Science and Indigenous Governance in the Face of Hydrocarbon Impacts:The Struggle to Remediate Lot 192

Written on 26 November 2025. Posted in News

BY MARIO ZÚÑIGA LOSSIO FOR INDIGENOUS DEBATES

In parts of Peru long subjected to oil exploitation, extractive activities have inflicted such profound socio-ecological damage on Indigenous territories that it has become an unpayable debt, affecting not only the present but also future generations. A close examination of the benefits promoted by the energy sector shows that they bear little relation to the real impacts experienced by Indigenous Peoples. The legacy of this damage—and the complexities involved in addressing it—cannot be ignored when considering transitions from the oil-extractive model towards new energy systems grounded in justice and historical memory.

In Peru, between 1997 and 2023, there were 1,462 oil spills. Lot 192, the area with the highest number of spills in the country, contains unresolved environmental liabilities left behind by companies that have withdrawn, leaving local communities to face a profound ecological disaster. By 2023, including unattended sites—which encompass solid waste and poorly managed infrastructure—over 3,200 points of contamination had been identified in Lot 192.

This area affects the territories of three Indigenous Peoples: the Achuar of the Pastaza and Corrientes rivers, the Inga of the Pastaza, and the Kichwa of the Tigre. Their approach to addressing these impacts is far from purely economic. Managing these processes presents a complex challenge in which politics, social movements, science, technology, investment, culture, and the economy intersect in often tense ways.

In response, some communities have chosen to fight for the remediation of oil-affected areas that have permanently altered their environments and ways of life. Their struggle has exposed, with scientific rigour and cultural clarity, the full scale and cost of hydrocarbon operations. The magnitude of this reality is unprecedented, challenging extractive promotion, environmental policies, and creating ongoing cycles of setbacks and progress in remediation efforts. Through this continuous struggle, Indigenous Peoples drive the advancement of public policies in scientific, social, and cultural terms, reshaping approaches historically marked by colonial and racist biases.

Ultimately, this highlights the challenge every community faces when coexisting with extractive activities, the intricate struggle for territorial restoration, and the conditions necessary for an energy transition that honours memory and justice.

The Struggle and the Law

Since 1971, communities in the territory of Lot 192 have been affected by various private operators and a regulatory framework whose permissiveness and extractive focus have resulted in heavily damaged lands. Between 2006 and 2007, confronted with inadequate environmental oversight and driven by social mobilisations and alliances with national and international civil society, local communities began organising independent monitoring efforts—without State support and entirely separate from the oil companies. Leaders in these areas started systematically documenting and reporting oil spills across their territories.

In response, Indigenous Peoples embraced new communication technologies, mastered formal protocols for sample collection, and obtained training in the relevant regulations and institutional reporting procedures. Through these territorial monitoring practices, they brought to light, using scientific evidence, the environmental disaster in which they had been living—previously concealed by the companies. By 2011, more than 100 affected sites had been documented, and this number grew exponentially, reaching 1,209 formal complaints by 2020.

The scale of the damage reported by Indigenous organisations, based on community-led monitoring, was so vast and hazardous that health and environmental emergency declarations were issued across several years. However, these complaints and emergency measures—intended to compel the oil companies to act—proved insufficient. The companies did not act responsibly; instead, they exploited regulatory gaps and legal loopholes to evade accountability, delay action, and avoid addressing the environmental disaster.

In this context, in 2015, as the oil contract for Lot 192 neared its end and a new operator prepared to take over, the communities mobilised. Using data collected by community monitors and validated by regulatory authorities, they demanded that the State establish minimum conditions before allowing operations to continue. One of these demands led to the enactment of Law 30,321, designed to ensure environmental remediation in the Lot’s river basins. Following PUINAMUDT’s sustained advocacy and the submission of a compliance record, the law was enacted in mid-2015 and formally regulated in 2016.

Law 30,321 and Its Implementation

Law 30,321 is a modern, progressive regulation with high standards of participation, developed with the active input of the Indigenous Peoples affected in Lots 192 and 8. The law established an Administrative Board in which Indigenous representatives, supported by specialist technical advisors, co-govern alongside public sector bodies, including the Ministry of Environment (MINAM), the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEM), and the Health, Sanitation, Housing, and Agricultural authorities. Within this framework, communities are involved at every stage: from designing the tender processes for the hire of remediation companies to drafting the terms of reference for environmental studies; from planning training programmes to implementing them for the remediation of the highest-risk sites and overseeing ongoing monitoring.

The law also created a dedicated remediation fund, held in a trust and jointly managed by all members of the Board. During implementation, community monitors and local enterprises actively participate, providing services to the private entities carrying out the studies and remediation works. Under the law, if companies fail to take responsibility for high-risk sites, the State must intervene to carry out remediation, ensuring accountability is maintained: once a responsible party is identified, the State has the right to recover the corresponding costs.

