“The disinterest and irresponsibility of authorities in charge of national environmental policy… constitute a violation of human rights every time they deprive the inhabitants of Guatemala of their right to a clean environment, individual dignity, preservation of the country’s cultural and natural heritage, and social and economic development....”

—Ruling by Guatemala’s Attorney General for Human Rights, February 7, 2000

Stop Oil Exploration in Maya Biosphere Reserve / Guatemala - Victory

Something to celebrate: Guatemala's Human Rights Court ruled that the right to a clean environment is a human right. Specifically, when oil companies damage the environment, they are violating human rights. And more specifically, government officials and agencies, from the president to village mayors, who permit oil activity in the Maya Biosphere Reserve are guilty of "injurious behavior that has harmed Guatemalans."

This eloquent ruling, released February 7, is the conclusion of a 12-month investigation undertaken by Guatemala's Attorney General for Human Rights in response to pressure from local communities and grassroots organizations in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Communities and organizations vigorously protest nine concessions for oil exploration and drilling that government officials granted after the Maya Biosphere Reserve was created in 1989. Guatemala's Law of Protected Areas specifically prohibits unsustainable activities like oil extraction in biosphere reserves. In addition to the nine illegal oil concessions, two new proposals threaten the communities of Carmelita and Uaxactun.

Despite its hard-hitting language, the Court's ruling may be sideswiped by political maneuvering in the capital. Environmental groups fear the ruling will only be applied to one concession that lies within Laguna del Tigre National Park, allowing for unrestrained oil development in the rest of the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

The Maya Biosphere Reserve is located in the northernmost part of Guatemala. Its lowland tropical forests and expansive wetlands span nearly 2.1 million hectares (5.25 million acres). Together with adjacent forests in Mexico and Belize, the area constitutes the largest contiguous tropical moist forest remaining in Central America.

More than 3,000 plant species thrive in the Maya Biosphere forests, along with more than half of all the animal species found in Guatemala. Rivers, swamps, lakes and flooding savannas are important habitat for migrating birds. The magnificent Maya ruins of Tikal and some 10,000 other Maya archaeological sites lie within the Reserve.

While the ruins attest to human habitation for many centuries, the forests were largely undisturbed until the mid-1980s when oil development began. New roads built for oil exploration and logging provided access to previously inaccessible areas of the Reserve, and peasant farmers converted primary forests into cornfields.

Government agencies and non-governmental organizations are working within the framework of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Program (see below) to help communities develop ecologically sustainable economies within the Reserve and its Buffer Zone. But these efforts are contradicted and undermined by illegal government concessions for oil activity in almost 50% of the Biosphere's Buffer Zone and 40% of the Transition and Core Zones.

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