species we cut. Other strategies include substituting abundant species of trees for those more rare (for example, seeking substitutes for mahogany) and promoting plantations on already disturbed lands rather than continuing to rely on wild species in intact ecosystems.

What's the most amazing thing you've seen in the Amazon?    -- Grist editors

Wow ... impossible to really answer. I've been there over 50 times and still haven't seen all the shades of green there! One of the most humbling, inspirational experiences I and others have had is atop a canopy walkway system. The Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research pioneered the first in the Western Hemisphere in the rainforest of northern Peru. At one tree platform over 110 feet above the forest floor, you can look to the horizon in all directions and see nothing but pristine forest. It blows you away. The canopy is where the vast majority of life in the rainforest is found. I remember taking a group of Peruvian school teachers up there. They were born and raised in the forest, yet broke into tears at the sight. They said they would never think about or view the rainforest the way they used to. They saw its majesty and its fragility and were literally transformed by that experience. They are not alone; it happens to so many.

Will the new walkway be sustainably built? Even though it's for educational purposes, does adding more construction to an area that's been so heavily logged and used concern you?    -- Grist editors

Our new canopy walkway in the cloud forest will not require the cutting of any trees. The system will consist of aluminum towers connected by suspended bridges. The system is to be located on one of the largest tracts of protected cloud forests in the region, and is designed to permit study -- and, frankly, a sense of awe -- without harming the forest. The system's footprint will be very small, but we hope the impact is as large as the cloud forest itself.

Has your organization promoted any research into tropical silviculture in the Amazon? Also, has the organization begun to talk with landowners regarding switching to forestry, rather than land-use conversion?    -- Artem Treyger, Syracuse, N.Y.

The ACEER does not have a resident staff of researchers. Rather, we host researchers from around the world and provide dedicated lab/field space for them. At times, we also provide funds for applied research. We created the first fully integrated system of natural resources data maps using a Geographical Information System, and provided training to Peruvian universities and research institutes to build their technical capabilities that they in turn apply to their work. We created a mathematical computer model to predict where certain medicinal plants would grow best, and this has been used to foster government-funded pilot projects. We showed them, for example, where a high-vitamin-C fruit, camu-camu, would grow best. The result was a pilot import/export project that now sees sustainable harvests of wild camu-camu being exported to the U.S. as an ingredient in sports drinks.

We are currently supporting species inventory work near Iquitos in the north and at our Puerto Maldonado site in the south. Researchers at ACEER have studied things like the impact of clear-cut corridors on species migration, which directly relates to and assesses impacts from roads or logging, and we have had ongoing educational programs in villages and schools relating to non-extractive uses of the forest. At our new Los Amigos center, the researchers of the Amazon Conservation Association have an excellent Brazil-nut project that shows how to value the forest and use it standing, as opposed to destructive short-term capital gain from heavy logging and clear-cutting. Lastly, ACEER has worked with the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute in their efforts to offer sustainable alternatives to land-use conversion. In this regard, Peru is way ahead of some other Amazon countries.

From an environmental perspective, what do you think of the hot new acai-fruit trend in the U.S.? The fruit has wonderful health attributes, but is the harvesting sustainable?    -- Mic LeBel, Newcastle, Maine

I think it is always valuable to show how the rainforest is more valuable standing and used sustainably rather than clear-cut for short-term gain but long-term erosion and loss of productivity and biodiversity. ACEER's work with modeling the habitats of medicinal plants speaks to your question. When projects like acai and others, like the camu-camu fruit, first begin, there is often not a problem with relying on wild stocks of the plants. But as the practice continues, I have seen problems with keeping it sustainable when relying on wild crafting. This is true, for example, with the Irapy palm used for roof thatching. In the north, people now travel in some cases days to find wild stands, whereas in the past, it was common everywhere. That's why you sometimes see efforts at plantation growing. The key example here is with hearts of palm, a wonderful, flavorful salad. But to secure a serving means cutting the whole tree down. This is not sustainable and has led to a certification program verifying that the hearts of palm are collected from plantation trees. Make no mistake about it -- the Amazon is a treasure trove of medicinal plants and represents a significant alternative to logging, but even here we need to understand and work with the carrying capacity of the ecosystem.

