By Javier Ponce

Diario El Universo, Guayaquil, Ecuador

Alberto Acosta proposed an unprecedented shift in oil politics: to leave the hundreds of thousands of oil barrels of Yasuní National Park's existing fields untouched. This would be possible if Northern governments and international ecological organizations handed over, as a compensation to Ecuador, fifty percent of the ITT fields production during the next ten years if these were exploited.

I don't know of any similar proposal in other regions.

Is this a dream? Not necessarily, if we take into account the enormous symbolic value that such a step would mean worldwide, at the climax of the global warming threat. The mechanism would consist in issuing bonds in which Ecuador would promise to respect the ITT zone in the future. This would be a first concrete measure in which the Northern societies would acknowledge an Amazonian country's effort to preserve a biodiversity space.

Should the proposal be executed, it would not only change the face of struggle against the Amazon's depredation at a regional level. It would also put the seeds of the first example of what could be a different conception of development that would not be sustained on mere and voracious capital accumulation.

If it is a dream, then it is one that has been fed for more than a decade by Amazonian Nationalities that have been talking about fighting for an oil moratorium in order to save what is left of the Ecuadorian Amazon Forest from extinction (particularly a zone that represents three hidden peoples' territory, three human groups living voluntarily in seclusion: the Tagaeri, Taromenane y Oñamenane - that zone possesses the largest biodiversity on earth).

On the other hand, Acosta's proposal forces us to think about a reflection that underlies in Ecuadorian people's conscience: it is necessary to move out of oil dependence. It forces us to look at Ecuador further than the petroleum mirage, to check the numbers that talk about a dramatic deterioration of all production activities hidden by oil revenues. It also forces us to put in the balance what an activity has meant for our own good, one that leaves the biggest revenues to transnationals and whose negative impact on the environment may be bigger than its benefit.

It is about a proposal that allows us to think about the possibility of building a less aggressive relationship with the region and its biodiversity, a relationship that would influence the region's harmony.

The Ecuadorian Amazon is going through two disasters: the human disaster experienced by nationalities in danger of extinction and the poverty that affected seventy percent of the population at the beginning of this decade; and the environmental disaster, with thirty percent of its native forest being completely devastated.

The ambition to control the Amazon's wealth has always been unlimited, from the bloody rubber years to the intentions to get hold of its fresh water-springs. For this reason, a decision that represents a political will to define the Amazon's future is a courageous and unprecedented step.