A/HRC/27/52/Add.3 responsibility for the clean-up. Indigenous women have told the Special Rapporteur that the pollution is affecting them above all because of changes to the quality and availability of water, the effects on livestock production (the sole source of work for many women) and the negative effects on their health. 21. A typical case of oil pollution in indigenous lands has been that of the so-called Block 1-AB, located in the basins of the Pastaza, Tigre, Corrientes and Marañón rivers, which are inhabited by the Quechua, Kichwa, Cocama and Urarina indigenous peoples. Starting in 1971, Occidental Petroleum carried out oil operations in the block until the year 2000, when it transferred the block to Pluspetrol. Over that period, industrial waste and other waste associated with oil production was dumped directly onto the land and into the waters used by the indigenous peoples of the four river basins. Pluspetrol took on the obligations undertaken by Occidental under the current environmental regulatory framework, which involves decontaminating the soils and the water sources of Block 1-AB. 22. In recent years, the Government has taken significant steps to deal with the situation in Block 1-AB, which include monitoring activities by such agencies as the Environmental Assessment and Oversight Office. Moreover, the company has also changed its practices to comply with current environmental regulations, and is also reusing all the produced water resulting from its operations, which should make it possible to avoid additional pollution. Nonetheless, there are still serious environmental problems resulting from the pollution of the bodies of water and soils used by the indigenous populations of the area, which has affected their food sources and their health. In his travels around the area of Block 1-AB, in the district of Andoas, the Special Rapporteur was able to observe the presence of oil in the Shanshococha, Ushpayacu and Pampaliyacu pools, or in the neighbourhood, as well as junkyards filled with equipment which had been used in the course of Occidental Petroleum’s operations. 23. In 2013, the Ministry of the Environment declared states of emergency, lasting around 90 days, in the basins of the Pastaza, Corrientes and Tigre rivers, and launched immediate and short-term environmental clean-up operations and other measures to mitigate the effects of pollution on the water and food sources of the affected population. However, the indigenous peoples of these basins have not seen much in the way of results from the immediate and short-term clean-up operations undertaken under these states of emergency. An important factor in this respect has been the lack of any progress towards the development of specific regulations to identify the sources of pollution in the block and the corresponding measures required to undertake environmental rehabilitation, or to determine the organizations, public or private, responsible for undertaking such rehabilitation. V. State response to indigenous movements opposed to extractive projects 24. In view of the history of negative impacts on indigenous peoples’ rights, the many protests that have arisen against government decisions to authorize extractive operations should come as no surprise. 25. The most widely known cases connected with protests against extractive industries in recent years include: the Bagua incidents of 2009, which resulted in the deaths of many indigenous and non-indigenous people and were the reason for an earlier visit by the Special Rapporteur to Peru (A/HRC/12/34/Add.8); the Aymara communities’ opposition to the concession awarded to the Bear Creek Mining Corporation to go ahead with the Santa Ana mining project, which led to the investigation of dozens of Aymara persons; and the protests against the Conga mining project in the Cajamarca region, which prompted the GE.14-07246 7

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