Oil workers are busy on the banks of the Tiputini river, on the northern border of the Yasuní National Park, in Ecuador's Amazon region. CREDIT: Pato Chavez / Flickr

By Carolina Loza
QUITO, Oct 9 2023 (IPS)

The decision reached by Ecuadorians to put an end to oil production in Yasuní National Park, in a popular referendum in August, was a triumph for civil society and a global milestone in environmental democracy. But when it comes to implementation, the result is less promising.

Despite being a democratic decision, taken by the majority of Ecuadorians, who voted to halt oil exploration and production in the park, the authorities say the verdict is not clear."The referendum process sets a precedent because it is a way of establishing what is called an environmental democracy, where the people decide what to exploit and what not to exploit. These principles in practice are in harmony with the rights of nature that are mentioned in the Ecuadorian constitution, to protect nature above and beyond economic profit." -- Ximena Ron Erráez

During the Aug. 20 presidential and legislative elections, 59 percent of voters voted Yes to a halt to oil extraction in one of the most biodiverse protected areas in the world, part of the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest that has been a biosphere reserve since 1989.

At the same time, 68 percent of the voters of the Metropolitan District of Quito voted against continued mining in their territory, in order to protect the biodiversity of the Chocó Andino, a forest northwest of the capital that provides it with water.

In the midst of an unprecedented political and criminal insecurity crisis in Ecuador, the two votes were a historic landmark at a democratic and environmental level, in addition to demonstrating that Ecuadorians are increasingly looking towards alternatives that would move Ecuador away from the extractivism on which the economy of this South American country has depended for decades.

But the No vote, i.e. the answer that allowed oil extraction to continue in the Yasuní ITT block, won in the provinces where the national park is located: Orellana and Sucumbíos. This is one of the arguments of the current authorities to stop compliance with the referendum, arguing that the areas involved want oil production to go ahead.

Constitutional lawyer Ximena Ron Erráez said the Ecuadorian government cannot escape the obligation to abide by the result of the referendum.

“As far as the Ecuadorian constitution is concerned…..it must be complied with in an obligatory manner by the authorities; there is no possibility, constitutionally speaking, that the authorities can refuse to comply with the results of the referendum,” she told IPS.

One of the murals that still remain on the streets of Quito from the campaign for the August referendum on whether or not to keep the oil wealth underground in Yasuní National Park, to which voters decided “yes”: leave it untouched. CREDIT: Carolina Loza / IPS

Ron Erráez also complained about a lack of political will.

On Sept. 5, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, in a meeting with indigenous communities, described the referendum as “not applicable”.

A leaked video in which he made the statement drew an outcry from civil society groups that pushed for the referendum for more than 10 years. Yasunidos, the group that was formed to reverse the 2013 decision by the government of then President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) to begin oil drilling and production in Yasuní, has declared itself in a state of permanent assembly.

The Correa administration had proposed a project that sought to keep the oil in Yasuní ITT (Ishpingo, Tambococha, Tiputini), also known as Block 43, in the ground, on almost 2,000 hectares, part of which is within the biosphere reserve and the rest in the so-called buffer zone.

The initiative consisted of asking for international economic compensation for not exploiting the oilfield, which contains more than 1.5 billion barrels of reserves, in order to continue to preserve the biodiversity of the park and its surrounding areas. But the proposal did not yield the hoped-for results in international financing and the government decided to cancel it.

This is despite the fact that Yasuní, covering an area of 10,700 square kilometers in the northeast of the country within the Amazon basin, is home to some 150 species of amphibians, 600 species of birds and 3,000 species of flora, as well as indigenous communities, some of which are in voluntary isolation.

Environmental activists and organizations working in favor of keeping Yasuní’s oil in the ground say the management of the project showed the dilemma of finding alternatives to the extractive industry and the lack of real political will on the part of the political powers-that-be to come up with solutions.

View of one of the rivers inside the Yasuni park, in northeastern Ecuador, which preserves an incomparable biodiversity. CREDIT: Manel Ortega Fernández / Flickr

Ron Erráez mentioned an important fact: Lasso, in power since May 2021, will be an outgoing president after the second round of presidential elections is held on Oct. 15, and it will be his successor who will have to fulfill the mandate of the referendum on the national park.

One difficulty is that his successor, who will take office on Nov. 25, will only serve as president for a year and a half, to complete the term of Lasso, who called for an unprecedented early election to avoid his likely impeachment by the legislature.

