Oil exploration threatens Belize's protected areas.

The government of Belize is violating international human rights law and possibly other global treaties by permitting oil exploration on indigenous lands, according to the environmental advocacy group Global Response. The group says Belize's April 2006 decision to allow Texas-based U.S. Capital Energy to conduct seismic operations in Sarstoon Temash National Park, the country's second-largest protected area, violates a 2004 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruling and may also breach Belize's treaty obligations under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

Belize, a Central American country roughly the size of Belgium, boasts more than 90 protected areas and has an international reputation for conservation and nature-based tourism. Over the past decade, however, the government has issued licenses for logging, oil exploration, and other extractive activities in areas traditionally home to indigenous Mayan communities, including the 16,600-hectare Sarstoon Temash region of pristine forests and coastline along the southern border with Guatemala.

In 1998, two native rights groups, the U.S.-based Indian Law Resource Center and the Toledo Maya Cultural Council, filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (ICHR) arguing that by granting logging and oil concessions on indigenous lands without consulting residents the Belizean government was violating rights guaranteed under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. In 2004, the ICHR ruled in favor of the petitioners, concluding that the failure of the government to consult with the Mayan people, and the negative environmental effects arising from the concessions, violated international law.

Colorado-based Global Response and local groups say the allowance of new oil exploration in Sarstoon Temash contravenes this ruling. Since 2003, the government of Belize and the non-profit Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM), which represents five Q'eqchi Maya and Garifuna indigenous communities, have managed the park jointly. But SATIIM executive director Greg Ch'oc says outside money often has more clout than local governance or even international law: "A wealthy foreign corporation can set off dynamite and extract oil without an environmental impact assessment or a mitigation plan."

At the request of SATIIM, Global Response has launched a letter-writing campaign to Prime Minister Said Musa to stop the destruction of biodiversity and indigenous livelihoods in the park. Sarstoon Temash includes 16 kilometers of Caribbean coastline and encompasses 14 ecosystems, including undisturbed mangrove forest, Belize's only comfra palm forest, and the only known lowland sphagnum moss bog in Central America. The park hosts at least 226 species of birds, 24 species of mammals, 22 species of reptiles, and 46 species of butterflies.

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