Preserving biodiversity

Yasuni National Park is one of the most biologically diverse areas on earth. Scientists have discovered 655 species of trees in one hectare of land in the park, more than the total record of the US and Canada combined.^[12] It has been declared a world biosphere reserve by UNESCO.^[13] Some 4,000-plant species, 173 species of mammals and 610 bird species live inside the Park.^[14] "It contains more documented insect species than any other forest in the world, and is among the most diverse forests in the world for different species of birds, bats, amphibians, epiphytes, and lianas. Yasuní is critical habitat to 23 globally threatened mammal species, including the Giant otter, the Amazonian manatee, Pink river dolphin, Giant anteater, and Amazonian tapir... Ten primate species live in the Yasuní, including the threatened White-bellied spider monkey."^[15] Earth Economics has estimated that its environmental benefits would have a net present value of 9.89 billion dollars. It was also estimated that the environmental costs of oil production in the ITT would be at least US$1.25 billion in present terms. This latter estimate includes only the effects of deforestation, the loss of ecotourism potential and the non-timber-related services of the forest, and excludes a number of externalities of oil exploitation like spills, local pollution, and effects on public health.^[16]

Currently, there has been some drilling in the Yasuni area, which has caused deforestation, air, and water pollution. Oil roads into the forest have become a magnet for colonization and opened up the park to over-hunting and deforestation. There are hundreds of waste oil "lakes" in the forest.^[17]

Avoiding CO₂ emissions

Leaving the oil underground would have avoided the emission of 410 million metric tons of CO₂.^[18]

The history of the protection of indigenous people in voluntary isolation

Historically the Waorani, a semi-nomadic group of hunter-gatherers, have lived in the Yasuní National Park for centuries. However, after the introduction of Royal-Dutch-Shell workers in 1930 that lead missionaries to this land, the only remaining part of the Wanorani are the Tagaeri and the Taromenane. As oil mongers continued to come into their land as the years went on, the Waorani established the "Organization of Waorani Nationalities of Ecuador" (ONHAE) to expand their rights. The ONHAE requested that the government of Ecuador grant the Waorani legal title over their territory. They wanted control over their land so that they could bring the harmful oil exploitation in their land to a halt. However, the government saw the Waorani opposition to oil activities as harmful to the modernization of Ecuador. Oil companies used the justification that Ecuador's development was dependent on oil extraction to further their projects. However, as oil companies like Maxus continued to build roads to aid in their extraction efforts the Waorani claimed that the company was "destroying everything in their path: our culture, our territory, and our lives." Their cry for help in the form of an "oil moratorium" gained the attention of NGOs concerned with the biodiversity of the rainforest, and it led to the Amazonia por la Vida (Amazon for Life), which brought environmental problems in the Amazon to the forefront of the media. This began the open discourse between the Waorani against oil activities in their land.^[19]

Before oil exploitation began, however, the Ecuadorian government enacted the doctrine of terra nullius, a racist doctrine that provided legal justification for Europeans to annex territories that were inhabited by indigenous people. The terra nullius asserted legal and political rule over the indigenous and gave them no property or political rights. It claimed that they were "savages" who could not exercise political power over their land. Thus, the land was claimed by Europeans who exercised control over the indigenous populations and began oil extraction without consent or compensation to the local peoples.^[20] In the early 1960s, oil companies ignored local land rights, failed to mitigate pollution/damage to the Amazon, and allowed for the process of colonization of the Amazon to begin. All of these issues combined stripped indigenous people of large areas of their territory and endangered their cultural and economic way of life. In their opposition, local residents sought to participate fully in discussions with multi-national oil companies and national governments on the issue. While this discourse did not blossom fully in the 1960s, by the 1990s the political pressure that oil companies faced completely changed the way things were done. Oil companies and governments now had to pay attention to the social and environmental impacts of extraction and long-term interests of local communities. A middle ground between the Waorani way of life and governmental and oil company's interests were created. To create this middle ground the Waorani learned new languages, traveled to the United States, met with industry and government officials, created new indigenous federations and political practices, engaged with international science, and modified long-standing social and economic practices. Through these actions a discourse was created, leaving the old one-sided exploitation of the indigenous lands in the past. Although the Waorani still did not have complete control of their land and their destiny, the middle ground had given them some influence over their fate. The native people also seek employment in the oil industry, access to oil markets, and long-term investment in health centers, schools, and community development. However, they struggled to establish good conditions for new projects, such as monitoring environmental pollution, the establishment of clear land rights, and sharing of the profits from oil development. By ignoring the wants and needs of the native people, oil companies forced them to turn to political resistance as the only way to make themselves heard. In the 1970s native groups wanted to incorporate concern for damage of the Amazon into the planning and execution of development projects. They also sought local control over development projects as a way to incorporate sustainable practices in their land. These concerns were given little attention until the 1980s when the government began to recognize native land claims. Town-meetings held by the Waorani were run in a consensus style, and although this is a different practice compared to the rest of the world, national governments recognized these meetings as legitimate political proceedings.^[21] While there is still much that needs to be done in the way of sustainable oil extraction, the discourse between the local population in the Ecuadorian Amazon has increased dramatically giving them a voice and a say in what happens to their land.