Why not get together an organization to ask rich countries to buy environmentally important land and have it set aside forever through an internationally agreed settlement with the nation that the land is in?    -- Keith Foster, Jacksonville, Fla.

Actually this is being done, though more could be done. The Nature Conservancy is a good example of an organization that brokers such deals. To Peru's credit, there are vast tracts of protected land in their part of the Amazon -- hundreds of millions of acres. But it is sometimes the staggering poverty in some South American and African countries that forces governments to open large areas for development.

We need look no further than the U.S. to see the issues at play. Our long-term energy demands cannot possibly be satisfied by the resources in the Alaskan wilderness currently under threat of oil exploration and drilling, yet it seems like a quick fix and is being pushed by some in the government rather than tackling the excessive energy use of the country and promoting more conservation and innovative technology. Also here, with only about one to two percent of our old-growth forests still standing, it is a struggle to come up with a way to place them off limits to timbering. If we struggle with these issues, imagine a poor country with huge needs for resources and improved quality of life. I work in some villages where the annual per capita income is $50.

Ultimately, we need a combination of conservation areas coupled with education and economic opportunities for the people living there. Once people have their basic needs met and fully understand their stake in a sustainable world, things will begin to change for the better.

What are the challenges of being a partly U.S.-based organization, both as you work with the government in Peru and as you speak with locals? What are the benefits?    -- Grist editors

As an international organization, we can bring funds, donors, technology, and collective wisdom from around the world to partner with locals, though never forgetting their key role in participatory decision-making. This is an advantage. However, centuries of exploitation by foreigners makes some local people understandably leery of what the underlying motives really are. After many, many years of abuse and neglect, one village could not believe that we wanted to help them simply because we cared and it was the right thing to do. Even now, we see problems with some enterprises that come into an area supposedly to help, yet a small minority benefits while the majority is unchanged. This sows seeds of suspicion. Fortunately, ACEER enjoys a good reputation thanks to our dedicated Peruvian staff and a commitment to making the people we work with full partners.

Does your organization seek mostly to provide education for local residents or tourists?    -- Grist editors

We began by offering workshops for North Americans so they would be inspired to help with conservation through donations and/or action. We then used the revenue generated to begin helping rural Amazonian schoolchildren with materials, books, pencils, etc. It soon became apparent that teachers were the other half of the equation in Amazonia, so we developed the first culturally sensitive, Amazon-based environmental education curriculum. Our initiatives have now grown to include teaching Latin American university students and U.S. children and teachers. Since we are all stakeholders in rainforest conservation, our efforts are far-reaching. To date, more than 1 million lives worldwide have been touched by ACEER programming.

How do you work with the native people of the Amazon region?    -- Grist editors

We always remember that it is their village, their lives, and that they are the local stakeholders. We do not use a monolithic approach to working, but rather employ a village-centered strategy. Our Peruvian staff is skilled at building trust, explaining who we are and what we do, and determining if and how we can be of assistance. We always make sure projects are respectful of the decision-making structure of the village and that the project is grassroots, rather than top-down. Too often, villages are told what is best for them by a central authority and aren't asked what they want/need. We've had great success by empowering local peoples to articulate their needs and seeing how we can partner with them to make it a reality. Education and the support of village community projects -- i.e., medicinal-plant gardens, libraries, and small-scale farm projects -- are what we typically focus on. In northern Peru, we are working with a consortium of villages in the Itaya watershed to help the villages create a conservation reserve.

As a vegetarian, I am forever searching for a positive method by which others might be encouraged to accept a meat-free diet for its beneficial effect on the environment. Are you able to promote vegetarianism in your work, and if so, how?    -- Marylou Noble, Portland, Ore.

We certainly discuss how poor a resource choice it is to convert the nutrient-poor rainforest into agriculture, and there is ample evidence of the negative impact of vast cattle operations in former rainforest habitats. We don't serve rainforest beef at our facilities, and we provide opportunities for people to visit both vegetable and meat markets to see how their food is prepared and where it comes from. But we do not specifically promote vegetarianism as a conservation strategy. In our health-related workshops conducted with West Chester University, we have more opportunities to discuss the environmental pros of a vegetarian diet.

