Indigenous women from the Amazon rainforest have called on Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno to end oil and mining projects on their ancestral lands, as the nation pushes to open up more of its rainforest to drillers.
Their meeting late on Thursday with Moreno at the presidential palace in Quito comes after the Andean nation launched a new bidding round this month for foreign companies to develop oil and gas reserves.
Ecuador, one of the smallest OPEC producers, hopes to attract about US$800 million in investment to boost production that the government says is vital to improve its sluggish economy.
However, women from Amazon indigenous groups say oil exploration damages their livelihoods, as well as the environment and water sources on ancestral lands, and comes amid growing deforestation in unspoiled areas of the biodiverse region.
“We don’t want more oil and mining companies,” Alicia Cahuiya of the Waorani group told the president. “Oil has not brought development for the Waorani — it has only left us with oil spills and sickness.”
She also told Moreno, who was flanked by several ministers, that the government was failing to consult properly with indigenous communities about planned oil and mining projects on their lands — a right they are entitled to under law.
“The oil and mining issue does not stop worrying me, because there is a future to take care of,” Moreno said at the meeting, which was streamed live on Facebook. “What you are completely right about is the importance of dialogue consensus, dialogue decisions ... about any decisions of my government with respect to oil and mining concessions.”
The women presented Moreno with a list of demands they call the “Mandate of Amazonian Women,” which includes stopping oil, mining and logging projects, and conducting official investigations into attacks against indigenous leaders.
“I hope [the president] will take this mandate seriously,” Nina Gualinga, one of about a dozen women who took part in the meeting, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Simmering tensions — including protests — between indigenous communities seeking to protect their lands and state-owned and foreign oil companies have been ongoing in Ecuador for decades.
The issue has come before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which in 2012 ruled in favor of Ecuador’s Sarayaku indigenous community in the Amazon.
The court said Ecuador had violated their right to prior, free and informed consultation before drillers in the late 1990s started exploration on lands where the Sarayaku people live.
“We will return to our communities and wait for a response from the government,” said Zoila Castillo, vice president of the parliament of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon. “If we do not receive a response in two weeks, we will be back.”
After several years flying high as Asia’s best Nvidia Corp proxy, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is increasingly vying with other artificial intelligence (AI) stocks for investor attention. Stock traders are chasing a wider array of beneficiaries as mainstream usage of AI creates demand for hardware beyond the most-advanced chips TSMC makes for Nvidia. Subthemes from the deepening memory crunch to advances in robotics are also luring bids. At the same time, investment caps on single stocks are pushing funds to diversify, while retail investors long familiar with TSMC through its US depositary receipts are being offered a broader set of
Netherlands-based semiconductor equipment supplier ASML Holding NV yesterday said that it is planning to hire an additional 1,000 people in Taiwan this year in response to growing demand from clients. ASML had previously planned to recruit 600 people this year, but that the plan has been adjusted upward, ASML vice president and ASML Taiwan general manager Grace Wang (汪佳慧) told reporters. ASML has a workforce of more than 4,500 in Taiwan, accounting for about 10 percent of its global total, Wang said. This year’s recruitment campaign would focus on adding people in the customer support, manufacturing and supply chain domains to assist ASML
UNDER MICROSCOPE: Taiwan detained three people who allegedly conspired to buy servers in Taiwan and export them using fraudulent documentation, prosecutors said Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday urged Super Micro Computer Inc to tighten up on compliance after Taiwan detained three people this week for allegedly making fraudulent declarations about artificial intelligence (AI) servers made by its US partner. The development marked the nation’s first crackdown on semiconductor smuggling, which grew after the US slapped restrictions on exports of high-end chips such as Nvidia AI accelerators to China. Nvidia is “rigorous” in explaining regulations to all of its partners, Huang told reporters after arriving in Taipei. “Ultimately Super Micro has to run their own company,” he said in response to
Nvidia Corp yesterday announced that CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) would attend an employee meeting in Taipei tomorrow to celebrate the launch of the company’s Taiwan headquarters project. Huang would attend a gathering at the site of Nvidia’s planned headquarters in Beitou Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區), the company said in a statement. After arriving in Taiwan on Saturday last week, Huang told reporters that he plans to meet with Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), and would attend the groundbreaking ceremony for Nvidia’s Taiwan headquarters tomorrow. Nvidia has not yet applied
RSS