Nemonte Nenquimo, an Amazon rainforest defender won 200,000 hectares from an oil company

The Ecuadorian indigenous leader was awarded the Goldman Prize, known as the “Environmental Nobel”, which is awarded each year to the world’s most relevant environmental leaders.

Nemonte Nenquimo, an indigenous Waorani in Ecuador, after being one of the winners of the Goldman environmental awards and being on the list of the 100 most influential people of 2020, the whole world recognizes her as one of the greatest defenders of the Amazon rainforest. She, a 33-year-old woman activist for indigenous rights, a founding member of the Ceibo organization, and representative of the council of her community, is also called a leader in her territory.

Her struggle started when the Ecuadorian government carried out prior consultations with some families of indigenous peoples of the Pastaza region to authorize the exploration and exploitation of an oil field known as Block 22, a space of more than 200 thousand hectares of the forest that is 16% connected with the territories of the 16 indigenous communities.

However, and after the follow-up to the case, it was discovered that the prior consultation, the center of the legal dispute that would later come, was a meeting with a few families from the community who were explained in Spanish and not in their native language the tenders of exploitation in their territory and that culminated in a few signatures of indigenous people who never understood the subject were being told about.

Upon learning what happened, the indigenous leaders, led by Nemonte Nenquimo, responded to the Ecuadorian State with legal actions for the breach of their right to prior consultation and in response to a procedure that was carried out without the protocols regulated by the law.

The Waorani indigenous communities dedicated themselves for the next eight years to legally demonstrate the importance of not only ecologically but also ancestral to that territory.

Waorani are hunter-gatherers who organize themselves into small clan settlements. In 1958 they were contacted by American missionaries — and now they have a population of approximately 5,000 people. The Waorani territory overlaps with Yasuní National Park, which, according to data from the Smithsonian Institution, “could have more species of life than anywhere else in the world”.

80% of the Waorani population lives in one-tenth of their original ancestral territory. For this reason, after the announcement of the Ecuadorian government, Nenquimo began to organize her community. It held regional assemblies and launched a digital campaign aimed at investors to finance the environmental defense of their territory with the slogan “Our jungle is not for sale.”

With these resources, several young Waorani were educated in audiovisual media and published documentaries and powerful images that went around the world. It also proactively helped communities maintain their independence from oil company subsidies by installing a rainwater harvesting system and solar panels, as well as supporting a women-run organic cocoa and chocolate production company. She played a key role in a community mapping project in which more than 200,000 of Waorani territory were mapped, covering 16 communities.

And finally, in July 2019, the Provincial Court of Pastaza determined that the alleged consultation, made in 2012, did not comply with national and international standards with regard to ethnic peoples and the entry of companies that they wanted to extract the oil in more than 200 thousand hectares of forest. (The indigenous people who avoided the exploitation of oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon).

An environmental advocate through the years

When Nemonte Nenquimo is asked about her recognition in the Goldman Prize, her answer is always the same: “I represent millions of indigenous people who fight for nature. If they recognize me, they are recognizing us all”.

The truth is that her work overtime did mark a before and after in her community. From the age of 15, she decided to escape from her shelter to study Spanish in a missionary school, but she returned three years later (at 18 years old) and since then she has not missed any grandparents’ assembly, where the leaders discussed the most.

Still very young, in 2010 she became involved in a project of the Association of Waorani Women of the Ecuadorian Amazon (AMWAE) that sought to stop the bushmeat trade. An activity from which his community benefited by selling different animals that they hunted within the Yasuní National Park. The results of the initiative, led by the leader Manuela Ima, not only managed to stop the sale of these animals but also promoted the sale of handicrafts, made by women, as an economic activity that could replace hunting.

Watch a video of Nemonte Nenquimo HERE

Read the article in the original language HERE

Source: Infoamazonia is a journalistic alliance between the Amazon Conservation Team and El Espectador.