The Perils of Not Seeing the Forest for the Copper
For years I’ve tried, but there simply are no words to convey the madness. The madness that justifies killing hundreds of thousands of trees, millions of orchids and bromelias, countless large and small understory plants- many unknown to man- the world of fungi, the wild bees, the home of three species of monkeys-all threatened by extinction, the ancient and current home of jaguars, sloths, pumas, of dozens of endangered species of frogs, the life support of hundreds of species of birds, the millions of insects and the more than 40 pristine rivers and streams, some of which sustain two species of frogs found only in these streams and nowhere else on Earth. The home too, of small farmers that for three decades have stood up to one mining corporation after another. Of an ecosystem so fragile and so biodiverse, of such out-of-this world beauty that no photograph, no painting or documentary can ever capture it.
I’ve found no words to express the angst that I feel at the possibility that all this can be destroyed because one species feels it can justify a wholescale ecocide because it is unable to see anything but the copper that lays beneath all this natural wealth and beauty. Angst is a monumental understatement. Anger, frustration, depression. OUTRAGE comes a little closer. Just a little.
And yet, here we are. Those that control markets and weak governments and create ungodly needs have condemned sites like Intag’s pristine cloud forest in northwest Ecuador to death. Death to give life to electric cars, SUV’s and pickup trucks that will benefit transnationals and rich citizens of the north. To curb the climate crisis. So they say. To do so, they justify devastating thousands of hectares of primary cloud forests that are, ironically enough, capturing millions tons of Carbon while protecting 43 pristine rivers and streams and the habitat of hundreds of species of animals and plants facing extinction.
What kind of world do we live in that justifies this madness? We all know. A world where money means more than life itself.
The perils of not seeing the forest for the copper? That it will lead to the devastation of more sites like Intag’s cloud forests, while leaving the Earth a much more biologically impoverished and ecologically unstable planet. And, in the end, not fix the root cause of the climate crisis: Mankind’s arrogance.
We who live in Intag and who have resisted all these years will not give up trying to win time with the hope that enough Homo sapiens will come to realize the absurdity and criminality Intag’s of turning places like Intag’s cloud forests into open pit hellholes. But that implies that the sapiens in Homo must assert itself. COP 16 in Colombia is one such opportunity.
We will be watching.
Carlos Zorrilla October 2024
For more information visit www.decoin.org and www.codelcoecuador.com, or write to decointag@gmail.com or toisan06@gmail.com
There are many excellent articles about our struggle, starting with Mongabay’s article https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/in-ecuador-communities-protecting-a-terrestrial-coral-reef-face-a-mining-giant/
Youtube has several feature-length and shorts on Intag’s decades old struggle against mining, most by the great Ecuadorian documentarian Pocho Alvarez, including; Javier; con I; Intag; Under Rich Earth; Defending the Intag Valley: 30 years of Community Resistance; Hugo; Territorio Rebelde; Intag Indefensión; Sitio y Ocupación a Intag; Letras y Voces en Lucha; Acoso a Intag