The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the official position of Community Travel Group.
Yasuní National Park is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, and logically, one of the places with less human per square kilometer compared to the large and deforested cities of the 21st century. The reserve is 9820 square kilometers in size and is located between the provinces of Orellana and Pastaza in Ecuador. But this is only one more fact if what we really want to know is what this territory means to its inhabitants and to humanity. In 1989 UNESCO declared Yasuní “International Biosphere Reserve”, which was expected to protect the territory, but this apparently only motivated the exploration of the human and therefore the inappropriate exploitation of the reserve, oil exploitation that Is done with the knowledge and licenses of the Ecuadorian government.
Yes, it is not a lie what I have just said, but it does not have anything to do with a political matter: in 1998 the Intangible Zone was declared, which included part of the current Yasuní reserve, and was delimited because it was wanted to keep indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation away from the oil fields. Similarly in 2007, the protection commitment was renewed, this time putting the case at the international negotiating table, requesting the developed countries to pay an economic compensation for each year in which the rich oil deposits were not exploited at Ecuador. Six years later? Initiative canceled because developed countries were not interested in keeping that oil in the subsoil but put it on the market.
Due to the precipitous fall of the mobilization of environmentalists and government to protect the reserve, a boycott to the Amazon perpetrated by the developed countries, nowadays one of the three areas to be protected (Tiputini) is already in prosperous production of oil and for this year the second (Tambococha) will be fully operational. Tiputini has a yield of 20,000 barrels of crude a day, you can imagine how much that represents in carbon emissions …
At what point did the international reserves of the biosphere (taking into account the extensive and pompous title in earnest) become active oil exploitation areas? I’m not just talking about the geographic space that the reserve occupies, part of it includes the territory of the Huaorani nation, who are entitled to the extension of land but not any right to the minerals of the subsoil that they have inhabited in their original Amazon, Both the anti-exploitation demonstrations have been unsuccessful since they have no constitutional right to the oil that is just below their feet. There is no right to prevent the bleeding of your own land.
However, on paper, no more than 1% of the protected territory of the reserve shall be operated; It is not a question of throwing blame but of reviewing the facts and start asking us as citizens of the world what our role is so that this kind of things will not continue to happen. It is no longer a secret in the information age that the Amazon is in danger, but the only non-renewable resource is oil? Because when we talk about non-renewable resources we forget all these species (vegetable, animal and spiritual) so biodiverse that they keep in balance in the lung of the world? I do not think we can renew a single (if extinct) of the more than eighty species of bats that are in this reserve (to put a vague example). Nor do I believe that we can justify by the wishes of the “civilized” world the destruction of the forest, of the jungle, and of any manifestation of life on earth.
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