Petition To Save Yasuni
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Petition to Save the Yasuni
Last May, I went on a three day trip into Cuyabeno, one of the biggest nature reserves in Ecuador. In spite of the previous group heralding little success of seeing the brochure-hyped pink river dolphins, spider-monkeys or many mammals bigger than the ubiquitous jungle bats, we careered down an Amazonian tributary getting right under three or four primate species, squirrel monkeys, orang-utans and before long were within a massive lagoon about half a mile wide surrounded by six fresh water dolphins, bobbing over the surface just five meters away from the canoe at one point: Nature isn't consistent. Zigzagging back through the myriad swamping layers of jungle at nighttime we swept the river with torchlight looking for caymans until we glimpsed the reflections of two pairs of amphibious eyes. Elsewhere, we caught piranhas and climbed up a locally constructed tower, just rivalling the tallest primary rainforest trees, and offering a panorama of the whole canopy, replete with the bat-like noises of howler monkeys, crickets, and birds. Anyone who doesn't know first hand how utterly alien are the flora and fauna of the Amazon to even the most lush of European environments see for themselves (after paying the carbon offset for the flights of course) but there is a basic difference between how life proliferates within that equatorial climate and how a small set of species win out in more temperate climates (I wanted to wear gloves while typing this...sooo cold) and fill all of the available niches – as quietly beautiful as the west coast of Scotland is, nature is tame. In an acre of the Cuyabeno national park, you could find over two hundred species of trees; here you'd struggle to count a dozen. The same goes for submarine species; there are thousands of tonnes worth of a single species of prawn in Mull, clearly it has little competition. Gabriel Garcia Marquez captures the difference well in 'One hundred years of solitude' when some explorers go off and after cutting a path through the forest, can almost see the wall of vegetation growing behind their backs. There's a constant sense that nature is ready to swallow up every man-made convenience – roads, paths, houses – which pervades all of Cuyabeno. This is not to say that the region is impervious to our actions; the previous September I travelled to the doorstep of this paragon of environmental integrity and stability, to a city called Lago Agrio (or acrid lake) with two friends who were in charge of video and sound documentation of a court case proceeding that was enabled by the elected government's mandate to cut down own corruption: The OCP (Oleoductos de Crudos Pesados) have been brought under scrutiny at last, and local farmers are pursuing reparations for damages to tourism, widespread pollution, and felling of trees on farmer property sancioned by previous governments and backed up by the military. The company brings petroleum from sites within this part of the Amazonia to the coast, and charges $2m per day to Texaco-Chevron who take charge of selling the oil when it is exported (though its hardly just the Americans who are in on the game – Chinese investment is now seriously rivalling US-based companies in many parts of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia). Since 1960, numbers of the Cofan Indian people in the region have been decimated from tens of thousands to less than one thousand, in what has widely been described as genocide, with Texaco's activities largely to blame1: the amount of oil spilled over those four decades equates to four times that leaked in the massive 1 http://www.chevrontoxico.com/article.php?id=315
Exxon Valdez accident. The extraction of oil has huge deleterious effects on the environment but the real damage is not just the absense of beautiful creatures like the pink river dolphin to keep us company; indeed the tangible beauty of the Amazon is not where its most cardinal value lies. The mass of vegetation within the ecological system sequesters rogue CO2 and provides a vital service in preventing as much of our emissions further aggravating the run-away global warming that is well underway. In the most self-interested way possible, it represents one of the most important kinds of environmental capital and we would be mad not to offer countries who are the custodians of this capital the investment necessary to keep these capital reserves high. Fortunately, we don't even have to go to so much bother – in Ecuador, Rafeal Correa's government has made a unique proposal to stop the Yasuni region to go the same way as Acrid Lake: the ITT (Ishipingo-Tambococha-Tibutini) Initiative will keep the oil in the ground provided the government recieves remuneration to the value of half the expected proceeds that it would gain by taxing the industries - $350m annually. This was signed by Correa on January 2nd 2008, but although it has met with enthusiastic backing from Spain, Germany and the