Panoramic view of Yasuní National Park in Ecuador.Pedro Bermeo (Courtesy)
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On August 15, 2013 at around 8:00 p.m., the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, announced the cancellation of the Yasuní ITT initiative. It was a project aimed at undergrounding the existing oil in Block 43 of the Yasuní National Park (PNY), the largest protected area in Ecuador, which stretches over a million hectares between the provinces of Orellana and Pastaza in the northeast hold the amazon.
The cancellation of this project anticipated the government’s intention to exploit this block despite being located in one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet, an area declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO and home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane, the last remaining indigenous groups They live in isolation in Ecuador. Faced with this decision, the environmental group Yasunidos called for a referendum so that citizens could decide. Ten years later, on May 9th, the constitutional court, after overcoming countless legal hurdles, accepted the application and on August 20th the referendum finally took place.
A day after commenting favorably on convening the consultation, Secretary of Energy Fernando Santos spoke about the alleged losses the state would incur from not utilizing the ITT block: “It’s $1,200 million.” [anuales] less income in a country that has enormous needs,” he said. The government made it clear that an irrational will would stand in the way of earning clearly urgent income. He consciously avoided the dark nuances contained in this idea of development.
An initiative that failed
There are seven oil blocks that belong in whole or in part to the PNY. Most of them have been exploited for decades, but Block 43, also called ITT because it includes the Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini fields (162,000 hectares, including 78,000 in the national park), was the only one that remained intact, which is why it became the target of the Conservation.
The Yasuní-ITT initiative implied that Ecuador committed to keeping 846 million barrels underground, which would have prevented the release of 400 million tons of carbon dioxide. In exchange, the country was to receive financial compensation of $3.6 billion from the international community, 50% of what could allegedly have been generated as income from the exploitation of that oil. When the initiative was canceled six years after its launch, it had raised $13 million, just 0.37% of the expected amount. “What we were asking for was not handouts, but shared responsibility in the fight against climate change. The world has let us down,” Correa said. It was a proposal that was as innovative as it was utopian.
Parrots in Yasuní National Park, Ecuador, on August 23, 2019. Pedro Bermeo (Courtesy)
Yasuní National Park was declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1989 and, along with the neighboring Huaorani Ancestral Territory, is one of the most biodiverse areas in the world. Within the PNY, the Ecuadorian state established an immaterial zone (about 74% of its extent) in 1999 to keep it permanently off oil production. The ITT oil block borders part of the intangible zone, home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane groups related to the Huaorani, one of the country’s 14 indigenous nationalities. It’s not hard to imagine the threat that oil exploration poses to their ecosystem and culture.
Until the mid-1950s, all groups of the Huaorani nationality lived in isolation, but processes of forced displacement ensued when evangelization missions of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, with government approval, expelled them from their territories and relocated to a different only sector with the aim of bringing them to “civilize” in Christianity. Part of the territory left by them was soon occupied by the Texaco company, which began ecological destruction from oil exploration.
When the current constitution was drafted in 2008, it was presented as revolutionary, recognizing nature as a subject of rights and guaranteeing indigenous peoples prior consultation on exploitation plans on their territories. However, after then-President Correa announced the failure of Yasuní’s ITT initiative, he asked the National Assembly, citing the constitution, to declare oil production in the ITT bloc of national interest. The application also included neighboring Block 31, although it had been in use since 2009. It was later revealed that the Department of Justice and the Department of Environment were responsible for producing maps so the Assembly could make the statement The area has arbitrarily shifted the location of isolated towns, making them appear as if they were not in the region to be exploited , even though they were.
On the night of August 15, 2013, hundreds of people waited at the foot of the seat of government for the president’s announcement. Protests erupted after it became known that the ITT bloc would be exploited. In the heat of these riots, members of human rights groups, environmentalists and feminists, mostly young people between the ages of 16 and 30, formed the Yasunidos Collective, an anti-partisan front dedicated to all causes challenging the economic model extractivist and the has made the Yasuní ITT case his symbol of struggle.
