'We can't hunt or fish': the villages in Ecuador's Amazon surrounded by abandoned explosives

In 2002, high explosives were laid in oil wells across 20 sq km of forest. The firm has gone but the pentolite remains, despite a court ruling, putting lives and the ecosystem at riskLiving on the banks of the Bobonaza River, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Indigenous communities in Sarayaku have always lived in harmony with nature. The rainforest, says Patricia Gualinga, is a sacred, conscious being.So when an Argentinian company was allowed to place a huge amount of high explosive around the rainforest to prospect for oil, the local Kichwa people fought back and eventually took their case to an international court. More than a decade after winning their legal battle, however, the explosives remain strewn around the community's territory. Continue reading...