Norway, precious little money has been promised (2m EU from Spain)2. The contrast with the response to recent financial crises is stricking: we are happy to spend in excess of £500bn to ameliorate damage to the economy, but the entire western political community is invited to raise a mere $350m (£202m) to protect a threatened zone the exploitation of which could only supply the world five more days of oil use3 and whose despoiling would be not just a huge tragedy for the millions of creatures and tens of thousands of farmers and Indians who live there (and the loss of cohesion to the whole biosphere in the region) but would forgo a crucial opportunity to maintain an ecosystem that soaks up our carbon use – and yet it cannot summon the political will to do this! Yasuni covers an area of 982,000 hectares and is similarly endowed with a great plethora of life-forms, many of which are unique to the reserve – there are more tree species in the park than in the USA and Canada combined4. The Mayor of the Orellana Province in which Yasuni lies, Anita Rivas, appreciates this and been touring Europe to galvanise support for the proposal. She came to Britain on October 18th and spoke with various MPs including the recently appointed Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Joan Ruddock who gave assurances that “the Government is in favour of such initiatives - our sympathies and goodwill are there.” 5In Italy, a senior official said, “We have an ecological debt to pay back, and this suggestion by Ecuador is an intelligent solution. It's the responsibility of all of us to look after these reserves.”6 So why has such a sensible and orthodox solution been met with silence in terms of concrete promises of financial help? The treaty is not that radical, it can be compared to the huge set-asides common in European agribusiness, the money given to keep a section of farmland uncultivated. The deadline has been pushed back twice, and is now set at December. It is true that in politics there are few black and white issues, and it is unlikely that the Government will rollback the entire initiative and hand the region over to the interested companies (including the aforementioned OCP), but would rather try to compromise with them and balance government protection (with whatever international subsidies it does obtain) with commercial concessions. But it is already under internal pressure – the President of the Central Bank, Carlos Vallejo, jingoistically claimed, “I would exploit the ITT [i.e. the Yasuni area] and I would grow African Palm,”7 so the Ecuador which relies on oil-exports as its chief revenue source, cannot fly in the face its own economic reality. On the other hand the ecuatorial Republic, which is the smallest member of OPEC, currently has its own reasons to leave the oil in the ground. All OPEC member nations are agreeing to limit oil exportation due to the momentarily decreasing value of oil (of course it didn't know that in 2 3 4 5 6 7
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/09/endangeredhabitats.endangeredspecies claim by New Internationalist. http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/96/Ecuador.html http://www.sosyasuni.org/en/News/Anitas-visit-puts-Yasuni-on-the-map.html http://www.sosyasuni.org/en/News/Ecuador-seeks-oil-compensation.html http://www.saveamericasforests.org/Yasuni/News/Articles/2008/10.4.08-NatureIsntEverything.htm
January when the proposal was made): supply is relatively high compared to demand, so the region is safer as long as that is the case. The flip-side is that as currently the problem (for us) is not a soaring price of oil (but reinvigorating the economy to stimulate demand such as would increase its price) now is a relatively friendly time for such an initiative. The cost to our Governments is just the asking price - $350m per year – and not the further cost of an oil price hike (as mentioned, in oil terms Yasuni is not huge, there are 900 million barrels in its oilfields8: but the worry might be of setting a precedent). It would be best if such vital protection were not subject to the whims of the market, so hopefully once established an initiative such as this would have the internal momentum and outside support sufficient to maintain their international validity once oil becomes as coseted a resource as it was last June. The project brings together several disperate movements and interests. Even non-living geological formations such as Bass rock or the Rockies have intrinsic value, but the integrity and stability of a biotic community as rich and diverse as found in any part of the Amazonia, and especially concentrated in the Yasuni area has a great intrinsic value quite apart from human needs. There are many indigenous people who might face the near extinction already suffered by the Cofan. The Waorani people are the main inhabitants of the region, some of whom have had little or no contact with hispanic, mixed (or mestizo) Ecuatorians, and are among the last non-contacted Amazonian indigenous tribes. They