Just a week later, Yasunidos submitted a question to the Constitutional Court to convene the aforementioned consultation: “Do you agree that the Ecuadorian government should keep the ITT crude, known as Block 43, underground indefinitely?” was not only about stopping the emission of greenhouse gases, but also about defending the territory of isolated peoples,” says Pedro Bermeo, legal adviser and spokesman for Yasunidos. “It was also about protecting the most biodiverse place on the planet and strengthening the rights of democratic participation so that we, the citizens, can decide whether or not to take advantage of the ITT.” It was the first initiative of this Type that should be developed at national level. To achieve this, signatures had to be collected from 5% of the electoral roll, 583,000 signatures at the time.
Batman against oil exploitation
As of April 2014, 1,600 volunteer collectors managed to collect 757,623 signatures, far more than required. In the same month, they handed them over to the National Electoral Council for review. But in a process that years later turned out to be fraudulent, that body annulled more than 400,000 signatures and disallowed the consultation. The most bizarre reasons were given in defense of canceling the signatures: that they only had to be done with a blue ink pen, that the forms weren’t all the same size or weight, that the copies on the back…to those who collected them , missing the identification documents that no one named Batman could sign, although there are people with that name in Ecuador and in fact a certain Batman had signed in defense of Yasuní.
A lengthy process had begun, in which five state institutions weaved an unspeakable web of legal obstacles to prevent the consultation from being approved. The process would take 10 years and involve three governments. “It’s clear that regardless of the current ruler, the state looks after the resource interests that are the blood of capital,” says Bermeo.
Finally, in September 2022, the National Electoral Council approved the call for consultation after the Constitutional Court found that the rights of Yasunidos and the signatories had been violated. The question tabled ten years ago had yet to be approved, and that happened on May 9th.
If the answer is yes, the oil fields already in operation there are to be gradually dismantled. Nothing could prevent that. In 2016, when the declaration of national interest went into effect, state-owned oil company Petroamazonas began exploiting the Tiputini and Tambococha fields and advanced prospecting in Ishpingo in 2022.
The members of Yasunidos: Omar Bonilla, Alejandra Santillana, Jorge Espinosa, Manai Prado, Pedro Bermeo, Antonella Calle, Fernando Muñoz-Miño and Sofía Torres. Ana Maria Buitron
Lighters on grandfather’s grave
Alicia Cahuiya and her ancestors were born in the municipality of Ñuneno, in the heart of what is now Yasuní National Park, within the Intangible Zone. In the mid-1970s, when she was six months old, she and her family were abducted from their territory by the Summer Institute of Linguistics and relocated to a protectorate called Evangelists. They lived away from home for more than ten years.
One day, tired of religious submission, Alicia’s father told his family that they were returning to their ancestral homeland. They marched for hours in the middle of the jungle until they found they had reached Ñuneno. Things had changed there. “Our territory was huge, everyone could move freely, fished, collected morete, ungurahua and cocoa,” says Cahuiya, now 47 years old and mother of five children. “But when they evicted us without our consent, the oil companies, with the help of the missionaries, rushed in and the destruction began.”
Alicia grew up with a strong image of Iteca, her paternal grandfather, whom she had never seen except in dreams. He knew he was a strong warrior, always defending his territory spear in hand until he was killed by invading rubber cones. One day, when she was 15, Alicia wanted to go to the distant place where Iteca was buried to leave her an offering: a bowl of chicha and some venison. “It was very important for me to see where he is buried. I thought when I arrived I would find everything full of medicinal plants, chonta, guaba, whatever he wanted, but instead there were only roads, tanks and lighters burning oil. That’s when I started crying because it was my grandfather’s cemetery,” and Alicia cries as she tells it.
Full of anger, she wondered how these companies could invade her land without consulting the communities. “Now you can loudly defend our territory,” his grandmother Waare told him. Even at the age of 15, Alicia began meeting with women of her nationality to organize defense. This began a political career that has lasted to this day.
In doing so, he understood that the collusion between the state and the evangelists had ended with the involvement of corrupt leaders of their congregations, who allowed looting in exchange for favors. To create options for financial autonomy and create a space for political management, she founded Amwae, the Association of Waorani Women of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and later became the representative of Nawe, the organization that unites the entire Huaorani nationality of Ecuador.
When the exploitation of the ITT bloc began in 2016, he filed a complaint with the National Assembly as a representative of the Nawe and came into contact with Yasunidos there. They offered him support and legal advice, he became part of the collective and became the personification of the struggle from the heart of the jungle.