Ultimately, though, I personally simply model vegetarianism in my own life and that prompts questions as to why. This gives me opportunities to explain how I came to my own choice; it sometimes prompts others to give it a try.

You mention Thich Nhat Hanh, who tries to remind us that "we are all in this thing together." However, isn't the dominant thinking in North America really that we can separate ourselves from "nature" and that everything has a technological "fix"? Or on the "other" side, perhaps a "divine" destiny that somehow excuses our abuse of the natural world? How do you break through these attitudes effectively? Have you some ways that you elaborate and teach about "interbeing" in experiential and conceptual ways?    -- Paul Kuchynskas, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Excellent question. What's important to keep in mind is that our propensity for thinking that we are separate from nature seems strongest in Western cultures and is not necessarily shared by all cultures. Isn't it ironic that we can heavily pollute our air, water, and food, and when we get sick from them, we are so surprised? Our reliance on and inseparability from our environment is as close as our next breath; we take so much for granted here. To break through this effectively cannot really be done through edicts, laws, or even market pressures, though these are used in the short term. Edicts and laws create an us/them mentality without challenging each person to fully understand their role as stakeholders in a clean environment.

One could get easily discouraged but for me what works is to, as Gandhi said, Be the change you want to see in the world. Want peace? Act peacefully -- start with yourself, your family, your community. Want a sustainable environment? Live in a sustainable manner -- start with yourself. When you do this, something wonderful happens: you give others permission to live the same way, to seek peace, to seek sustainability. And when this happens, a shift starts to occur. Maybe not a great one at first, but a real one for sure and this builds and builds.

At ACEER and at West Chester University where I teach, I create experiential opportunities and invite people to participate and see for themselves. I could write or lecture ad nauseum about interbeing, but when I bring individuals to the rainforest on an ACEER workshop, I don't need to say anything; the forest is a powerful teacher. I have seen time and time again people come away with a realization of interbeing in a real, personal way by actually living it. It's like that commercial -- airline ticket: $850; jungle lodges: $250; experiencing interbeing and the reality of your place in the universe: priceless.

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The boat ride down southeastern Peru's Urubamba River cuts through mountains and sweltering jungle, passing wooden shacks of colonos -- mixed race and grindingly poor Peruvians lured to the jungle with promises of free land -- and nativos, tribes recently brought into contact with the modern world. The area is a biological gold mine, home to endemic and rare species, and some of the world's last uncontacted humans. It's also home to an asset that may become the Amazonian rainforest's biggest threat: the mamma jamma of South America's natural-gas lodes.

The Camisea pipeline.

Big Oil has been pushing its pipelines into the Amazon rainforest frontier since the 1960s. Nowadays, prompted by high oil prices and militarization of the Middle East's fossil fuels, the eastern slope of the Andes and the Amazonian jungle lowlands are being stripped, sawed, plowed, and piped into a global barrel of politically cheap fossil fuels. From Colombia to Ecuador, Brazil to Peru, themes are common: sloppy extractive industries tainting key ecosystems, polluting water, killing plants and animals, and causing strange human illnesses. The Camisea Natural Gas Project is the king of all extraction projects in this region, a billion-dollar operation that taps jungle gas here in the Lower Urubamba, then pipes it over the Andes and down to the Peruvian coast.

In the tiny village of Camisea, a community of Machiguenga Indians downriver from a processing plant, nude children play in the river water. Mangy dogs with floppy teats sniff for food as half-starved chickens peck at dust for invisible morsels. Past a group of shacks where women sit weaving traditional cloth and boiling yucca, Matias Rios, Camisea's chief, tells me how barges and helicopters arrived in 2001, driving away fish and wildlife, causing malnutrition. "We have almost nothing to eat," he says. "We did not need chickens five years ago because we could fish and hunt. Now we have to bring them here by boat."

Indigenous communities are at risk.

Photo: © Amazon Watch.