would be placed under serious threat if the oil drilling moratorium was ended and the region was 'fair game' again: there have already been oil spills in and around the Yasuni reserve9. On the grounds of human rights – both the right not to have your livelihood contaminated by outsiders and the right to privacy and cultural survival, consideration of their interests should veto anyone who wants to drill. Finally, we share an interest in keeping the oil in the ground even if we are only interested in our own affairs: while far from being a solution to climate change, it must be part of the solution. The long-term economic cost just in terms of pollution and of lost opportunity to sequester CO2 incurred by losing Yasuni as a living, breathing part of the Amazon, in the same way that the Lago Agrio region has been lost, is almost certainly more than what it would yield in barrels of oil, and is abhorrent in itself. So, for now, its all to play for. For reasons mentioned above, Correa's government probably has an interest in keeping oil exports relatively low, in feeding the image of an Ecuador with some level of independence from its oil wells (abetting growing fears of dependency on a finite resource), in avoiding the embaressment of the policy being a failure and in a good record for posterity of being one of the only (and hopefully growing number of) South American administrations to seriously protect indigenous peoples' interests, but all of these depend on its financial viability. And that depends on ours governments' response! So firstly, you should congratulate the resolve of Correa's government and send a petition to behove Rafeal Correa to (i) persist with and (ii) expand the mandate of the ITT initiative. Which you can do here: (i)http://www.liveyasuni.org/form.html (ii)http://www.sosyasuni.org/en/component/option,com_mailit_yasuni/ Secondly, Colin Challen (has a philosophy degree!), is Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell, and tabled a petition for MPs to sign - in full support of the Yasuní Green Gold campaign. If you live in Britain, get in touch with your MP and ask them to sign EDM 2192!
8 http://www.liveyasuni.org/ NOTE: estimate oil/day varies but 84m barrels is average: as such ITT fields contain ~11 oil-use days – still not huge! see http://www.nationmaster.com/red/pie/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption. total retrievable oil in the world is ~2tr of which ITT oil is ~0.045% 9 “Ecological and Sociological Impacts of Oil in Yasuni”, Karoline Nolso Aaen 2006
Last May, I went on a three day trip into Cuyabeno, one of the biggest nature reserves in Ecuador. In spite of the previous group heralding little success of seeing the brochure-hyped pink river dolphins, spider-monkeys or many mammals bigger than the ubiquitous jungle bats, we careered down an Amazonian tributary getting right under three or four primate species, squirrel monkeys, orang-utans and before long were within a massive lagoon about half a mile wide surrounded by six fresh water dolphins, bobbing over the surface just five meters away from the canoe at one point: Nature isn't consistent. Zigzagging back through the myriad swamping layers of jungle at nighttime we swept the river with torchlight looking for caymans until we glimpsed the reflections of two pairs of amphibious eyes. Elsewhere, we caught piranhas and climbed up a locally constructed tower, just rivalling the tallest primary rainforest trees, and offering a panorama of the whole canopy, replete with the bat-like noises of howler monkeys, crickets, and birds. Anyone who doesn't know first hand how utterly alien are the flora and fauna of the Amazon to even the most lush of European environments see for themselves (after paying the carbon offset for the flights of course) but there is a basic difference between how life proliferates within that equatorial climate and how a small set of species win out in more temperate climates (I wanted to wear gloves while typing this...sooo cold) and fill all of the available niches – as quietly beautiful as the west coast of Scotland is, nature is tame. In an acre of the Cuyabeno national park, you could find over two hundred species of trees; here you'd struggle to count a dozen. The same goes for submarine species; there are thousands of tonnes worth of a single species of prawn in Mull, clearly it has little competition. Gabriel Garcia Marquez captures the difference well in 'One hundred years of solitude' when some explorers go off and after cutting a path through the forest, can almost see the wall of vegetation growing behind their backs. There's a constant sense that nature is ready to swallow up every man-made convenience – roads, paths, houses – which pervades all of Cuyabeno. This is not to say that the region is impervious to our actions; the previous September I travelled to the doorstep of this paragon of environmental integrity and stability, to a city called Lago Agrio (or acrid lake) with two friends who were in charge of video and sound