Peru's Camisea Gas Project is arguably one of the most damaging projects in the Amazon Basin. The project includes two pipelines of 700 km to the Peruvian coast, from an ecologically fragile area of the Amazon, over the Andes to the Pacific Coast. The gas field of Camisea I (Block 88 and 56) and pipeline are located in one of the world's most ecologically and socially fragile areas. A region of great biodiversity.

Since the beginning of Camisea I's operation in mid-2004, the pipeline ruptured five times within 18 months, with at least three major spills. According to an independent report by a non-profit engineering consultancy E-Tech International, released February 2006, the pipeline built by Techint was constructed by unqualified and untrained welders using corroded piping and was rushed to avoid onerous late completion fees that would have totalled $90 million.

Camisea II's proposed port and liquid gas fractionation plant site is in Playa Melchorita that is of particular concern because it is located in the buffer zone of the Paracas National Reserve where an accident or spill would have untold consequences.

Some of the environmental consequences of the project so far have been:

• Fish stock declines, due to severe soil erosion and landslides resulting from the pipeline's construction along steep ridges. Reportedly, this is resulting in a rise of malnutrition, articularly among children.
• Deforestation / landscape disturbance, opening up corridors for the pipeline alters draining patterns, affects movement of species, interrups seed dispersal and natural forest regeneration, destroys habitat and negatively impacts the landscape.
• Pollution, solid waste management has been one of the primary issues surrounding Camisea.

Camisea is home to Machiguenga, Yine, Nanti, Nahua and possibly Kirineri indigenous people. Apart from environmental issues, the project also has been criticized by NGOs because of the negative impacts on the indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolations in the Nahua-Kugapakori Reserve, such as involuntary resettlement, the destruction of food and water supplies of local communities, and the exposure to illnesses for which the indigenous population has no immunological defenses.

Disease and death of indigenous people

Early explorations in the 1980s resulted in almost one-half of the Nahua people dying from influenza and whooping cough, to which they were not immune. Camisea contractors are still in relatively close contact with indigenous people, sustaining an inordinately high mortality rate within vulnerable local populations.

Human rights violations

Affected indigenous people were not considered in the decision-making of the construction of the project. Furthermore, indigenous communities were intimidated into allowing gas drilling on their lands. The cumulative impacts on vulnerable communities have been ignored and inadequately compensated.

Specific concerns exist for the compliance with:

• Convention 169 of the ILO: This convention states that when projects afect indigenous land or their interests in general, the government must ensure: “.. studies are carried out, in co-operation with the peoples concerned, to assess the social, spiritual, cultural and environmental impact on them of planned development activities. The results of these studies shall be considered as fundamental criteria for the implementation of these activities” (article 7.3)

• United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Article 23: ”Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for exercising their right to development. In particular, indigenous peoples have the right to be actively involved in developing and determining health, housing and other economic and social programmes affecting them and, as far as possible, to administer such programmes through their own institutions.”