Field Report: Engineers Without Borders Team Inspects ClearWater Systems In Ecuador, Day 4

This is part four of a series. Read part one here, part two here, and part three here. San Pablo San Pablo, about 2 hours upriver by canoe from Cofan Dureno, is a Secoya community—though they’ve recently voted to re-adopt their traditional name, Sia’Copai, so I should say it’s a Sia’Copai community. Here’s what it [...]

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Field Report: Engineers Without Borders Team Inspects ClearWater Systems In Ecuador, Day 1

Coca and Rumipamba – July 30 We spent one night in Coca, at the Hotel Auca, before embarking out into the Indigenous villages of Cofan Dureno and San Pablo in the Amazon. “Auca” is apparently a racist name for the Huaorani. It’s another tribe’s word for “savage”, and the white men who built the hotel [...]

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Deep in the Amazon, A Story is Waiting to be Told

Media technologies and professional skills are valuable tools that enable Indigenous communities living in rainforests around the world to communicate about the crisis of deforestation through sharing their stories, language, and art. Amazon Voice, a great new NGO that is working directly with the local Amazon communities based on a foundation of reciprocity and mutual [...]

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In Chevron RICO Suit Against Amazonians, Who’s The Real Gangster?

This post originally appeared on the San Francisco Chronicle’s City Brights blog. Have you ever seen the movies Erin Brokovich or The Rainmaker? Basic plotline: evil company dumps poison into town’s drinking water, for years people get sick while the company denies any wrongdoing, but then someone decides it’s time to fight back. The big [...]

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Forget the Black Gold, Just Clean Water Please

I’m sitting opposite the ‘Hotel Black Gold’ as the sun goes down over Lago Agrio and the streets start to hum with evening traffic, people returning home from work and families out walking together. It’s hard to believe that just a few short hours ago this street was filled with hundreds of indigenous people and [...]

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Mother Gunnoe: Mountaintop Removal Organizer Wins Goldman “Environmental Nobel” Prize

Last night Maria Gunnoe received a Goldman Prize for her work to end mountain top removal coal mining (MTR) – and protect her home. This is an issue that we are all a part of and Maria believes that, as energy consumers, we have a responsibility to know where our electricity is coming from. “When [...]

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