Alex Samaniego, who participates in Yasunídos from Scientist Rebellion Ecuador, said it was clear from the start that the campaign for the Yasuní and Andean Chocó referendums was a long-term process, which would not end with whatever result came out of the vote.

“We know that we have to defend the result, defend the votes of the citizens and make sure that the referendums are fully complied with,” he told IPS.

According to the environmental activist, the democratic process behind the referendums will serve as an example for many countries, including Brazil, where communities are waging a constant struggle to combat climate change by seeking alternatives to the extractive industries.

Capture from a video of the Quito Free of Mining campaign, which triumphed in the popular referendum on Aug. 20. CREDIT: Carolina Loza / IPS

“We are told about all the money that oil brings to the economy, but very little money stays in the communities,” said Samaniego, who mentioned alternatives such as community-based tourism and biomedicine and bioindustries as economic alternatives to oil production.

Ron Erráez said “the referendum process sets a precedent because it is a way of establishing what is called an environmental democracy, where the people decide what to exploit and what not to exploit.”

“These principles in practice are in harmony with the rights of nature that are mentioned in the Ecuadorian constitution, to protect nature above and beyond economic profit,” she added.

Ecuadorian voters decided at the ballot box, and their decision should accelerate the possibility of a transition to alternatives for their economy. But what will the implementation look like?

The referendum on the Andean Chocó region covers a conservation area of which Quito is part, which includes nine protected forests and more than 35 natural reserves, in order to avoid the issuance of mining exploration permits, a measure that will be implemented after the vote.

There are contrasting views over the halt to oil exploration and production in Yasuni. The state-owned oil company Petroecuador highlights the losses for the State and presents figures that question the studies of groups such as Yasunidos.

The referendum gives the government one year to bring oil production activities to a halt. But Ron Erráez said it could take longer to dismantle Petroecuador’s entire operation in Yasuní ITT. Meanwhile, operations in Block 43 continue.

Sofia Torres, spokesperson for Yasunidos, said that despite all the talk during the campaign about economic losses, the vote showed that a majority of Ecuadorians question the country’s extractivist industry status quo.

In her view, although government and oil authorities insist that oil resources are indispensable for the country’s development, Ecuadorians have not seen this materialize in terms of infrastructure, social measures or services.

For this reason, they decided that “it is better to opt for the preservation of something concrete, such as an ecosystem that provides us with clean water and clean air and that is something like an insurance policy for the future,” she told IPS.

On Oct. 15, Ecuadorians will choose between left-leaning Luisa Gonzalez, the protegé of former President Correa, and businessman Daniel Noboa. It will fall to one of them to enforce the majority vote on the future of Yasuní and the halt to oil industry activity in the park.

Degrowth demonstrators marching through the streets of Leipzig, September 2014. The placard reads: Exchange Share Give. Credit: Klimagerechtigkeit Leipzig (http://klimagerechtigkeit.blogsport.de/)

By Justin Hyatt
LEIPZIG, Sep 22 2014 (IPS)

From the mid-20th century onwards, economic growth has come to count as a self-evident goal in economic policies and GDP to be seen as the most important index for measuring economic activities.

This was the premise underlying the recent Fourth International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equityheld in Leipzig to take stock of the “degrowth” movement’s progress in efforts to debunk the mantra of growth and call for a fundamental rethink of conventional economic concepts and practices.

Many followers of the movement, who argue that “anyone who thinks that growth can go on endlessly is either a crazy person or an economist”, base their philosophy on the findings of a 1972 book – The _Limits_to_Growth – which reports the results of a computer simulation of exponential economic and population growth with finite resource supplies.“In China, which is touted as a success story of economic growth, 75 percent of the results of this growth serves only 10 percent of the population, while the enormous Chinese urban centres have become so polluted that even the government would like to build eco-cities” – Alberto Acosta, economist and former President of the Constitutional Assembly of Ecuador

After Paris (2008), Barcelona (2010) and Venice (2012), this was the fourth such conference but, with some 3,000 participants, the largest so far. Hundreds of workshops, roundtable discussions and films or presentations were organised for the scientists, researchers, activists and members of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who gathered to discuss economic degrowth, sustainability and environmental initiatives, among others.

