Ecuador’s Pres. Correa resisting calls to reconsider a scrapped initiative to leave Amazon crude oil untouched

csmonitor.com reported that….Standing before the United Nations General Assembly in 2007, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa offered the international community a way to make a significant impact on climate change: Donate $3.6 billion to the economy of Ecuador by 2019, and the country would refrain from drilling for oil in its Yasuní National Park, one of the most biologically diverse tracts of Amazon rainforest. The initiative would prevent the total release of about 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – the equivalent of France’s output in one year. At the center of the debate….The Yasuní’s indigenous peoples, who inhabited the land for centuries before missionaries, oilmen, and ecotourists started to make their way in, are not united in the debate over their ancestral land’s resources. A small number of “uncontacted peoples” live in voluntary isolation from the outside world, while other communities work with the oil companies and rainforest tourists.Read Article

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