Ecuador has put a moratorium on oil exploration in one of the country’s largest reserves located in the Yasuni national park, and wants to create a fund into which donors could pay for voluntary emission reduction credits for the avoided deforestation.

Lucia Gallardo, environmental adviser to Ecuador's minister of foreign affairs, said that because the proposal can not currently qualify to be part of the Kyoto protocol's clean development mechanism, it should be considered for inclusion as a flexible mechanism in the post-2012 negotiations.
She told Point Carbon it could find support among other developing oil-exporting countries.
“It is also the first time in history that a country dependent on oil exports for one-third of its income has proposed forgoing oil extraction to support global sustainability objectives,” she said.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa highlighted the Yasuni initiative at the high-level climate talks at the UN on Monday. Correa said that by not exploring for oil in the Yasuní zone, his country stands to lose $720 million (€510 million) dollars in investments per year, which he said was significant for a country of Ecuador's size.
"We are [ready] to make this immense sacrifice, but are demanding responsibility from the international community," he said. In exchange for preventing the emission of an estimated 436 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the deforestation that oil exploration would cause, Correa said that the international community should pay into the fund by buying voluntary credits. He hopes this will generate $4.6 billion dollars to fund programmes that would encourage energy diversification and other development projects in Ecuador.

So far, countries such as Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Norway have expressed interest in the avoided deforestation efforts at Yasuni, according to Gallardo.
Correa said this compensation is fair, considering Ecuador contributes less than 1 per cent of the worldwide emissions.“What we need is the compensation for the damages caused by the disproportionate amount of historical and current emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised countries,” he said.

Washington DC/New York