As their influence rose the Waorani were able to stop exploration in two leased oil blocks in Ecuador. They also pushed the government in 2007 to prohibit oil, gas, and logging activities in the "Zona Intangible", which was 7,580  km² of Waorani land. The grounds for this movement included not only contaminations of the Waorani land in the Amazon, but also the diseases, that were decimating the Waorani population, brought in by persons from the developed world.^[22] In a lawsuit against Texaco, lawyers pointed to the actual loss of money by oil companies after oil exploitation to prove that sustainable practices on the front end would benefit the company and the land. In the 1980s the average income per barrel of oil was five dollars, while the cost of reparations for the land were more than six dollars per barrel. The six dollars only covered local damages, it did not account for climate change and costs of carbon dioxide production, which also required payment for. These figures prove that indigenous concerns for the land are not only beneficial to the land, but also cost-effective.^[23] The story-line about respecting and preserving the land of the "last free people" is the corner-stone of the ever-changing discourse underlining the Yasuní-ITT project, and is used every time human rights activists claim that isolated groups are affected by new oil activities.^[24]

Abandonment of Yasuní-ITT Initiative by Ecuadorian government

In July 2013, Correa formed a commission to evaluate the Yasuni-ITT Initiative's progress to date. The commission concluded that the economic results were not sufficient. On August 15, Correa scrapped the plan citing poor follow through from the international community.^[28] "The world has failed us", he said, calling the world's richest countries hypocrites who emit most of the world's greenhouse gases while expecting nations like his to sacrifice economic progress for the environment.^[29] Through an executive order, he liquidated the Yasuni-ITT trust fund formally ending the initiative. During the six-year history of the initiative, only $336 million had been pledged, Correa said, and of that, only $13.3 million had actually been delivered.^[28]

On Wednesday September 7, 2016, the Ecuadorian government confirmed the start of drilling activity within the Yasuni-ITT block.^[30] Then vice president Jorge Glas led reporters around the drilling site managed by Petroecuador, the country's national oil company.^[31] As of July 2016, the whole of the block was estimated to hold around 1.7 billion barrels of oil.^[30][32]

Referendum campaigns

National law allows for a national referendum if a campaign can canvass signatures supporting it from 5% of the electorate. In October 2013, shortly after government approval for oil exploration in Yasuní-ITT, the anti-exploitation group YASunidos launched a campaign to collect enough signatures to trigger a referendum, with the proposed question: "Do you agree that the government of Ecuador should leave the crude of ITT, known as Block 43, below ground indefinitely?".^[33] By 2014, YASunidos had collected more than sufficient signatures to trigger a referendum, but the National Electoral Council threw out hundreds of thousands of signatures, saying they were duplicates or fakes.^[34]

YASunidos made allegations of "foul play" by its opponents, including plagiarism of their campaign pamphlets intended to confuse voters and an instance of abduction and assault by government officials against a YASunidos activist.^[33]

In 2018, environmentalists succeeded in forcing a referendum with the question, "Are you in favor of increasing the Intangible Zone by at least 50,000 hectares [123,550 acres] and reducing the oil extraction area in Yasuní National Park from 1,030 to 300 hectares [2,545 to 741 acres]?" The Intangible Zone protects Indigenous communities from oil extraction activities. Sixty-seven percent of voters supported the referendum. In May 2019, President Moreno signed a decree that expanded the Intangible Zone, but which did not reduce oil extraction and allowed construction of oil infrastructure within a buffer zone around where it had previously been prohibited.^[7]