documentation of a court case proceeding that was enabled by the elected government's mandate to cut down own corruption: The OCP (Oleoductos de Crudos Pesados) have been brought under scrutiny at last, and local farmers are pursuing reparations for damages to tourism, widespread pollution, and felling of trees on farmer property sancioned by previous governments and backed up by the military. The company brings petroleum from sites within this part of the Amazonia to the coast, and charges $2m per day to Texaco-Chevron who take charge of selling the oil when it is exported (though its hardly just the Americans who are in on the game – Chinese investment is now seriously rivalling US-based companies in many parts of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia). Since 1960, numbers of the Cofan Indian people in the region have been decimated from tens of thousands to less than one thousand, in what has widely been described as genocide, with Texaco's activities largely to blame1: the amount of oil spilled over those four decades equates to four times that leaked in the massive 1 http://www.chevrontoxico.com/article.php?id=315
Exxon Valdez accident. The extraction of oil has huge deleterious effects on the environment but the real damage is not just the absense of beautiful creatures like the pink river dolphin to keep us company; indeed the tangible beauty of the Amazon is not where its most cardinal value lies. The mass of vegetation within the ecological system sequesters rogue CO2 and provides a vital service in preventing as much of our emissions further aggravating the run-away global warming that is well underway. In the most self-interested way possible, it represents one of the most important kinds of environmental capital and we would be mad not to offer countries who are the custodians of this capital the investment necessary to keep these capital reserves high. Fortunately, we don't even have to go to so much bother – in Ecuador, Rafeal Correa's government has made a unique proposal to stop the Yasuni region to go the same way as Acrid Lake: the ITT (Ishipingo-Tambococha-Tibutini) Initiative will keep the oil in the ground provided the government recieves remuneration to the value of half the expected proceeds that it would gain by taxing the industries - $350m annually. This was signed by Correa on January 2nd 2008, but although it has met with enthusiastic backing from Spain, Germany and the Norway, precious little money has been promised (2m EU from Spain)2. The contrast with the response to recent financial crises is stricking: we are happy to spend in excess of £500bn to ameliorate damage to the economy, but the entire western political community is invited to raise a mere $350m (£202m) to protect a threatened zone the exploitation of which could only supply the world five more days of oil use3 and whose despoiling would be not just a huge tragedy for the millions of creatures and tens of thousands of farmers and Indians who live there (and the loss of cohesion to the whole biosphere in the region) but would forgo a crucial opportunity to maintain an ecosystem that soaks up our carbon use – and yet it cannot summon the political will to do this! Yasuni covers an area of 982,000 hectares and is similarly endowed with a great plethora of life-forms, many of which are unique to the reserve – there are more tree species in the park than in the USA and Canada combined4. The Mayor of the Orellana Province in which Yasuni lies, Anita Rivas, appreciates this and been touring Europe to galvanise support for the proposal. She came to Britain on October 18th and spoke with various MPs including the recently appointed Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Joan Ruddock who gave assurances that “the Government is in favour of such initiatives - our sympathies and goodwill are there.” 5In Italy, a senior official said, “We have an ecological debt to pay back, and this suggestion by Ecuador is an intelligent solution. It's the responsibility of all of us to look after these reserves.”6 So why has such a sensible and orthodox solution been met with silence in terms of concrete promises of financial help? The treaty is not that radical, it can be compared to the huge set-asides common in European agribusiness, the money given to keep a section of farmland uncultivated. The deadline has been pushed back twice, and is now set at December. It is true that in politics there are few black and white issues, and it is unlikely that the Government will rollback the entire initiative and hand the region over to the interested companies (including the aforementioned OCP), but would rather try to compromise with them and balance government protection (with whatever international subsidies it does obtain) with commercial concessions. But it is already under internal pressure – the President of the Central Bank, Carlos Vallejo, jingoistically claimed, “I would exploit the ITT [i.e. the Yasuni area] and I would grow African Palm,”7 so the Ecuador which relies on oil-exports as its chief revenue source, cannot fly in the face its own economic reality. On the other hand the ecuatorial Republic, which is the smallest member of OPEC, currently has its own reasons to leave the oil in the ground. All OPEC member nations are agreeing to limit oil exportation due to the momentarily decreasing value of oil (of course it didn't know that in 2 3 4 5 6 7
