-- Transnationals everywhere are attempting to recast themselves as eco-friendly. But, as Stephanie Boyd discovers, sometimes it’s not

the way companies behave but the nature of business itself which is at issue. --

Ashley Bushen

GLOBAL GEOGRAPHY 12(3)

MRS. ALIPHAT

--They promised this time it would be different. ‘Health, safety and environment’ was their motto.

--A ‘green’ Shell. A friendly Shell.

--Lower Urubamba Valley.

--INTRODUCTION--

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

--Estimated 600 million barrels of liquid natural gas.

--Working with foreign companies is their only chance to get money for social

projects.

--Peru’s central government has ignored native people in the Urubamba Valley for centuries – leaving them without schools, health centers or other services.

--San-Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network. (RAN)

ENVIRONMENT

--Shell first came to the region in the 1980s.

--Whooping cough and influenza decimated previously uncontested groups.

--Shell returned in 1996.

--Chronicled a series of abuses that first year – including garbage left behind in campsites, abandoned airstrips that were never reforested and dangerous levels of hydrocarbons, cadmium and mercury in local water samples.

Machiguenga

--Traditional Machiguenga House

--Amazon Indigenous Peoples

OBSERVATIONS

&

CONCLUSIONS

--Operation of natural-gas pipelines have even greater potential for damage.

--One leak in a pipeline and everything within ten kilometres disappears.

--One pipeline explosion in 1989 in Russia, between the towns of Ufa and Asha, blew up two railroad trains and killed 575 people.

WORKS CITEDhttp://www.newint.org/

--THE END--