[OANNES Foro] About Securing Citizenship Participation. The Artisanal Paracas Fishermen and Pluspetrol

[Mario Cabrejos]

PERU UPDATE
A Bimonthly Publication of the Peru Support Group
Issue 151: Apr - May 2012
www.perusupportgroup.org.uk

The Problems of Securing Citizenship Participation
Andrea Boyco Orams, postgraduate student in Development Geography at the University of
Bergen, reviews problematic efforts to include artisanal fishermen in Ica's development.

The recent passing of the Prior Consultation Law in Peru has encouraged many to take a renewed look at the country's participative legislation. The law, which draws on Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation, provides for consultation with the country's indigenous and tribal populations (understood to be the descendants of those living in the country prior to the arrival of the Spanish). It will apply only to groups that identify themselves as being part of either 'indigenous' or 'tribal' communities. 

However, this legislation is not the only measure that aimed at greater inclusion of vulnerable populations in decisionmaking
processes. A similar, albeit much scaled-down, initiative was passed via supreme decree in 2008. The aim of this law was to
provide for some level of engagement with citizens prior to the commencement of hydrocarbons projects. The decree opened participation in the process to all who wished to take part, giving particular attention to vulnerable groups. Unlike the 2012 measure, it did not exclude stakeholders who did not belong to indigenous or tribal groups. However, these earlier attempts to obtain local buy-in for hydrocarbons projects were not without problems. An illustrative example of the difficulties is the case of artisanal fishermen operating in the Paracas bay, near Pisco in the Ica region.

The Fishermen and Pluspetrol
Since 2004 the Paracas bay has been home to a processing plant and series of pipelines as part of the Camisea gas project, led by Pluspetrol Peru. Artisanal fishermen living nearby rely on the ocean for their day-today activities and any small changes in the
environment could have a dramatic effect on their work. They are mostly an uneducated group as many move into the family business while still very young. Some have criticised the fishermen for what they perceive to be a poor work ethic, saying group
members work only to gather their daily income and show little interest in expanding their operations. The long-term survival of their activities has also been endangered by historical overexploitation of fishing stocks, both by industrial and artisanal fishing operations. For all the above reasons, the fishermen should be classified as a vulnerable group by Peruvian legislation. 

As a precondition for starting its operations, in 2003 the government requested that Pluspetrol sign eight socio-environmental agreements with different stakeholders in its proposed area of operations. These were to be signed only with associations of fishermen (loose groupings that represent the interests of their members) that had registered with the Ministry of Production. At this stage separate accords were signed with both of the associations of artisanal fishermen from the San Andrés village. A third agreement was also signed with a grouping of five similar associations from Pisco city. Under these arrangements, Pluspetrol committed to pay US$ 800,000 to the fishermen over the project's life span. The funds were to be released periodically and were only to be used to finance approved development projects.

Both Pluspetrol and the fishermen agree that there have been problems since the start. The fishermen complain that Pluspetrol
won't accept the projects they propose, and that the majority of the funds therefore remain unused. They claim Pluspetrol should
provide better guidance as to what they believe constitutes a "proper" development project. Pluspetrol on the other hand, says it
is not their responsibility to train fishermen on how to design and write qualifying project proposals. The result has been a growing
sense of mutual distrust. 

Project Expansions

With two expansions of the project in 2008 and 2011 the fishermen believed new compensation agreements would be drawn up.
Those that had been unable to access the development fund from the original project thus registered themselves as family-based
associations to qualify for the anticipated new agreements. 

In the event, Pluspetrol did not sign any new contracts under its project expansion programme. Instead, from 2007 it began making
payments to another type of fund, known as a voluntary contribution fund, whose earnings would be used for development projects in the nearby area. In contrast with the earlier scheme, these sums were due to be distributed directly to individuals rather than being channelled through associations. US$ 72,000 was set aside for the area as a whole, and an additional US$ 2,000 was to be given to the fishermen. While the larger fund has already been spent, no-one has yet been able to access the US$ 2,000 as Pluspetrol is still finalising its plans for the distribution of the money.

Monitoring Programmes
Discussions over access to development funds are not the only problematic area of relations between the fishermen and the firm. There have been other issues over a voluntary monitoring programme set up when the Pluspetrol project started in 2004. Representatives from the local population, including some of the fishermen, were invited to participate in the monitoring process.
However, these efforts quickly stalled as the fishermen requested payment for their involvement to compensate them for missing
a day's work. When Pluspetrol agreed to the payouts, those outside the scheme claimed that those who had received Pluspetrol
money had become employees of the firm. This meant, they argued, that those who had received the payments could no longer be trusted.

An effort to restart the monitoring programme has begun within the framework of the 2008 hydrocarbons decree mentioned above. 
As part of this initiative Pluspetrol has begun training a number of local stakeholders including students from the local university,
port authorities, and members of the Paracas National Reserve. Due to the previous difficulties however, the firm has taken the conscious decision not to include the fishermen. This runs counter to the principle of citizenship participation as outlined in the
2008 legislation. 

The artisanal fishermen in the Paracas Bay are just one example of a problem that is replicated right across the country. Although the particular circumstances may vary, many other sections of the population have also proved unable to effectively participate in local development decisions. Careful attention will need to be paid to how the Prior Consultation Law is applied at a local level to ensure all vulnerable groups that should be consulted are indeed being included in the process.



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