Polluting Partners For Green Mission
RESGUARDO BUENAVISTA, Colombia — At the edge of the Colombian Amazon, in an Indigenous village surrounded by oil rigs, the Siona people faced a dilemma.
The United Nations Development Program, or U.N.D.P., had just announced a $1.9 million regional aid package. In a village with no running water, intermittent electricity and persistent poverty, any money would mean food and opportunity.
But the aid program was part of a partnership between the United Nations agency and GeoPark, the multinational petroleum company. The company holds contracts to drill near the Siona reservation, including one with the government that would expand operations onto what the Siona consider their ancestral land. To the Siona people on the Buenavista reservation, oil drilling is an assault, akin to draining blood from the earth.
This collaboration is one example of how one of the world’s largest sustainable development organizations partners with polluters, even those that at times work against the interests of the communities the agency is supposed to help.
From Mexico to Kazakhstan, these partnerships are part of a strategy that treats oil companies not as environmental villains but as major employers who can bring electricity and economic growth to poor and middle-income nations. The development agency has used oil money to provide clean water and job training to areas that might otherwise be neglected.
But internal documents and dozens of interviews with current and former officials show that when the United Nations has partnered with oil companies, the agency has also tamped down local opposition to drilling, conducted business analyses for the industry and worked to make it easier for companies to keep operating in sensitive areas.
The agency’s Colombia office, in particular, is a revolving door of officials moving in and out of oil companies and government energy ministries. The agency has also worked with the government and the oil industry to compile dossiers on drilling opponents. There is no evidence that those dossiers were used to target anyone, but in a country where environmental activists are killed at a rate higher than anywhere else in the world, activists and community members said they felt their lives had been put at risk.
Even as the United Nations sounds the alarm on climate change and calls for a dramatic reduction in fossil fuels, its development arm at times serves as an advocate for the oil and gas industry.
The development agency said it supports clean energy and does not encourage drilling. But Achim Steiner, the agency’s head, said its mission is to bring people out of poverty, and that often means working in countries that are built on coal, oil and gas. “We have to start where economies are today,” Mr. Steiner said. “I don’t see a contradiction, but there is a tension.”
Adding to that tension, current and former officials say, is a relentless fund-raising pressure. The agency takes a cut — from about 3 to 10 percent — of donations. Officials, backed by the agency’s own audits, say that puts pressure on development officers to find partners, even when the donors work against their agency’s interests.
Money from the energy industry contributes only about $6 million a year to the agency’s $8 billion budget, according to data provided by U.N.D.P. But locally that money can have outsize effects.
Nowhere are those effects felt more than in Colombia, where oil companies, the government, armed groups and environmentalists are fighting over the future of the Amazon. Deforestation has reached record levels, threatening a rainforest that serves as a crucial buffer against climate change.
Until last year, the Siona people living on the muddy Putumayo River in southern Colombia saw the U.N.D.P. as an ally in that fight. The community had benefited from a previous grant from the agency.
Then came the GeoPark partnership.
‘Deal of the Year’
Mario Erazo Yaiguaje, a community leader and former governor of the Buenavista reservation, suspected that the U.N.D.P. aid program was a stealth attempt by the oil company to push his village into accepting its presence.
The Siona of Buenavista live in wooden homes on a small territory cut into the Amazon on the border with Ecuador. This region has been the scene of conflict for generations, and the Siona of Buenavista see oil companies as the source, drawing in both leftist rebels, who have attacked the oil pipelines, and the government soldiers who are sent to guard company infrastructure. The oil industry and the cocaine trade have contributed to so much violence that one of the country’s highest courts has designated the Siona at “risk of extermination.”
The United Nations announced its GeoPark partnership at a moment of controversy. The company was already defending a lawsuit over an oil spill in the region. Then, a local advocacy organization accused GeoPark of hiring an armed group to threaten drilling opponents. The company fiercely denied the allegation, but activists said they feared for their lives.