Alicia Cahuiya, Head of Huaorani and Head of Gender and Family of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie).Ana María Buitrón
The Paradox of Abundance
Ever since Ecuador became an oil exporting country in 1972, the argument of the economic benefits of oil production has been entrenched in the collective imagination. It has brought with it the ultimate weight of an idealized panacea: ending hunger and poverty. The truth is that this goal has not been achieved and that most of the poverty is concentrated in the Amazon. According to the 2022 National Employment Survey, the provinces of Morona Santiago, Orellana, Pastaza and Napo, all in the Amazon and with oil production, are the poorest in the country. It’s about the paradox of abundance, says the economist Carlos Larrea in the Amicus Curiae, which he presented to the constitutional court this year to support the consultation.
In that document, Larrea, who was director of the Yasuní-ITT initiative, mentions that according to the Department of Energy, the country’s proven reserves are 1,338 million barrels, which could be depleted in less than five years if no new reserves are integrated. In the case of Yasuní, he points out that blocks 31 and 43 have already entered their decline phase due to the high density of the crude oil and the high proportion of formation water, the water that is extracted together with the crude oil. This water is separated and then discharged back underground, at a high economic and environmental cost. For this reason too, experts point out that all the Yasuní rivers are contaminated.
Speaking about the investigations being carried out in the Ishipingo field, which is the most sensitive because it borders the immaterial zone, Minister Santos told a local media outlet in early April: “It was disappointing because a very strong tar was sprouting around this one Processing crude oil would require large foreign investments, the profitability of which is not guaranteed.
Larrea also talks about the export paradox. Ecuador exports crude oil but imports more expensive petroleum-derived fuels. “The country is approaching a point where its fuel imports equal oil exports and is no longer an oil country.”
Perhaps the most thorny paradox is that of determining income. Ecuador could benefit provided they are invested in its social and economic development, but the Organic Law Regulating Public Finances (2020) states that profits from the oil business must be used to pay off foreign debt. “With this law embedded in the IMF-sponsored neoliberal reforms, the country was unable to reinvest extraordinary oil resources in social development,” says Larrea.
Due to all the complications involved in producing crude oil in the ITT block, Petroecuador has pointed out that of the 846 million barrels estimated as recoverable reserves in 2007, 136 million remain today. But he has defended that this would generate around $4.8 billion over the next 33 years, or $148 million a year, an amount that accounts for barely 0.47% of the general government budget in 2023.
The Yasunidos collective during a workshop. Ana Maria Buitron
“The most biodiverse place on the planet is being destroyed on a very small scale,” says Pedro Bermeo. Fernando Benalcázar, former Vice Minister of Mines, defends the exploitation of the ITT block, claiming that the affected part of the PNY is negligible. “To prevent 85 hectares from being developed for the benefit of 18 million Ecuadorians seems out of place,” he said.
Among the alternatives to the extractivist model, Bermeo puts the abolition of tax exemptions for the richest in the country first. According to the Internal Revenue Service (SRI), Ecuador did not receive $6.338 million more in 2021 because of this, which is 30% more in just one year than what it would receive in 33 years for exploiting the ITT block.
The Cancer of Corruption
If the proceeds from oil sales are not invested in development, if they are almost equal to the cost of importing derivatives, if reserves are depleted, who will get rich from this business? “These are the big companies that offer oil services,” replies Ramiro Ávila, Yasunidos’ lawyer and university professor. “Those who build the pipeline, those who maintain machines, those who provide transportation, storage and cleaning, they’re the ones who get really rich, it’s not Ecuador.”
Ecuador would become a different country since entering the oil economy. “The state became particularly corrupt because there was a lot of money,” says Ávila. “The extractivist model is corrupt wherever you see it: you corrupt to get the tender, to enter the community, to allocate the resources. It is a catastrophe.” Minister Santos himself confirmed this in his inaugural speech in October 2022: “Oil brought development, but it also brought the cancer of corruption.”
Despite the arguments demonstrating the current weakness of oil as an economic engine and the various environmental damages caused by its exploitation, Ecuador will not opt for a more responsible and fair model in the near future. But stopping the exploitation of the ITT bloc could be symbolic. “The country will not collapse if Block 43 stops working,” says Ávila. “But if we choose to do this, we are choosing a way of life that is not based on human exploitation or nature’s aggressive extractivism. That is what is at stake.”