Following the enactment of Law 30,321, the first 32 affected sites were identified in 2017. These sites were made public so that the companies responsible could begin studies under higher quality standards. Some had already been cleaned and mitigated by the oil companies but the supervisory authority confirmed that contamination remained, posing serious environmental and health risks. Unfortunately, no company accepted responsibility so, under Law 30,321, the State and Indigenous Peoples proceeded to conduct rehabilitation studies. For the first time in Peru, 32 Rehabilitation Plans (PR) were jointly developed.

Unlike previous studies conducted by oil companies, the community-led technical studies provided the first rigorous assessment of the specific impacts in the area. The contamination volumes identified totalled 364,749 cubic metres, equivalent to 24,316 truckloads. The sites also present carcinogenic risks to children, adults, and hunting communities. Currently, more than 112 additional high-risk sites have been identified, awaiting the preparation of new studies. These sites cover 698 hectares—15 times larger than the entire area of the Vatican City (44 hectares). How could the State have allowed such damage to accumulate for so long on Indigenous territory?

A Wait that Frustrates: Blockages in the Implementation of Law 30,321

Science aimed at protecting health and the environment identifies, characterises, quantifies, and assesses risks. Although rooted in Western knowledge systems, it has compelled Indigenous Peoples to develop a new horizon of technical expertise. And yet producing these studies involves particular tensions and sets limits on this reconfiguration. While the State co-produced the Rehabilitation Plans (PR) using a multisectoral approach, the validation of these documents falls to the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEM), creating bottlenecks under pressure from the industry. When the PRs for the 32 priority sites were submitted in 2019, MINEM delayed their review, slowing the process for several years.

Moreover, the production of new Rehabilitation Plans has effectively stalled. Between 2019 and 2024, the State approved only 19 plans and has produced none since. This has led to ongoing academic, political, and cultural debates; delays in funding for continued action; shortages of technical and scientific resources within the State; and a lack of political will and modernisation in public administration regarding environmental issues. These delays have also fostered a mistrust towards the State and triggered attacks on the organisations driving the remediation agenda, as if they were responsible for delivering and approving the studies themselves.

By contrast, the experience of the Fund’s Administrative Board has proven far more effective than that of the oil companies, which continue to accumulate remediation plans that are repeatedly rejected, poorly executed, or approved under minimal standards. Although the Fund holds resources allocated by previous governments—over 400 million soles (just over 100 million USD)—two years after the approval of several Rehabilitation Plans (PR), remediation has begun at only a single site, while the tendering process for subsequent sites is still pending.

Despite these delays, the law’s slow implementation has not led to passivity. Communities have steadily expanded their participation on the Board by including additional organisations, promoted the use of funds for local training, and worked alongside PROFONANPE to exert pressure on MINEM. Furthermore, the communities and their organisations have made it unequivocally clear that if the State fails to remediate the sites despite having the necessary funds, oil operations will not resume on their territories.

Towards a Transition with Memory

The environmental science developed in collaboration with Indigenous communities has exposed the full scale of ecological damage, challenging the so-called “benefits” that oil extractivism often touts as a promise of development. According to the regulatory authority overseeing the Canon and Oil Royalties, oil operations in Lot 192 have generated just over 2 billion soles (571 million USD) for the Regional Government of Loreto. Yet only a tiny fraction of this has reached the communities, much of it lost along the way to officials’ pockets or spent on projects located in cities far from Indigenous territories.

At the same time, MINEM asserts that tackling the 144 sites identified under Law 30,321 will require more than 6 billion soles (1.7 billion USD). Alarmingly, this investment is projected to be deployed over a 42-year period, leaving future generations of Indigenous Peoples to shoulder the burden of contamination. The situation is even more dire considering that these 144 sites represent only a small fraction of the total number of sites affected in the lot. Economically, socially and environmentally, oil operations in Amazonian territories are wholly unsustainable.

Struggles in oil-producing regions such as Lot 192 teach us that Indigenous Peoples are fully capable of engaging with the modernity of science and the State. Carried out collectively—through mobilisation, public dialogue, and a blend of cultural, technical and scientific expertise—this struggle has achieved two key milestones. First, it has demonstrated the effectiveness of collaborative work between the State and Indigenous Peoples in scientifically analysing the damage caused by oil extraction. Second, it has exposed the colonial bias embedded within the energy sector, which remains resistant to change and incapable of reforming its processes to urgently address fundamental violations of rights.

Within this context, any energy transition that seeks to replace oil-based systems with more sustainable ones cannot proceed without memory. It must not ignore the environmental debt left by the oil “civilization” of Indigenous territories—a debt that continues to impose unbearable costs on communities whose future generations will keep fighting for recognition and reparations.

This article was revised by the Apus of PUINAMUDT and its technical team.

Special thanks to Angela Vilca, Andrea Cier, Fernando Torres, Renato Pita, and Frederica Barclay.

Mario Zúñiga Lossio is an anthropologist from the National University of San Marcos and an advisor to PUINAMUDT.

Cover photo: Fernando Cola - Puinamudt

Tags: Indigenous Debates