On Oct. 25, a Center for Strategic and International Studies panel discussed some of the environmental damage occurring in Venezuela, which has been led since 1999 by socialist Hugo Chavez and, since Chavez’s death in 2013, socialist Nicolás Maduro.
As many as 50,000 oil leaks and spills occurred between 2010 and 2016 across Venezuela, including Lake Maracaibo, as drilling rigs, thousands of miles of aging pipelines, and storage tanks in need of repair are decaying or leaking, according to a NASA report that cited information from news agencies, environmental groups, and human rights advocates.
According to Eduardo Klein, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar University, oil spills are “very lightly taken” in the country, in part because the industry is under government control via the state-owned oil company, PDVSA.
Klein added that Venezuela partners with companies and countries, including Russia and Vietnam, with poor environmental records.
Klein blamed the startlingly high rate of oil spills on multiple factors. Among them the fact that the government relies on old, poorly maintained infrastructure and cannot effectively clean up spills when they happen.
What’s more, it does not typically issue official statements on spills.
Speakers also discussed Venezuela’s “criminal mining policy,” which has impacted large portions of the highly biodiverse Amazon basin.
Cristina Burelli, a Venezuelan American entrepreneur who leads the environmentalist V5Initiative, told the panel that Venezuela’s ecologically damaging activities are “inherently tied to its political situation,” as the Maduro regime is sacrificing its natural resources and biodiversity to shield itself from “mounting international pressure.”
Panelists also took a question from a listener who wondered why Venezuela “[seem]s to get a pass” as compared with Brazil, led by the conservative Jair Bolsonaro.
“Why haven’t we heard about it [Venezuela] up to this point?” the listener was quoted as asking.
Michael Eddy, an acting regional administrator for USAID, said that Brazil is considered synonymous with the Amazon and with climate change, making it seem like a natural focus for environmental campaigns.
Earlier in the discussion, Eddy had credited Brazil, but not Venezuela, with partnering with USAID to balance economic development with rainforest conservation.
Francisco Dallmeier, the Venezuelan-born director of the Center for Conservation and Sustainability at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the National Zoo, said that many Venezuelans who would speak out may not feel safe doing so.
“Being there, you have to think every day, how am I going to survive?” said Dallmeier.
Burelli, of the V5Initiative, said that Chavez and Maduro had both been very adept at pitching themselves as pro-environment and pro-indigenous.
“Nobody really checked to see if that was true,” she said.
Panelists agreed that the country’s oil spills and illegal mining should no longer be obscured.
“The world needs to know what is happening in Venezuela,” said Klein.
