There’s an attractive simplicity to the Ecuadorian leader’s proposal. Rafael Correa has said that his government is prepared not to extract nearly a billion barrels of oil from Yasuní National Park, a part of the Amazon rainforest of extraordinary but fragile ecological and cultural richness. To do so, however, Ecuador will need to be compensated by the international community to the tune of at least $350 million per annum for the next 10 years. The June 2008 deadline for this proposal to save Yasuní has been extended, but time is running out and the oil companies are poised, ready to drill. This month’s New Internationalist looks at what’s happening to a bold plan that could point the way to breaking oil dependency – but which is also fraught with possible snares and pitfalls. Is this just carbon trading by another name? Or is it the neatest model for tackling global warming yet? And what do those most directly affected – the indigenous and other peoples of Yasuní itself – think of the idea?
A vast forest so rich in trees that in just one hectare you could find as many species as exist in the entire continent of North America. A tropical haven, where flora and fauna took refuge during the last Ice Age, and which today hosts the world’s greatest biodiversity. A home to jaguars, giant otters, woolly monkeys and no fewer than 630 types of birds – including the rare harpy eagle – and 25 species of endangered mammals.
