By Mike Seager, Yasunidos volunteer
A group of activists, musicians and actors traveled along the Ecuadorian coastline during the holidays to present short skits and musical presentations about the government’s plan to drill for oil in the Yasuní National Park. The “Yasuní Caravan” trip raised awareness about the Yasuni drilling project, discussed potential impacts of the proposed project with citizens, and gathered signatures to support a national referendum aiming to prevent oil activities in the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) section of the national park. The caravan visited 10 cities and towns in the Esmeraldas and Manabí provinces in coastal Ecuador.
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| Photo by Pato Chavez |
“The caravan was successful because it was able to bring information about Yasuní to people that knew very little about the issue,” said Alicia Franco, a caravan volunteer. “The amount of the signatures we collected was not the most important part of the trip, rather it was to bring this information to people that were unaware of the risks associated with the proposed Yasuní oil project.”
The Yasuní National Park is located in Eastern Ecuador, is part of the Amazon rainforest, and is one of the most biologically diverse hotspots in the world. An average hectare in Yasuní contains about 650 tree species, more than the total amount of native trees in the continental United States and Canada combined. 630 species of birds and hundreds of other species of mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles reside within the park.
In August 2013, the Ecuadoran government announced that it would commence oil exploration and extraction within the ITT block of the Yasuni National Park, which is the last block within the national park in which oil extraction activities have not taken place. A group of activists formed the Yasunidos group, which has become the principal organizer of the efforts to collect more than 600,000 signatures before April 12, 2014 in order to send a ballot question about the proposed extractive activities to a national referendum.
The ITT section of the national park also represents part of the territory of the semi-nomadic Taromenane and Tagaeri people, two of the last indigenous tribes living in voluntary isolation in the country, and some of the last remaining in the world. The proposed oil exploration and extraction activities would mean construction of “ecological trails” as the government calls them, or in other words, roads like this one. It would also entail the use of helicopters, which could disrupt wildlife habitat, and would increase the presence of oil workers, all which may lead to the contact or demise of the Taromenane and Tagaeri tribes.
Furthermore, according to statistics published by the Ministry of Environment in Ecuador, between 2000 and 2010 there were approximately 50 oil spills per year, almost one per week. It is more than likely that if the project goes forward, the Yasuní-ITT block will meet the same fate, which will have catastrophic consequences for the delicate rainforest ecosystems, the flora, fauna and the people of Ecuador.
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| Photo by Pato Chavez |
Alternatives to Drilling: Plan C
The government announcement that it would proceed with plans to exploit oil reserves in the Yasuní National Park came after 6 years of promoting an innovative conservation plan called the Yasuní-ITT initiative. The Yasuní ITT initiative proposed to forego the oil exploitation if the international community donated $3.6 billion to a UNDP administered fund, which would be used for clean energy and sustainable development projects in Ecuador. The $3.6 billion was roughly half the estimated amount that the country would earn from exploiting the reserves. However, 6 years after the initiative was first announced, the fund had accumulated only $13.3 million, and President Rafael Correa had said that “the world has failed us” and decided to move on to “Plan B”: exploitation of the oil reserves.
Although true that the international response was weak, the Ecuadorian government cannot place all the blame for the initiative’s failure upon foreigners. According to an article in The Guardian:
“Critics say [Correa] discouraged potential financial contributors by confused aims and strategies, publicly attacking the UN and his own negotiating team, and refusing to abandon a ‘Plan B’ to exploit ITT and making increasingly frequent references to it.
“In addition, activities in adjacent concessions always aroused suspicion. In 2011 Block 14, operated by PetroOriental, part owned by Chinese state company SINOPEC, was mysteriously extended east to Block ITT, creating an ‘oil corridor,’ according to NGO Accion Ecologica, and meaning that PetroOriental was now ‘just one step from Tiputini.’
“The following year the so-called ‘ecological trail’ was built into Block 31 where the deposits are so small in comparison to ITT that critics say the ‘real reason’, according to the National Geographic in January, is to ‘lay the infrastructure for an eventual move into the ITT Block next door.’”
President Correa has publically defended the decision to exploit the oil reserves by stressing that the revenue from the Yasuní project is essential in order to continue his government’s public works projects in health, education and infrastructure. In response to this argument, the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CDES) has proposed an alternative to increase government revenue called “Plan C.”
Plan C provides a series of policy recommendations that would generate about $2 billion more revenue than the proposed Yasuní exploitation would over 25 years, and would encourage more egalitarian distribution of wealth in Ecuadorian society. One of the plan’s recommendations is to increase the sales tax rate on the country’s 110 largest (richest) companies from 2.9% to 4.4%. This 1.5% increase would generate 2 billion dollars in revenue over 25 years. Another idea is to nationalize the telephone companies or to reorganize the previous agriculture for a ecological sustainable agriculture whose biological products would be very popular especially in Europe, where the market of biological products is booming. Ecuador provides also the best conditions for generating alternative energies. So another proposal is to invest in these technologies as it was planned in the Yasuní ITT initiative, too.
Upcoming Plans
Yasunidos plans to send groups of volunteers to several different cities and towns for the Carnival celebrations in February to raise awareness about the issue and collect additional signatures.
“The signature collection campaign is going well and more and more volunteers are signing up to help out with collection,” said Mette Orup, a Yasunidos volunteer. “However, more volunteers are needed not only in Quito, but at the national level.”
How You Can Help
In order to support the signature collection campaign, and help save this immensely important piece of the Amazon rainforest, please consider donating through the Greengrants webpage.
Your donation will go directly to the Yasunidos campaign.
- $25 dollars will support one volunteer trip to rural Ecuador to spread the word about the Yasunidos movement, gather signatures, and discuss the importance of protecting the Yasuní National Park.
- $60 dollars will pay for a weekly newspaper advertisement needed to promote the referendum question.
- $100 dollars will enable Yasunidos to print 300 flyers about the campaign.
- $200 dollars will enable Yasunidos to rent an auditorium to hold a forum to raise awareness about the importance of preserving the Yasuní.
- $450 dollars will cover the production of a television advertisement that will encourage the Ecuadorian people to sign in favor of the referendum.
Stay up to date on the last activities of the Yasunidos follow them on their facebook page “yasuni guardians” and on the website www.yasunidos.org.