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/09/endangeredhabitats.endangeredspecies claim by New Internationalist. http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/96/Ecuador.html http://www.sosyasuni.org/en/News/Anitas-visit-puts-Yasuni-on-the-map.html http://www.sosyasuni.org/en/News/Ecuador-seeks-oil-compensation.html http://www.saveamericasforests.org/Yasuni/News/Articles/2008/10.4.08-NatureIsntEverything.htm
January when the proposal was made): supply is relatively high compared to demand, so the region is safer as long as that is the case. The flip-side is that as currently the problem (for us) is not a soaring price of oil (but reinvigorating the economy to stimulate demand such as would increase its price) now is a relatively friendly time for such an initiative. The cost to our Governments is just the asking price - $350m per year – and not the further cost of an oil price hike (as mentioned, in oil terms Yasuni is not huge, there are 900 million barrels in its oilfields8: but the worry might be of setting a precedent). It would be best if such vital protection were not subject to the whims of the market, so hopefully once established an initiative such as this would have the internal momentum and outside support sufficient to maintain their international validity once oil becomes as coseted a resource as it was last June. The project brings together several disperate movements and interests. Even non-living geological formations such as Bass rock or the Rockies have intrinsic value, but the integrity and stability of a biotic community as rich and diverse as found in any part of the Amazonia, and especially concentrated in the Yasuni area has a great intrinsic value quite apart from human needs. There are many indigenous people who might face the near extinction already suffered by the Cofan. The Waorani people are the main inhabitants of the region, some of whom have had little or no contact with hispanic, mixed (or mestizo) Ecuatorians, and are among the last non-contacted Amazonian indigenous tribes. They would be placed under serious threat if the oil drilling moratorium was ended and the region was 'fair game' again: there have already been oil spills in and around the Yasuni reserve9. On the grounds of human rights – both the right not to have your livelihood contaminated by outsiders and the right to privacy and cultural survival, consideration of their interests should veto anyone who wants to drill. Finally, we share an interest in keeping the oil in the ground even if we are only interested in our own affairs: while far from being a solution to climate change, it must be part of the solution. The long-term economic cost just in terms of pollution and of lost opportunity to sequester CO2 incurred by losing Yasuni as a living, breathing part of the Amazon, in the same way that the Lago Agrio region has been lost, is almost certainly more than what it would yield in barrels of oil, and is abhorrent in itself. So, for now, its all to play for. For reasons mentioned above, Correa's government probably has an interest in keeping oil exports relatively low, in feeding the image of an Ecuador with some level of independence from its oil wells (abetting growing fears of dependency on a finite resource), in avoiding the embaressment of the policy being a failure and in a good record for posterity of being one of the only (and hopefully growing number of) South American administrations to seriously protect indigenous peoples' interests, but all of these depend on its financial viability. And that depends on ours governments' response! So firstly, you should congratulate the resolve of Correa's government and send a petition to behove Rafeal Correa to (i) persist with and (ii) expand the mandate of the ITT initiative. Which you can do here: (i)http://www.liveyasuni.org/form.html (ii)http://www.sosyasuni.org/en/component/option,com_mailit_yasuni/ Secondly, Colin Challen (has a philosophy degree!), is Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell, and tabled a petition for MPs to sign - in full support of the Yasuní Green Gold campaign. If you live in Britain, get in touch with your MP and ask them to sign EDM 2192!
8 http://www.liveyasuni.org/ NOTE: estimate oil/day varies but 84m barrels is average: as such ITT fields contain ~11 oil-use days – still not huge! see http://www.nationmaster.com/red/pie/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption. total retrievable oil in the world is ~2tr of which ITT oil is ~0.045% 9 “Ecological and Sociological Impacts of Oil in Yasuni”, Karoline Nolso Aaen 2006
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