Audubon.org
Considered the most biodiverse place in the world, the Yasuní is in danger of being ruined through the exploitation of its natural resources. And time is running out to save it.
The most biodiverse park on the planet can be a very noisy place—especially around sunset, when day-shift creatures cede the rainforest to those who roam and serenade the night. But on a late afternoon in April, the trails near Yasuní National Park's Yasuní Scientific Station are jarringly quiet.
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The YASunidos Collecive defends life in all its manifestations and forms. Since our founding as a group and even before, we have supported the struggle of those who denounced the violence executed by the TEXACO company, of indigenous peoples and settler-colonists who for more than 20 years have sustained the most emblematic lawsuit in the history of Ecuador (and in large part, of the planet) denouncing the environmental and social devastation that this company has generated in order to extract crude oil from the northern zone of the Ecuadorian Amazon since the 1990s.
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by YASunidos
For twelve days in May local, national and global groups from all over the planet held actions in six continents and 13 countries under the banner to "break free from fossil fuels". It was an unprecedented wave of peaceful direct action, in many cases including children and elders, warning governments and corporations that the era of dirty fossils has come to an end. We will not stand by while they sell our future.
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by UN News Centre
12 April 2016 – Welcoming Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa to the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today said the world needs a new vision for urbanization – a "New Urban Agenda" – to help protect the environment and limit climate change.
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by Amazon Watch, Kevin Koenig
Last week, the Ecuadorian government announced that it had begun constructing the first of a planned 276 wells, ten drilling platforms, and multiple related pipelines and production facilities in the ITT (Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini) oil field, known as Block 43, which overlaps Yasuní National Park in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest. Coupled with the recent signing of two new oil concessions on the southern border of Yasuní and plans to launch another oil lease auction for additional blocks in the country's southern Amazon in late 2016, the slated drilling frenzy is part of a larger, aggressive move for new oil exploration as the country faces daunting oil-backed loan payments to China, its largest creditor.
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by Huffpost Green, Alexandra Valencia
QUITO, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Ecuador's parliament on Thursday authorized drilling of the nation's largest oil fields in part of the Amazon rainforest after the failure of President Rafael Correa's plan to have rich nations pay to avoid its exploitation.
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First of 200 wells drilled close to controversial block of forest known to have two of the last tribes living in isolation
by The Guardian
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by Human Rights Watch
Correa Cracks Down on Environmental Activism
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by Jonathan Watts, the guardian
Environmentalists devastated as president blames lack of foreign support for collapse of pioneering conservation plan.
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Ende Gelände
Ende Gelände (Here and no Further) for lignite coal in Lusatia: climate justice in action!
In 2016, the farewell to coal continues: Vattenfall, owner of the coal field in Lusatia is trying to sell its German lignite coal branch. This is a unique chance to finally close down opencast pits and coal power stations and to show that it is possible to phase-out coal in a socially and ecologically responsible manner.
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globalpost.com
by Kamilia Lahrichi
AMAZON RAINFOREST, Ecuador — In one of the most ecologically diverse corners of the planet, a small tribe is fending off oil corporations that want to drill their ancestral land.
It takes first a bumpy 20-minute drive from the city of Tena, then a two-hour journey on a rudimentary canoe to meet the Daya family, one of the few Huaorani communities in the Amazon rainforest who have not yet abandoned their traditional ways.
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by Mongabay
- There is fear that oil exploitation will lead to widespread soil, groundwater, and surface stream contamination.
- The government claims to have organized a free, prior and informed consultation, but critics disagree.
- The Sápara say they are ready to follow the Sarayaku example and bring their case to national and international courts in order to avoid the drilling of blocks 79 and 83.
The Ecuadorian government has signed two contracts with the China-based Andes Petroleum consortium, to work on the oil blocks known as 79 and 83; blocks that overlap with the territory of the Sápara indigenous people.
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Pachamama Alliance
The indigenous people in this region are strongly opposed to any plans for oil development and vow to resist and stop these projects. They know the environmental and social disaster that oil development will bring.
On January 26 the government of Ecuador formally signed exploration contracts for two Amazonian oil blocks—known as blocks 79 and 83—with Chinese state oil company, Andes Petroleum. The Ecuadorian government also announced plans to open up 16 other oil blocks in its South-Central Amazon region to bids later this year.
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Mondiaal Nieuws
The Yasuni territory in Ecuador is under pressure because of oil reserves found underneath the nature reserve. Here in ParisYasunidos wages action during the climate summit. Their proposal gives a voice to the local population, protects the Yasuni territory and is an answer for the global challenge of climate change.
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Amazon Watch
Yasunidos Defends Signatures and Denounces Electoral Irregularities
Quito, Ecuador – Just five days after turning in more than enough signatures to qualify for a national referendum to stop oil drilling plans in a critical part of Ecuador's Yasuni National Park, Yasunidos, the civil society collective spearheading the grassroots effort is denouncing what appear to be egregious irregularities by the National Election Commission (CNE).
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Amazon Watch
Experts Say Move Could Set Precedent for Future Disputes Between Environmentalists, Government and Industry
By Mercedes Alvaro, Wall Street Journal
A coalition opposed to a new oil development in a national park in Ecuador's Amazon rain forest say they have collected enough signatures to force a referendum on the activity, which experts say could set a precedent for future disputes between environmentalists, the government and industry.
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www.mongabay.com
By Rhett A. Butler
The fate of the most biodiverse rainforest on Earth has been decided: it will be drilled for oil.
On Thursday Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said he has abandoned a plan that would have prohibited oil extraction from Yasuni National Park in Eastern Ecuador in exchange for payments to leave the crude in the ground. Correa had sought $3.6 billion in contributions — equivalent to roughly half the value of the 846 million barrels of oil estimated to lie under the rainforest reserve — but managed to raise only $13 million in actual cash since the Yasuni ITT Initiative concept was first presented in 2007. Contributions came mostly from private donors and the U.N.
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www.mongabay.com
By Rhett A. Butler
Data released this week by Terra-i, a collaborative mapping initiative, shows that deforestation in Ecuador for the first three months of 2013 was pacing more than 300 percent ahead of last year's rate. The report comes shortly after Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa killed off a proposed plan to prohibit oil drilling in Yasuni National Park in exchange for payments equivalent to half the value of the park's unexploited oil.
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www.mongabay.com
By Jeremy Hance
A visit to a rainforest slated for oil drilling has blown up into a diplomatic row between Ecuador and Germany. Ecuador has said it will no longer partner with Germany on environmental issues and will return aid money, after the South American government discovered that German legislators were attempting to visit the much-embattled Yasuni National Park.
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www.mongabay.com
By Sean Mowbray
The building of oil roads into the Amazon has led to unsustainable indigenous hunting, fed an illegal bushmeat market, possibly facilitated the pet trade, and is emptying rainforests of wildlife.
- Oil companies build extensive road systems to service drilling operations in Ecuador, and they often offer gifts of vehicles, canoes, outboard motors and guns to indigenous people, enabling hunters to hunt more efficiently to feed the illegal bushmeat trade.
- Studies in Ecuador show that roads create exposure to a market economy, upsetting the equilibrium that exists in indigenous cultures. Hunting becomes a commercial pursuit, and wildlife populations quickly plummet.
A study of the Maxus road that penetrates Yasuni National Park, found that it resulted in new indigenous settlements along the road and a shift of Waorani hunters from sustainable hunting practices to unsustainable commercial hunting. Both prey and predator wildlife species numbers dropped precipitously near the oil road.
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