He calls over his 5-year-old son and another boy, whose backs and chests are covered with tiny lesions, which Rios and his wife say are caused by bathing in contaminated water. "The companies have sent representatives here to look at the problem, but they always say the water is clean," he says.

Supported by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) -- which is backed by the U.S., among other nations -- and part-owned by U.S.-based Hunt Oil, the Camisea project promises cheap gas for Lima, Peru's capital. It also promises future tax revenues when natural-gas products are eventually sold to Mexico and the U.S.

But big promises have turned into big problems: The pipeline has ruptured five times in the first 18 months of its operation. The country's prime minister, who reportedly has ties to Hunt Oil, has blamed at least one failure on local saboteurs. And now concerned residents, activists, and workers are trying to shed light on the project before things get even worse.

Camisea is "a tale of political scandal, technical flaws, and environmental degradation," says Maria Ramos of Amazon Watch, a California-based watchdog group that has worked alongside the World Wildlife Fund, Oxfam, and international civic organizations to draw attention to the project's failings.

Pipeline route.

In 2000, the Peruvian government gave a petroleum consortium including Texas-based Hunt Oil and Argentina's Pluspetrol the right to mine the area's gas reserves. It also handed another consortium, Transportadora de Gas del Peru (TGP) -- formed in part by Pluspetrol and Hunt -- the right to build two pipelines to carry natural gas and natural-gas liquids (NGL) out of the deep jungle. Together they help form Camisea, a $1.6 billion Herculean straw for sucking out an estimated 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Getting it to North American markets will require another link in the chain: another phase of Camisea is the construction of a 4.4 million ton per year liquefaction plant on Peru's southern coast, a project estimated to cost $2.1 billion. Hunt Oil, the lead shareholder for the facility, has completed "front-end engineering and design," according to the company's website, and the Camisea consortium is asking for $400 million in backing from the IDB for the project. The Washington Post reported last week that Hunt is also seeking IDB help in lining up an additional $400 million in loans from private commercial banks.

The project has been an activist howler from the get-go. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation and Export-Import Bank of the U.S. rejected Camisea financing for environmental reasons, and financial services company Citigroup withdrew under pressure from activists. But the Inter-American Bank gave Camisea the OK, arguing that its endorsement would lend credibility and policing power to the embattled project. In September 2003, the bank coughed up $135 million, committing itself to continuous monitoring of the companies and tacking on loan conditions that demanded, among other things, heightened environmental and social controls and evaluations.

A plant among plants.

Photo: Amazon Watch.

After Camisea went online in 2004, things quickly went south. In late December, just five months into operation, a 14-inch section of the NGL pipe ruptured, dumping an estimated 183 cubic meters of liquid, which was cleaned up by the companies. Eight months later, in August 2005, there was another rupture without a substantial spill. Two more failures with spills occurred in September and November of that year.

Under fire, TGP promised to invest up to $30 million to fix the problems. But Camisea was already topping the Amazonian enemy list. And while many of the same companies that are in the Camisea consortium proceed with plans to tap into some 2.5 million acres of nearby jungle, questions mount: Why did a brand-new pipeline have four breaks in 15 months? Where was the IDB, which bought into the project to keep it on the up and up? Where was the independent audit it had required as part of the loan? And were problems going to be fixed before future projects got rolling?

During the rainy season, the Lower Urubamba is Peru's most dangerous region, prone to rockfalls and mudslides that turn chunks of mountainside into brown milkshake. The consortium and the IDB have cited the soil's instability as the main reason for the failures. But in February, E-Tech, a California-based nonprofit technical-assistance organization, issued a stinging independent audit of the pipeline -- one that caught attention from the press, and will likely form part of a recently announced safety inspection being planned by the Peruvian government.

The key to E-Tech's report was Carlos Salazar, a welder who'd worked on the pipeline as a supervisor for Techint, an Argentine company. He'd seen improprieties. He wanted to talk.

"He said, 'I want to be part of an independent audit,'" says Bill Powers, an engineer with E-Tech. Salazar -- whom Powers says has since gotten anonymous threats -- painted a picture of slapdash construction, hurried by company fears of contractual late fees that could have hit $90 million. Delivered to IDB in February, the report concluded that the pipeline was weak and could rupture at six different places.

