A Toxic Development: Pollution and Change in an Amazonian Oil Frontier

The vulnerability of tropical peatlands to oil and gas exploration and extraction

“…In the Pastaza-Marañón Basin in Peru, by contrast, there has so far been comparatively little road-building specifically in relation to the oil industry (perhaps because transport along the river network there is relatively straightforward), although there are periodic proposals to connect the important oil town of Trompeteros to the national road and/or rail networks (Arima 2016; Roucoux et al 2017). Nonetheless, population expansion due to immigration, partly in response to employment offered by the oil industry but also tied to a larger political programme of economic colonization of Peruvian Amazonia (Barantes and Glave 2014; Delgado Pugley 2019), has generated new economic frontiers linked to the progressive depletion and degradation of wild resources such as fish, game and palm fruits during the past few decades (Mäki, Kalliola, and Vuorinen 2001; Suárez et al 2009; Harvey and Knox 2015; Schulz et al 2019b; van Lent et al 2019).…”