With thanks to CSVPA member Vita De Waal for alerting us to this, please note the Yasuni National Park is at risk. Companies could start extracting oil underneath key biodiversity reserve on Earth by 2016. An article in the National Geographic in January 2013 warned of this risk. According to the article in the National Geographic, “The park sits at the intersection of the Andes, the Equator, and the Amazon region, an ecological bull’s-eye where extremely rich communities of plants, amphibians, birds, and mammals in South America converge.”
In 2007, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa had offered to leave indefinitely untouched an estimated 850 million barrels of oil inside Yasuní’s northeastern corner (known as the ITT Block: the three oil fields it contains: Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini). The UNDP made documentary about it in 2009. As payment for preserving the wilderness and preventing an estimated 410 million metric tons of fossil fuel-generated carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere, the President of Ecuador had asked the world to do more about global warming; Ecuador is seeking US$3.6 billion in compensation (roughly half of what Ecuador would have realised in revenues from exploiting the fossil fuels, at 2007 prices). The money would be used to finance alternative energy and community development projects.