The report packed hard allegations: improperly certified welders; fast promotions from welder's helper to welder; improperly welded pipe ends; risky pipe jointing used to adapt to difficult terrain rather than searches for more stable routes. One claim -- that 30 to 40 percent of the pipe materials were left over from other South American projects and of substandard quality -- hit so hard, Powers said TGP threatened him with a lawsuit. That threat dissolved, however, when on March 4, for a fifth time in now 18 months, the pipeline ruptured again, in a place E-Tech had flagged as vulnerable. The ensuing explosion burned a woman and her child.

That's when the government of Peru jumped, promising to fund an independent audit -- an inspection of the pipeline's safety. But it reversed that decision days later, announcing that TGP would instead give funds for that purpose to Osinerg, the Peruvian government agency responsible for overseeing the pipeline. Alfredo Dammert, an Osinerg official, stressed to reporters that TGP would have no hand in the audit. Meanwhile, a Peruvian congressional committee has launched an inquiry, and plans to call construction contractors to testify next month.

Powers, an engineer with a degree from Duke University, says one rupture on a new pipe is rare, and five is unheard of. The IDB should have been watching, he says, and should now step up and demand real audits and fixes before signing on to other projects in the region. "But the bank is behaving more like a member of the consortium rather than the set of eyes they claimed they would be," says Powers.

Wrong-of-way through the Andean foothills.

Photo: Terra Erosion Control.

The IDB, which has poured billions of dollars into Latin American extractive-industry projects in recent years, stands behind its work. The bank's environmental and social expert, Robert Montgomery, says it has done its job. "Step way back to the start and look at it now in terms of social and environmental standards," he says. "Even critics say IDB made a big difference."

Montgomery said the bank monitors Camisea on an ongoing basis, using "external, independent environmental and social consultants in the field on a daily basis." Echoing claims by the consortium members, Montgomery says the ruptures "in several cases" were generally due to shifting soil putting lateral pressure on the pipes. "The E-Tech report makes a series of allegations, some quite serious, but does not provide any specific information or documentation to really support these allegations," he says, adding that "the principal reasons for spill event are generally known, and do not necessarily correlate to the allegations made in the report. Regardless, the IDB, the government of Peru, and TGP are clearly interested in resolving the spill issues and are open to any input."

As for the breaks: "People ask me if the breaks are normal, but it's hard to say what is normal for this, because there aren't many projects that take natural-gas liquids from the jungle and go over the Andes with it," says Montgomery. "You can't build that kind of pipeline and not have some unanticipated issues, but the number of events in this time period was not expected." He says IDB had required the consortium companies to perform an audit as part of the project approval by the bank, but after the last spill decided "to enhance the process to help alleviate worries in communities."

The IDB did release an environmental and social impact report two years after Camisea broke ground. But Amazon Watch says it was "woefully inadequate, calling into question whether its real purpose was to provide cover for the project rather than seriously engage with the urgent issues facing the Lower Urubamba and its peoples." The group says only 21 of the report's 138 pages actually dealt with environmental and social impacts.

Ecological worries aren't the only factor raising alarm. Earlier this year, the Peruvian government's Office of the People's Defender, the public ombudsman, criticized Camisea for violating indigenous rights. The report cited early Peruvian government studies saying that technically prohibited contact between workers and some native communities has caused startling upticks in cases of diarrhea, syphilis, and other illnesses.

The study said one isolated tribe, the Nanti, has been hit so hard with foreign germs and infectious disease that only one in four children reach adolescence. Despite the fact that contact is prohibited by the Camisea project and by the International Labor Convention 169, critics say oil companies still seek contact with tribes living atop lands they want to use.

Aliya Ryan of the Peruvian nonprofit Shinai, an advocacy group for indigenous causes, says she and her colleagues know of one tribe that was contacted by a Dominican Catholic Mission arriving in helicopters owned by Pluspetrol. The missionaries "went to give vaccinations, but they baptized people and gave them Christian names," she said. "They came in a helicopter, visited for a short time, and then left. They could have brought illnesses, but [because there are no communication links] there is no way of knowing other than traveling there." Pluspetrol did not respond to an interview request, and a Hunt Oil representative in Houston referred questions about the pipeline to TGP.