Internationally acclaimed Ecuadorian economist Alberto Acosta, who was President of the Constitutional Assembly of Ecuador in 2007-2008 told participants that in China, which is touted as a success story of economic growth, 75 percent of the results of this growth serves only 10 percent of the population, while the enormous Chinese urban centres have become so polluted that even the government would like to build eco-cities.

Acosta, who developed the Yasuní-ITT initiative, a scheme to forego oil exploitation in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park, is also an advocate of buen vivir, arguing that extractivism is one of the most damaging practices linked to latter day capitalism, as more and more non-renewable natural resources are taken from the earth and lost forever, while producing gigantic quantities of harmful emissions.

To counter extractivism, Acosta calls for the adoption of buen vivir, which is based on the Andean Quechua peoples’ sumak kawsay (full life) – a way of doing things that is community-centric, ecologically-balanced and culturally-sensitive – and loosely translates as “good living”.

For Giorgos Kallis, an environmental researcher and professor at the University of Barcelona, degrowth needs to provide a space for critical action and for reshaping development from below, in an attempt to divert more time away from a capitalist and towards a care economy.

When asked if the concept of degrowth was not too radical or uncomfortable a message, Kallis said: “Yes, perhaps degrowth doesn’t sit well, but that is precisely the point, to not sit well – it is time to make this message relevant.”

Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein, known for her criticism of corporate globalisation and author of No Logo – which for many has become a manifesto of the anti-corporate globalisation movement – joined the conference by Skype to tell participants that radical change in the political and physical landscape is our only real possibility to escape greater disaster and that reformist approaches are not enough.

One of the main driving forces behind the degrowth movement is Francois Schneider, one of the first degrowth activists who promoted the concept through a year-long donkey tour in 2006 in France and founded the Research and Degrowth academic association.

“Systemic change involves whole segments of society,” Schneider told IPS. “It doesn’t involve just one little part and we don’t expect a new decision from the European Parliament that will change everything. Dialogue is the key. And putting forward many different proposals.”

Taking the example of transport and mobility, he explained that it is useless to tackle the transformation of transport alone because “transportation is linked to energy and advertising is linked to the car industry.”

Vijay Pratap, Indian activist from the Gandhi-inspired Socialist youth movement era and member of South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy (SADED) pleaded for the inclusion of marginalised majorities in the degrowth movement. Pratap told IPS that “unless we initiate the processes so that they can become leaders of their own liberation, no real post-growth society can come into being.”

While he was satisfied with what he said as a very egalitarian and democratic approach to the organisation of the conference, Pratap said that inclusion should be guaranteed for those who do not speak English, those who do not know how to navigate social networking sites and those who do not have access to international philanthropic donor agencies.“

According to Pratap, who participated as an organiser in the World Social Forum (WSF) gathering in Mumbai in 2004, this was one major lesson of the WSF process.

On the final day, Lucia Ortiz, a programme director for Friends of the Earth International and active in Brazilian social movements, did not mince her words in the closing plenary when she proclaimed that “degrowth is the bullet to dismantle the ideology of growth.”

The movement to dismantle this ideology will now continue in preparation for the next degrowth conference in two years’ time.

And Kallis is convinced that it will be even more successful than this year’s event. Commenting on the increase in participation from a few hundred in Paris in 2008 to the 3,000 in Leipzig, he quipped: “At this pace, in twenty years, we’ll have the whole world at our conference.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The ecosystem and indigenous people of Yasuní Park are in danger, environmentalists warn. Credit: Iniciativa Yasuní-ITT

By Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Aug 24 2013 (IPS)

The Ecuadorean government’s decision to allow oil drilling in the Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse areas of the planet, has caused alarm among environmentalists and indigenous people, who are calling for a referendum on the issue.

President Rafael Correa ordered the shelving of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, a plan to leave oil reserves underground in the Amazon rainforest park in return for international compensation.

He complained that only 13.3 million dollars were contributed by companies, individuals and countries to a trust fund administered by the United Nations since 2007, towards a final goal of 3.6 billion dollars.

The decision announced Aug. 15 gives the state-run oil company Petroamazonas the green light to commence exploration in up to one percent of the area of the park, according to the decree that ended the Yasuní-ITT Initiative.

Opponents warn of the effects on the fauna, flora, and native peoples in voluntary isolation – the Tagaeri and the Taromenane – if drilling goes ahead in Ecuador’s largest protected area, covering 982,000 hectares.

