- President Nicolás Maduro is running for a third consecutive term despite overwhelming opposition to his regime. This time, his opponent is González Urrutia, a former diplomat.
- Under Maduro, illegal mining has spread rapidly through the rainforest, while water shortages and the trafficking and flora and fauna have only gotten worse.
- While González Urrutia has promised to address illegal mining and other environmental issues, experts say there’s little chance he can win. The current government has already taken steps to guarantee Maduro’s victory, including disqualifying opposition candidates and uninviting outside electoral observers.
The lead up to Venezuela’s presidential election, scheduled for this Sunday, July 28, hasn’t been about the candidates’ experience or the viability of their policies. The focus has been on whether the elections will look anything close to free and fair. Critics have expressed concern about the disqualification of opposition candidates and the absence of outside electoral observers.
President Nicolás Maduro is running for a third consecutive term despite overwhelming opposition to his regime, which came to power in 2013 as the successor to Hugo Chávez. This time around, Maduro faces a relatively unknown candidate in Edmundo González Urrutia, a former diplomat. He took over after two other candidates were disqualified by the regime due to administrative errors in the registration process and unfounded corruption charges.
There has been little room for discussion about environmental issues, despite the fact that the country has plunged into a crisis so severe that many observers now call it an ecocide. Mining has torn through the Amazon Rainforest. A neglected oil industry has polluted the coast. Protected areas are plundered for their timber and exotic species. Funds for scientific research have all but dried up. Funds for park guards have dwindled, as well.
González Urrutia’s campaign has focused more on restoring free and fair elections and fixing the economy, the collapse of which has forced over 7.7 million people to migrate. But it’s inevitable that his government also addresses the environmental crisis at some point, even if just indirectly. The opposition has traditionally vied for opening the country to international aid, which would include humanitarian and conservation groups that could restore protected areas and Indigenous territories.
He said his government won’t oppose “professional and ecologically responsible mining” but would fight the illegal mining in the Orinoco Mining Arc, which has “destroyed the environment to generate wealth through violence.” The mining arc is a stretch of largely forested land through the states of Amazonas, Bolívar and Delta Amacuro that the Maduro regime opened for mining in 2016.
At one point, over 2,000 illegal miners were present across over 4,000 campsites in Yapacana National Park, according to satellite analysis by Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Amazon Project. The miners also brought in around 3,800 pieces of heavy machinery. Farther south, near the Brazilian border, the Alto Orinoco-Casiquiare Biosphere Reserve is suffering a similar fate, with Brazilian miners, known locally as garimpeiros, occupying Indigenous Yanomami territory.
The oil industry has collapsed due to mismanagement, so gold and other minerals have become essential to the Maduro regime, even if it means working with dissident guerrilla groups and other kinds of organized crime. “In Venezuela, with a collapsed economy, with an oil industry that can’t get back on its feet, only mining remains,” said Cristina Burelli, head of the Venezuelan environmental advocacy group SOS Orinoco. “That’s really what’s left. It’s mining, drug trafficking and any other illicit business.”
This month, the Maduro campaign said it was working on an “ecological production concept to preserve the country’s mining industry in a sustainable way.” But outsider observers like SOS Orinoco say the regime often says one thing then does another. Over the last six years, it has made a show of arresting prominent miners without actually shutting down mines, and stressed the importance of conserving the Amazon at the same time that it was expanding the mining arc and establishing mining and oil development plans with Turkey.
Should Maduro govern for another six years, the mines will likely stay open and even expand into new parts of the rainforest. With illegal mining comes the continued growth of other illegal activities, such as drug trafficking and the exploitation of local and Indigenous communities. The lawlessness of many mining hotspots has also given rise to the trafficking of flora and fauna. Pet farms and pet shops have exploded across Caracas in recent years, part of a sophisticated black market benefiting from corruption. “Everything is opportunistic,” Burelli said. “Everything. When they see opportunities, they exploit niches.”
Easy access to timber, both inside and out of protected areas, has also given rise to a black market for charcoal, due to nationwide gasoline shortages that leave people with no other way to cook their food. Degraded and cleared forests means that natural aquifers have broken down, as well, creating freshwater shortages for many communities. As much as 80% of citizens have problems accessing water, according to the Political Ecology Observatory of Venezuela.
All of that will likely continue as long as corruption persists and the government drains park services of their budgets and resources. Conservationists from across Venezuela who spoke to Mongabay said park guards barely make a living wage and often don’t have basic equipment like boots and vehicles.
González Urrutia would have to pump money into protected area conservation to start reversing these impacts, not to mention find a way to provide water, gasoline and other scarce commodities that put pressure on Venezuela’s natural resources. But such a systemic change, while likely to be slow, will only come if he can actually manage to win.
“Everything indicates that this is all going to continue,” Burelli said.
Banner image: A Colombian red howler monkey in Apure, Venezuela. Photo by Luis Zabala via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic
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