So where do Peru's top politicians stand on the mess? Critics of Prime Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski say he is an apologist for Big Oil. Last month, after Kuczynski suggested that the fifth pipe failure was likely sabotage by locals, the newspaper La Republica criticized him, noting he had good reason to dance an industry beat. Citing testimony given before the Peruvian Congress' oversight committee, the article said Kuczynski had once served as a financial adviser to Ray Hunt, Hunt Oil CEO. (Hunt is a Bush presidential campaign contributor and board member of Halliburton.)

Alcides Huinchompi of the Machiguenga Council of the Urubamba River -- which represents the region's indigenous communities -- says talk of sabotage is simply not true. "We want justice, but we have been fighting for it through dialogue, not violence," he says. "But if we are pushed, there is a point that we will defend ourselves and what is ours."

They may get some help. Col. Ollanta Humala, the popular front-runner in a presidential runoff election set for May, has criticized the pipeline project, and, more broadly, called for boosting taxes and royalties on foreign companies operating in Peru.

As the IDB and Peruvian government appear to be pressing for solid audits, Hunt Oil and others are still counting on bank funding for the planned liquefaction plant and associated facilities. In April, however, Luis Alberto Moreno, IDB president, told The Financial Times the environmental concerns were too great to proceed before a study was completed. "We are not even close to approving the loan," he said. "Without the audit we can't go to the second phase."

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Peru is dominated by two features that are, to most outsiders, the stuff of legend: the Amazon and the Andes. The lush forests and jungles of the former cover half the country, while the storied peaks of the latter march across another 27 percent.

This topography is home to millions, and a notorious draw for explorers and tourists. (Including you, maybe!) Travelers are indeed rewarded; birders, for instance, have a shot at about 1,800 species, 120 of which aren't found anywhere else in the world. Plenty of other critters -- including the yellow-tailed woolly monkey and the hairy long-nosed armadillo -- also make their home solely within the country, which is said to have 28 different climates. Frankly, it's enough to make us stop writing and get on the next plane.

But Peru suffers as much as it shines. Intent on a quest for gold, Spanish conquerors toppled the Incan Empire more than 450 years ago, and the foreign hunger for natural resources has only grown. Over the past decade, mining companies and others have invested $9 billion in the mineral-rich region. Oil and natural-gas projects have also blossomed, as have logging and coca production. Peru and its people have suffered the side effects of these intense operations, and despite the economic influx, half of the population still lives in poverty.

Change may be on the horizon. A presidential election will happen this weekend, and leading candidate Ollanta Humala is promising to, among other things, make mining companies pay royalties they are currently skirting. Critics worry that he will move the country away from the free-market economy some say has helped strengthen Peru in recent years. But his pledges have earned the support of the rural poor.

It's a complicated situation, a complicated place. One 19th century naturalist referred to Peru as "a beggar sitting on a bench of gold," and the phrase has stuck.

In a collection of photos, Gary Braasch takes us on a visit to Peru's rivers, mountains, ancient temples, and young faces -- the country's true gems.

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U.S.-owned plant contaminating Peruvian communities with heavy metals

There's heavy metal in Peru, but not the mullet-and-fake-satanism kind. Children in a Peruvian Andes mining town have high levels of toxic heavy metals in their bodies -- and the likely source is an 83-year-old smelter owned by the St. Louis-based Doe Run Company. An independent study found that 97 percent of La Oroya's children under six have harmful blood levels of lead, and about 18 percent have high body burdens of arsenic. Researchers also discovered elevated heavy-metal levels in Concepcion, a town about 70 miles downriver and downwind of La Oroya, suggesting the contamination may be regional. Doe Run execs didn't comment on the report, but a spokesflack says that by 2006, the company will have put over $140 million toward improving the smelter.

