Ecuador: The government faces a challenge in the Yasuni National
Park
When couple of days ago President Rafael
Correa affirmed that the environmentalists want to return to the
Stone Age on requesting an oil moratorium he was only repeating
what has been said for years by those who have shaped and maintained
the dependent country we have… The problem is that this time he
made this statement while the international press was sounding
the alarm over global warming…if we burn more oil we will end
up in the Stone Age!
Beyond this typically developmental
comment, it invites us to remember Plato’s myth of the cavemen.
According to the myth, we human beings
live in chains inside a cave, sitting with our backs to the entry
and with a light at our backs. The shadows represent the only
reality we can see. We do not notice the chains and we neither
can nor want to act against our perceptions.
However, Plato said that someone, sometime,
became aware that he was chained, got free, turned round and left
the cave. The light was so strong that he felt blinded and it
was only gradually that he got used to it and could see real things…
The Ishinpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT)
project, like a gigantic shadow in the midst of the darkness,
is being announced with the same enthusiasm as other large projects
that have failed. There is talk of 4,000 jobs and investment
of 5 billion dollars, the opportunity to leave poverty behind…but
if someone notices the environmental impacts, the response is
that “they will be minimized.”
Why is this project causing so much
fuss?
The ITT project is located in the Yasuni
National Park. According to scientific studies, the Yasuni Park
(set up in 1979) is a region with the greatest biodiversity in
the world. It is part of the Pleistocene Napo refuge. It
is also the territory of the Huaorani people and an area for transiting,
fishing and hunting for the Taromenane and Tagaeri people who
live in voluntary isolation and who need their territory to be
free from external intervention in order to live.
This is a project confronting two visions
of the world, two realities. From the shadow it projects images
of growth. But seen in the light of Ecuadorian oil experience
this would be yet another environmental and social disaster for
the local communities.
With proven reserves of almost 1 billion
barrels of heavy crude oil, the Government intends to maintain
the pace of its oil exploitation and exportation. It is interested
in a consortium involving Petrobras (Brazil), Enap (Chile), Petroecuador
and even Pdvsa (Venezuela), which seeks to consolidate a partnership
in the field based on integration proposals, whatever the costs,
even environmental costs. SINOPEC, a Chinese corporation is also
interested as they are trying to assert their presence in the
region and are submitting high bids at the cost of their total
ignorance of environmental issues.
However it cannot be ignored that the
project is within the National Park, environmentally a highly
sensitive zone. It is expected that the project will cause levels
of contamination even higher than those existing in the areas
already under intervention as the exploitation is of heavy crude
oil associated to large amounts of toxic water at a ratio of 80-20
(80 of toxic water to 20 of crude oil).
The project will undoubtedly cause widespread
degradation in the area, serious negative impacts on the life
of local peoples and the extinction of cultures.
With this scenario in mind, a proposal
has been made to sell the crude oil in the subsoil to ensure that
it is not extracted. It has been said that each barrel of oil
in the subsoil would cost 5 dollars. I have heard many people
saying that they would love to have 20 barrels, or 10 or 1 and
to know that it will never be extracted…
It is considered that with this proposal
a three-pronged objective can be achieved: to conserve biodiversity,
to address global warming and to protect the rights of peoples
in voluntary isolation.
President Rafael Correa, in an almost
challenging tone, entrusted the Minister of Energy, Alberto Acosta
and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maria Fernanda Espinosa with
“substituting the resources that the country will stop receiving
and that could be invested in health, education and infrastructure
programmes. If this substitution is achieved there will be no
call for bids” he insisted.
Ecuador has signed international conventions
such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Climate Change
Convention, ILO Convention 169, the International Pact on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, the Convention
for the Prevention and Sanction of the Crime of Genocide, that
protect the peoples and their territories and that aim at safeguarding
the Planet.
There are sufficient arguments for the
mechanism of selling oil to prevent it from being extracted to
operate but, is there enough political will not only at national
but at international level, to address the issue?
Will this be a project dealt with in
the shadows of an Ecuador in chains or, on the contrary, will
it be addressed in the light of a new vision of the country, where
the environment is not a requisite to be overcome but the basis
for the nation’s subsistence?
By Esperanza
Martínez, e-mail: tegantai@oilwatch.org.ec,
Oilwatch, www.oilwatch.org.ec
