On the edge of the Colombian Amazon, in an indigenous village surrounded by oil rigs, the Siona people faced a dilemma.
The UNDP (United Nations Development Program) had just announced a regional aid package of US$ 1.9 million (R$ 9.79 million). In a village with no running water, intermittent electricity and constant poverty, any money would mean food and opportunity.
But the aid program was part of a partnership between the UN agency and the oil company GeoPark. The multinational company has contracts to drill near the Siona reserve, including one with the government that would expand operations in what the Siona consider their ancestral homeland. For the Siona people of the Buenavista reserve, drilling for oil is an attack akin to draining the earth’s blood.
This collaboration is an example of how one of the world’s largest sustainable development organizations partners with polluters, even those who sometimes work against the interests of the communities the agency is supposed to help.
From Mexico to Kazakhstan, these partnerships are part of a strategy that treats oil companies not as environmental villains but as big employers that can bring electricity to far-flung areas and economic growth to poor and middle-income countries. The development agency uses oil money to provide clean water and job training in areas that might otherwise be underserved.
But internal documents and dozens of interviews with current and former officials show that when the UN partnered with oil companies, the agency also cracked down on local opposition to drilling, did business analysis for the industry and worked to keep the companies operating. more easily in sensitive areas.
The UNDP office in Colombia, in particular, is a revolving door for employees of oil companies and energy agencies that come and go. The UN development agency has also worked with the government and the oil industry to compile dossiers on opponents of drilling.
There is no evidence that these dossiers were used to target anyone, but in a country where environmental activists are killed in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world, activists and community members said they felt their lives were at risk.
Even as the UN raises the alarm about climate change and calls for a drastic reduction in fossil fuel consumption, its development arm sometimes serves as a promoter of the oil and gas industry.
“The oil and gas sector is one of the industries worldwide capable of generating the greatest positive impacts on people’s development conditions,” wrote the United Nations Development Program in 2018.
The agency said it supports a clean energy transition and does not encourage prospecting. But Achim Steiner, head of UNDP, said his mission is to lift people out of poverty and that often means working in countries that are built on coal, oil and gas. “We have to start where the economies are today,” Steiner said. “I don’t see a contradiction, but there is a tension.”
Adding to this tension, according to officials, is relentless fundraising pressure. The agency receives a percentage of the donations, about 3% to 10%. Officials, supported by the agency’s own audits, say this puts pressure on development managers to find partners in the countries they have been assigned to, even when donors work against the agency’s interests.
Internal e-mails show senior officials chafing at having to apply a varnish to the world’s dirtiest companies — a process that critics call “blue washing” because of the organization’s distinctive color.
In 2017, for example, two years after world leaders adopted the Paris climate agreement, the agency published a report on the positive role the oil and gas industry could play in the world. She listed an Exxon Mobil recycling initiative and Chevron’s promotion of engineering in schools.
“I really think this publication is problematic as it aims to portray the oil and gas industry in a favorable light,” an agency official wrote in a group email. The report “was undermining our message about sustainable energy,” read another email.
As part of the agency’s $8 billion budget, money from the energy sector is a pittance: about $6 million a year, according to data provided by UNDP. But locally that money can have massive effects.
Nowhere are these effects more felt than in Colombia, where oil companies, government, armed groups and environmentalists fight for the future of the Amazon. Deforestation has reached record levels, threatening the rainforest that serves as a global buffer against climate change.
Until last year, the Siona people who lived along the muddy Putumayo River in southern Colombia saw the UN development agency as an ally in this struggle. The community had benefited from a previous grant from the agency. Then came the partnership with GeoPark.
‘Offer of the Year’
Mario Erazo Yaiguaje, a soft-spoken community leader and former governor of the Buenavista reserve, suspected that the UNDP aid program was a stealthy attempt by the oil company to force his village to accept its presence in the region.
The Siona of Buenavista live in wooden houses in a small territory cut out in the Amazon, on the border with Ecuador. Community life revolves around the “chagra”, a rural terrain, and the “yagé”, a substance that the outside world labels as hallucinogenic, but the Siona consider a medicine that, when taken under the guidance of an elder, allows them to receive wisdom and guidance.
The region has been the scene of conflict for generations, and the Siona of Buenavista see oil companies as the source of their problems, attracting both leftist rebels, who have attacked the area’s pipelines, and government soldiers, who are sent to protect infrastructure. from the company. Together, the oil industry and the cocaine trade have contributed to so much violence that one of the country’s highest courts has classified the Siona as an “extermination risk” population.
The UN announced its partnership with GeoPark at a time of controversy. The company was already defending itself in a lawsuit over an oil spill in the region. Then, a local defense organization publicly accused GeoPark of hiring an armed group to threaten opponents of drilling. The company vehemently denied the allegation, but activists in the region said they feared for their lives.
Erazo saw the GeoPark deal as a tactic to “clear their name”, he said. “When we saw that GeoPark was giving money to UNDP, we realized that they had made the deal of the year.”
GeoPark has said it has no interest in drilling in the Siona reserve and has taken steps to give up its lease on the disputed territory. He said his partnership with the development agency was aimed at helping communities that have suffered economically during the Covid pandemic. The money was not intended for the Siona, the company said.
“We have always had a relationship based on dialogue, respect and building trust with our neighbors,” the company said in a statement.
The Siona of Buenavista saw things differently and began to prepare for a difficult decision.
‘This is a trick’
UNDP’s Achim Steiner said his agency works under difficult conditions to bring money and opportunities to the people who need it most. He doesn’t define Colombia’s energy policies and he can’t order the government to stop drilling in certain areas — what he can do, he said, is look for ways to minimize damage to communities and the environment.
“But also maximizing the benefits of an industry — extractive industries generally — that is very important and a significant source of revenue for many developing countries,” he said.
A development official made a similar argument last year in a tense call with Erazo and others about the GeoPark deal. The UN has not invited oil companies to the area, said the official, Jessica Faieta. But “now that they are in the region, we can somehow ensure that they comply with human rights.”
Buenavista’s Siona were livid. The UN appeared to be endorsing the oil companies, Erazo said.
That conversation torpedoed any hope of winning them. The Siona filed a formal complaint with the agency, returned their previous funding, and vowed never to accept aid from the development program again.
“People applaud every time a UNDP representative arrives, because he brings something. ‘God bless!'” Erazo said. But he continued, “This is a trick.” The partnership with GeoPark, he said, was “the death of this organization for us.”
The development agency canceled its partnership with GeoPark and is now investigating why it got involved with the company when the Siona grievances were already so well known. “I think it’s a legitimate criticism,” Steiner said. “You know, we learn from lessons.”
