Yasuní: The Last Chance or the First Step? | Amazon Watch
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Yasuní: The Last Chance or the First Step?

March 5, 2009 | Campaign Update

Yasuní: The Last Chance or the First Step?

By Esperanza Martínez
Acción Ecologica

On Februray 5, 2009, presidential decree number 1572 indefinitely extended an initiative not to exploit crude oil located in Yasuní National Park in Ecuador.

With this, the Yasuní-ITT initiative was saved from one of the biggest problems that conspired against the original proposal — the deadline to obtain necessary international funds to offset the government’s forgone revenues. President Correa first gave the proposal three months, then six, then a one-year extension.

The uncertainty and lack of faith in the measure was further complicated by the fact that Ecuador had not developed legal mechanisms and financial guarantees, making it appear to be more of a passing whim rather than a serious, negotiated strategy to keep the oil in the ground. It would have been better to have a time limit for the proposal that allowed for necessary guarantees and strategies to be developed, which are related to climate negotiations on an international level.

Aside from granting an indefinite extension, Decree 1572 also resolved two additional issues. The responsibility for running the project – a task now given to the Foreign Ministry – and the involvement of a work team from the Environmental Ministry, which had previously been glaringly absent.

These elements set the scene for addressing some of the proposal’s outstanding challenges:

1. The need for a strategy toward international negotiations that this year have concentrated on debates relating to improving the Kyoto accords, which have been deemed to be evasive with few results and politically unfair. Thus, what is needed is to remove the broad carbon emissions marketing margins and move toward political agreements marked by environmental justice.

2. The need to end the ongoing drilling speculation by Petroecuador that worked against the call for no drilling. If the non-exploitation of the ITT fields in Yasuní is the first option, it should not have to compete with any notion of exploration – those elements leading to exploitation need to end. The confusion that the nation’s oil authorities cause in granting pending exploration permission to an oil company, or investing in infrastructure that would advance oil exploration (in Tiputini for example), should be prohibited.

3. The need to have a plan relating to the entire Yasuní National Park. It is difficult for potential international donors to accept that the whole park is broken up into oil concessions. Thus, an environmental appraisal and a process of abandoning any exploration, with the necessary restoration of the area, is indispensable.

If these elements are accomplished, Yasuní will be the first step toward improving one of the most painful blemishes of modern times – the destruction of paradise to support and preserve an economic model of consumption, coupled with environmental injustice and North-South inequality.

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