After three years of work by many organizations, including The Pachamama Alliance and Fundacion Pachamama, news came out last week that Ecuador will be compensated for leaving oil reserves in the ground that are under the Yasuni National Park. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) will monitor an international trust fund for donations in support of the Ecuadorian proposal of keeping the oil of Yasuní untouched and underground. This is a major win for Ecuador, for The Pachamama Alliance, for the environment and for the world.
The Yasuní-ITT initiative started in the summer of 2007, when Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa, proposed not to exploit oil reserves located in Yasuní National Park, Ecuador’s largest nature reserve and a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Named for the three oil reserves it intends to preserve, Ishipingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT), this ambitious and first of its kind initiative was proposed in response to what was not included in the Kyoto Protocol or any other international agreement. Rather than reduce carbon emissions or deforestation, it looked to leave completely intact the land and its resources, therefore not even emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
In exchange, the Ecuadorian government sought monetary compensation from the international community, aiming to receive at least half of the money the country would have earned by extracting and selling the crude oil from the Yasuní. The proposal gained international support quickly as it was introduced, but the process slowed down in the following years when no agreement was reached on the amount of money Ecuador would receive.
This initiative not only saves about 410 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere and oceans, but it also defends cultural rights and the rights of Nature by protecting the great natural biodiversity of the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle and the interests of indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation in the Yasuní National Park.
Fundación Pachamama has been directly involved in the process of the Yasuní-ITT initiative. They had a direct representative inside the political, technical and negotiating committees created by the government to promote the proposal. FP took on communicating with the national and international community about it, and most importantly, about how to respect the rights of Nature now granted in the Ecuador constitution.
