- Venezuela’s economic and political crises have driven away many international donors, leaving conservation groups without enough funding to sustain their operations.
- Widespread corruption and organized crime, as well as government hostility to foreign civil society organizations, has made it too dangerous for many conservation groups to carry out fieldwork in the country.
- Should President Nicolás Maduro win reelection later this month, conservation groups say the already dire situation could deteriorate even further.
Conservation has become a near-impossible task in many parts of Venezuela.
Government funding has dried up, political pressure has scared away international donors, and criminal groups continue to overpower the areas where the worst deforestation is happening. As the country prepares for an election at the end of the month — one that could be rigged in the ruling party’s favor — many environmental groups are quietly wondering how they’re going to survive another six years under President Nicolás Maduro.
“Environmental organizations, as well as Indigenous leaders, are finding it increasingly difficult to do their work,” said Olnar Ortiz, national coordinator for the Indigenous Peoples Penal Forum, a legal aid NGO. “It’s really difficult to go [to Venezuela] yourself because of the security issues and how hard it is to get access.”
In recent years, the Maduro government has become even more hostile to NGOs, intergovernmental groups and nonprofits. In February, a U.N. human rights agency was expelled for alleged dissident behavior. Last year, the head of the Red Cross was removed by the Supreme Court. While environmental groups can sometimes stay out of government crosshairs by doing less controversial work, such as in biodiversity, they still have to be careful, several groups told Mongabay.
On the coast, even trying to clean up oil spills can be a prickly subject for the government. Groups have been blocked from cleanup efforts, presumably because it would expose the true environmental impact of the accidents and shine a light on government negligence. Researchers trying to study the impacts of oil spills have resorted to monitoring satellite images because they can’t do fieldwork.
An Indigenous community meets in Amazonas state, Venezuela. Photo courtesy of Olnar Ortiz.
Under Maduro, Venezuela has spiraled into an economic crisis marked by hyperinflation, food scarcity and the outmigration of more than 7.7 million people. Millions of residents survive on less than $100 a month. Conservation isn’t a priority in the national budget, let alone for state or local governments. Conservation groups have had to shift their expectations away from the public funding that was all but guaranteed in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Back then, the government not only supported a lot of NGOs but also allowed funding from the U.S. that went to species conservation, environmental education and the training of professionals, according to the Tierra Viva Foundation, which carries out biodiversity and sustainability projects in the country. As relations between the two countries has deteriorated,