Galápagos on the Brink

The famed archipelago is suffering the effects of political clientelism, unregulated economic activity and the institutional weakness of Ecuador, says analyst Javier Ponce in this exclusive column for Tierramérica.

QUITO - Ecuador is petitioning the International Maritime Organization to declare the Galápagos Islands an "especially sensitive marine zone", in order to protect the archipelago from the pollution generated by international shipping traffic.

But the islands that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution are in fact turning into a "marine zone constantly on the verge of crisis" -- and not necessarily because of foreign ships passing by.

In recent weeks, two events opened the doors to future disaster: the military announced intentions to take over Baltra Island, the gateway to the archipelago; and a prolonged work stoppage by artisanal fisherfolk that ended with an absurd agreement signed by an environment minister who was forced to resign by the flood of international protests.

The armed forces have an old complex in Baltra, dating to World War II when it was a U.S. military enclave. A curious law passed by the Ecuadorian Congress, known as the "trolleybus act" for including an assorted and incoherent collection of legal provisions, authorized public institutions to demand ownership over any property that they have possessed de facto for five years.

Under the shield of that law, the military's appetite for the entire island was awakened.

The matter triggered such strong reactions in Ecuador and abroad that the armed forces began to regret the move and are trying to hush up the legal decision that gave them ownership of Baltra, and which would have meant that the environmental authorities would lose control over what happened on the island.

"Galápagos cannot be managed as an autonomous archipelago. There is a close interrelation between the marine and land ecosystems," says Ruth Elena Ruiz, executive director of the non-governmental Fundación Natura.

Meanwhile, alongside the military caprice thrives that of the political bosses: behind the February fishing strike, which sought to overturn the existing fishing regulations, was a local legislative deputy.

The Galápagos fisherfolk, who already have the privilege of being the only ones authorized to fish the archipelago, wanted permission to once again use the dangerous "palangre", the high-capacity fishing implement that drags in everything in its path, including sharks, sea lions and birds.

The irony of the case is that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has provided resources to build fishing warehouses so large that to fill them the fisherfolk would have to use methods like the "palangre". An international development institution stirring the appetite of the predators!

The ongoing danger of destruction that looms over a landscape in which time has been frozen leads to paradoxes. For example, a squadron of armed helicopters has declared war on the goats. Ruth Elena Ruiz insists on the urgent need to get rid of this species foreign to the Galápagos because they could wipe out the islands' native species. She points out how difficult and costly it would be to use land-based methods to remove these animals inhabiting the cliffs. So eliminating them from the air, as strange as that sounds in these times of wars between unequal rivals, is the most advisable approach.

The Galápagos are an expression of the curious contradiction between an environmental laboratory and the survival of the human population that poverty expelled from continental Ecuador. All of the latest theories are being put to the test there.

Is sustainable development possible in the midst of the need for expansion of the exploitation of resources?

Is it possible to protect, practically under a glass bell, this region that for centuries remained untouched, beyond the scope of market interests (those interests led, in past centuries, by the series of whale hunts that grew closer to the Galápagos)?

We cannot take our eyes off those islands even one moment, because the Galápagos do not escape Ecuador's political clientelism, the informal nature of its economy or the weakness of its institutions -- when it isn't the sophisticated appetites of the Orient periodically causing the devastating hunt for sea cucumbers to meet the demands of the Japanese ships surrounding the islands.

For today, the Galápagos are being saved from military bases and from over-fishing. We will have to deal with whatever occurs tomorrow.

* Javier Ponce is an Ecuadorian author and columnist. Among his books on indigenous issues is "Y la madrugada los sorprendió en el poder" (And in the Morning They Found Themselves in Power).