Rory Carroll in Lago Agrio, The Guardian .

Country asks developed world to pay it not to pump - and avoid further pollution of the Amazon rainforest.

The slogans "Yasuní Belongs to Everyone" and "Yes to Life, No to ITT", painted on the walls in Quito and other Ecuadorean cities in the last few days, are a sign that something new is happening in this country
by Kintto Lucas  from Inter Press News Service

Montreal Gazette

Under pressure to preserve the environment while at the same time ease the poverty of his people, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has come up with an unusual solution. Correa wants wealthy nations to pay Ecuador $350 million a year in exchange for leaving an estimated 1 billion barrels of oil under the ground in the pristine Yasuni rainforest. "I think oil has brought us more bad than good," said Correa during a recent visit to the bustling Amazonian oil town of El Coca. "We need to do something about it." Environmentalists around the world have celebrated the idea, apparently the first of its kind, as a way to preserve a delicate environment without creating an economic burden for the cash-strapped nation where six in ten people are poor.

By Rune Geertsen. What does a poor government do when it finds an oil treasure in a protected natural park? Does it choose profit, and therefore the pollution and the cultural extinction of indigenous people that goes with it, or does it leave the oil in the ground and wave goodbye to millions of dollars that could be spent fighting poverty?

Sir,

In your issue of June 21st you dismiss the tentative decision of the new government of Ecuador to leave in the ground the one billion barrels of heavy oil in the Yasuni National Park.

The Economist.
To be green or to be rich, must that be the question?

Daily Grist.
Ecuador offers to keep oil in the ground for compensation

Alonso Soto, Planet Ark . QUITO - Ecuador offered on Tuesday to drop plans to develop the country's biggest oilfield if wealthy nations pay it to safeguard pristine land near the proposed drill site.