"The Amazon Oil Spills Overlooked By Environmental Leaders in Lima"

SAN PEDRO VILLAGE, Peru -- "It is a disaster hidden from the environmental leaders gathered inside the walls of a military compound in Lima on a mission to fight climate change.

Over the last few months – as Peru helped guide the United Nations climate negotiations – five separate oil spills along a main oil pipeline through the Amazon have spewed thick black clots of crude across jungle and swamp and carpeted local fishing lagoons with dead fish.

Inside the climate summit fortress – as in much of the world – the oil spills in the jungle went largely unnoticed.

But for the indigenous peoples living downstream in clusters of tin-roofed and thatched houses on the banks of the Marañón river, it’s been a season of sickness and fear."

Suzanne Goldenberg reports for the Guardian December 9, 2014.