Mr. Erazo saw the GeoPark deal as a tactic. “Clearing their name,” he called it. “When we saw that GeoPark was giving money to U.N.D.P., we realized that they’d made the deal of the year.”
GeoPark says it has no interest in drilling on the Siona reservation and has taken steps to give up its lease on the territory. It said its partnership with the development agency was intended to help communities that had suffered economically during the pandemic. The money was never intended for the Siona, the company said.
The Siona of Buenavista began preparing for a difficult decision. Sitting in the front row of a community meeting last year, Mr. Erazo listened as the community’s lawyer, Lina María Espinosa, laid out their choice: “You are going to receive a sum that will provide for any family need,” she said. “But the money comes from, or will come from, the oil company.”
She asked: “Will you accept it?”
‘Feeding the Beast’
Mr. Erazo understood why GeoPark might want to partner with the United Nations. But why would a sustainable development agency partner with an oil company?
The origins of these deals are murky. The agency receives no dues from U.N. member nations. Its donations mostly come from governments and large international funds.
Former officials say today’s relationship with major energy companies can be traced in part to a fight with one of the agency’s biggest benefactors, a nonprofit fund called the Global Environmental Facility. In 2011, Monique Barbut, the fund’s top executive at the time, became convinced that U.N.D.P. was too focused on raising money, with too little to show for it. She began cutting funding.
Those cuts coincided with the effects of the global financial crisis and increased demand for development aid. So the agency doubled down on its fund-raising. Energy companies were among the targets.
Development officials recall constant pressure to find money.
“It’s a system centered on feeding the beast,” said Benoit Lebot, who worked on environmental projects during that period. Mr. Lebot said he ultimately quit.
Even today, staff members say — and performance appraisal forms reiterate — that supervisors prioritize raising money and starting projects.
Mr. Steiner firmly rejected the notion that he prioritizes raising money over running successful programs. He said that independent evaluators review and rate every project.
‘This Is a Trick’
In Meta, in the central part of Colombia, suspicions of the agency run deep. The agency has worked with Ecopetrol, the country’s largest company.
“The only reason it has come here, to our region, is to try to soften up the communities so that Ecopetrol can come in to do its oil work,” said Gustavo Carrión, a leader in Castilla La Nueva, a town in Meta.
The agency’s employees acknowledge as much. Fabian Espejo, who worked for the development agency in Colombia for five years, wrote in his 2020 doctoral thesis that the agency had good intentions but also took its cue from the oil, gas and mining ministries “to keep the production running smoothly.”
Mr. Steiner said his agency brings money and opportunities to people who need them most. He does not set Colombia’s energy policies and cannot order the government to stop drilling. What he can do, he said, is look for ways to minimize harm to communities and the environment.
“But also to maximize the benefits of an industry — extractive industries writ large — that is very significant, and a very significant revenue source for many developing countries,” he said.
A development official made a similar argument last year in a tense call with Mr. Erazo and others about the GeoPark deal. The United Nations did not invite the oil companies into the area, the official, Jessica Faieta, said. But “now that they’re already in the region, we can in some way guarantee that they comply with human rights.”
The Siona of Buenavista were livid. The United Nations seemed to be vouching for oil companies, Mr. Erazo said.
The Siona filed a formal complaint with the agency, returned their earlier grant and swore off ever again accepting help from the agency.
“People applaud every time a U.N.D.P. representative arrives because he’s arrived with something. ‘God bless!’ ” Mr. Erazo said. But, he went on, “This is a trick.”
Today, Mr. Erazo sees trouble ahead. Inflation and gasoline prices have wreaked havoc. A relationship with the United Nations Development Program would certainly have its benefits.
But he has no regrets.
The development agency canceled the GeoPark partnership and is now investigating why it ever got involved with the company when the Siona’s grievances were already so well known.
“I think that is a legitimate critique,” Mr. Steiner said, adding, “You know, we have learned lessons.”