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Latin American activists have string of successes against gold mines

Even with mining laws, environmental laws, and international free-trade agreements heavily weighted against them, activists in Latin America have had a string of recent successes stopping open-pit and cyanide heap-leach mines from polluting their groundwater and decimating hillsides. In Peru last November, protestors blocked roads near the city of Cajamarca, forcing U.S.-based gold giant Newmont Mining Corp. to close an exploration site, marking the first time Newmont caved to pressure to close a mine. Last summer, officials in Honduras halted a Canadian company's strip mine, saying it intruded on a nature reserve. And the highest court in Costa Rica nixed a gold mine in December, ruling it would damage the environment. But with gold prices at over $430 an ounce, the number of U.S.- and Canadian-owned mines in the region is only expected to increase, even in the face of fierce resistance.

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Continuing its energetic pursuit of the Worst Global Corporate Citizen Award, Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp. is headed into legal battle with Peruvian peasants suffering long-term health consequences from mercury contamination around one of the company's gold mines. In June of 2000, a truck carrying canisters of liquid mercury -- a toxic byproduct of gold extraction -- leaked some 330 pounds of the stuff out onto the highway. Next thing you know, peasant children were taking blobs home on spoons and their parents were boiling it, trying to extract gold. Oops! Needless to say, said villagers are now suffering from an array of horrific health problems, from headaches to loss of vision to fainting spells. For three years, Newmont fought to keep the case out of U.S. courts, finally agreeing to mediation talks held in January. But those talks were unsuccessful, and the plaintiffs now plan to press their case in a Denver court. If they win, their lawyers claim it will be the first time a U.S. company is held liable in the U.S. for environmental contamination outside the country.

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Development, Tradition on Opposite Sides in South American Energy Battles

Given its vast reserves of oil and natural gas, the Amazon basin should be heaven for extractive industries. Instead, the people who make their home in the basin are trying to make life hell for energy companies. Over the years, Amazon natives have become both more sophisticated and more forceful in efforts to protect their pristine homeland -- efforts that include everything from protests and lawsuits to vandalism and kidnappings. At issue is the struggle to balance national growth with traditional culture, and the stakes could scarcely be higher: millennia-old ways of life on the one hand, and South America's future role in the international economy on the other. A short list of proposed projects in the region includes 800 miles of pipeline in Peru, a $1 billion project to pipe gas through the rainforest in Brazil, and an all-out effort by Ecuador to tap as many of its 4.6 billion barrels of oil as possible.

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Illegal Mahogany Logging Endangers Amazon Rainforest in Peru

Illegal logging of mahogany is escalating in Peru, threatening the Amazon rainforest and a number of indigenous groups that live in its remote reaches. The mahogany trade is strictly governed by international rules, and Brazil has cracked down on logging of the sought-after tree, but mahogany still flows from Peru in large quantities, thanks in part to rampant corruption in the nation's natural-resources agency. Enviros and even some government officials estimate that as much as 90 percent of the mahogany coming out of Peru is illegally logged. And much of it ends up in the U.S. in the form of furniture, decks, and even coffins. Ken Fuhrmann of Henkel Harris, which sells high-end furniture made of mahogany, says that in his 30 years on the job, he's only encountered about eight people who asked where the mahogany came from. "I would say they don't really care," he said.

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Peruvian Natural Gas Project Denied Funding

In a blow for two Texas energy companies, a huge Peruvian natural-gas project was denied funding yesterday because of concerns about the likely impact on a marine preserve, a rainforest, and indigenous people in the Amazon Basin. In a 2-to-1 vote, the U.S. Export-Import Bank rejected a bid for about $214 million in loan guarantees for the Camisea project, which would pump some 13 trillion cubic feet of gas from an Amazon rainforest and pipe it over the Andes to an export facility near a marine sanctuary off the coast of Peru. The forest is one of the most pristine and biologically diverse places on Earth, and the marine reserve is home to rare species, including Humboldt penguins and green sea turtles. "With the exception of drilling in the arctic refuge, this is the only resounding defeat for any component of the Bush energy plan that the environmental community has pulled off," said Jon Sohn, a Friends of the Earth lobbyist who fought the plan. The two U.S. companies involved in the project, Hunt Oil and Halliburton, both have close ties to the Bush administration.

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