Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In 2010 Ecuador signed an agreement with the United Nations not to exploit 850
million barrels out of an estimated 5,000 million barrels of oil reserves within the
one million hectare Yasuni National Park - one of the most biologically rich and
diverse areas on the planet designated by UNESCO in 1989 to be a Biosphere Reserve.
The Government of Ecuador estimated that it would require US$3.6 billion from
the global community to leave the rainforest unspoiled for a decade. This figure
represented half the anticipated economic value of the oil in the Yasuni rainforest.
Germany pledged US$836 million, and Sweden, France, Spain and Switzerland
announced they would also pledge some money. This agreement seemed to repre-
sent a great victory for indigenous peoples, particularly the Waorani people, the
Taromenanes and the Tagaeris who live in voluntary isolation, and was supported
by 90 per cent of Ecuador's population (Lebrun, 2013). Conservationists who had
been campaigning to maintain the ecological integrity of the area believed that by
preventing oil exploration they would also be saving the atmosphere from an
additional 410 million cubic tons of carbon dioxide.
In August 2013 President Rafael Correa appeared on television declaring 'the
world has let us down', stating that Ecuador had only received $13.3 million, although
the UN itself said that $376 million had been collected. However, drillings had
already taken place in the park as far back as the 1990s, and 40 per cent of the
area had been divided into blocks and allocated to foreign oil companies by the time
Correa made his announcement. The country's poor record in conservation and
preservation and the fact that 50 per cent of its exports are dependent on its oil
reserves had dampened the enthusiasm of many prospective donors. Having said
that, the governments of China and the US had never been particularly enthusiastic.
In an open letter to President Correa, the SOS Yasuni campaign group wrote of
concessions to foreign companies, road construction and the laying of pipelines
which had been granted before the August announcement:
All of these actions, which are being undertaken in advance of any publicly-
announced decision about oil exploitation in Yasuni, seem designed to ensure as
quick a start to oil exploitation as possible. They are of a piece with other recent
actions with high environmental costs: the growth of large-scale mining in various
regions of the country, the opening of the oil frontier in the south central Amazon
region, the advance of genetically-modified crops and large-scale dams, the
criminalization of social protest, and the control and disciplining of critical NGOs.
They can only be seen as part of a process of decision-making by stealth. . . .
The Yasuni-ITT initiative was not an isolated, one-off technical proposal, but
rather a pathway, a transition. It embodied a proposal for genuine civilizational
change. To question oil, capitalism's fundamental commodity; to call attention
to the impacts extraction has had on nature and the environment (and ultimately
people); to question the commodification of nature through carbon markets; to
try to map out a future without petroleum: all of these aspects of the Yasuni
initiative were born out of the experience and deep reflection of the society. To
traditional development, which makes one-sided reference to industrialized
nations, was counterposed sumak kawsay [ancient teaching of indigenous
peoples] and harmonious relations with nature. Yasuni was to be one of the
first addresses of utopia - the very antithesis of what it appears to have been
for your government, namely just another profit-making alternative.
(SOS Yasuni, 2013)