On Thursday Aug. 22, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), the Confederation of Peoples of Kichwa Nationality (ECUARUNARI), the Confederation of University Students, and environmental organisations like Acción Ecológica presented a proposal for a referendum to the Constitutional Court.

They will need to collect 584,000 signatures – five percent of all registered voters in this country of 15 million people – in support of the petition.

In the proposed referendum, voters would be asked: “Do you agree that the Ecuadorean government should keep the crude in the ITT, known as block 43, underground indefinitely?”

President Correa urged people to collect signatures, and said he was sure that his own proposal to extract crude from Yasuní, for the purpose of boosting public expenditure, would win in a referendum.

The government says an area of less than one-thousandth of Yasuní park, situated in the north of the country, will be affected.

It also claims the isolated native communities will not be impacted, since the fields to be exploited (Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini – the ITT) are far from the area declared the “untouchable zone”, where they live.

José Lema, the president of the association of geological engineers of Ecuador, told IPS that it is possible that oil could be extracted as the government proposes.

He cited the work Petroamazonas is doing in the Pañacocha field, located in another nature reserve in the north of the country, which has received international recognition for environmental best practices.

“Petroamazonas is carrying out similar work there, and it has had only temporary impacts while building the oil pipeline,” he said.

The expert believes the first thing to be done is to carry out a new assessment of the area in order to redesign the drilling plan.

“There may be changes, because the methodology that was first used (in 1993) was a two-dimensional seismic survey…that determined reserves of 920 million barrels of crude,” he said.

“But once more detailed information is available, there will be a more precise volume assessment, which will no doubt be greater than the original estimate,” he said.

In Lema´s view, the main task will be to adapt the oil rigs that are already in the park, and to bring in equipment for the installation. Then the wells will have to be drilled and the oil pipeline built.

“Every project creates disturbances; the aim is to reduce them as much as possible by using the best technology,” he said.

Wilson Pástor, a former minister of non-renewable resources in the left-leaning administration of Correa, who took office in 2007, says the concerns are unfounded because oil is already being extracted in the park.

“Block 31, which was explored by (Brazilian oil company) Petrobras and now belongs to Petroamazonas, is located within the park,” he said.

He also noted that the Pañacocha field produces 18,000 barrels per day, but the crude is not processed in any way within the protected area.

“The same approach will be used with ITT, since there are already seven oil rigs in the area,” and cluster wells will be drilled. “Previously, one well per platform would be drilled, but now 25 wells are drilled from each rig, occupying less space,” he said.

In Pástor’s view, the most polluting activity is the treatment and separation of water, gas and oil, which mean “in practice setting up a refinery, and the refinery will not be built in the ITT…so the entire intervention will only affect 190 hectares.”

He added that electricity will not be generated in the field and the oil pipeline will not affect the park, as it will be buried in a trench three metres wide filled with biodegradable material.

Evidently, the drilling plans already existed

The former minister also said that oil exploitation would have an additional benefit for the park. “Today, the Yasuní lacks strong institutions to control access to the park, but if Petroamazonas begins work here there will be resources to protect it,” he said.

According to government forecasts, the Tiputini field will produce its first barrels of crude in two years’ time, Tambococha 12 months later, and Ishpingo a year after that.

But civil society organisations are not convinced by the arguments put forward by Correa and his government.

María Paula Romo, of the left-wing party Ruptura 25, who is a former member of the constituent assembly that rewrote the constitution, argues that the government is violating article 57 of the constitution, which bans extraction activities in the territories of isolated peoples.

The article says: “The territories of the peoples living in voluntary isolation are an irreducible and untouchable ancestral possession and all forms of extractive activities shall be forbidden there. The state shall adopt measures to guarantee their lives, enforce respect for self-determination and their intention to remain in isolation, and ensure observance of their rights.”

It adds that “the violation of these rights shall constitute a crime of ethnocide, which shall be classified as such by law.”

Romo told IPS, “Before talking about specifications for wells, the first step is to ask how entry into forbidden territory can be justified in the light of the constitution.”

The justice minister, Lenín Lara, said there are no isolated communities in the oilfields where drilling is planned.

But environmental experts and academics refute this claim.

“The Taromenane are hemmed in on every side. And even if the work is done with the best technology, pressure is going to be put on these peoples,” said journalist and filmmaker Carlos Andrés Vera.

With reporting by Carey L. Biron in Washington, D.C.