From Green Right Now Reports
Yasuni National Park. Photo: ecuador-travel.net
A team of 13 Ecuadoran, American and European scientists has concluded that Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park is the most biodiverse area in all of South America.
Results of the study were published Jan. 19 in the open-access scientific journal PLoS ONE.
“One of our most important findings about Yasuni is that small areas of forest harbor extremely high numbers of animals and plants,” said lead author Margot Bass, president of Finding Species, a nonprofit with offices in Quito and Maryland. “Yasuni is probably unmatched by any other park in the world for total numbers of species.”
That enviable distinction may not save the region from the ravages of oil drilling.
Until recently, the park has been protected by a creative arrangement known as the Yasuni-ITT Initiative. The plan calls for the park’s largest oil reserves to remain in the ground in exchange for international donations of $3 billion over the next 10 years. In return, 900 million barrels of oil, valued at about $6 billion, would not be removed as a contribution to fighting climate change that would be created by massive deforestation and the eventual burning of the oil.
Representatives from Ecuador and the United Nations were expected to sign the trust fund agreement at December’s climate summit in Copenhagen, but Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa balked at what he described as “shameful” conditions set up by the trust. Some of those conditions — including contributing nations having a say in how the money was spent, were damaging to his country’s sovereignty and dignity, Correa said.
In the wake of Correa’s comments, Foreign Minister Fander Falconi and two other members of the negotiating team resigned in protest. The president said the committee negotiating the Initiative has until June to come up with a palatable deal or the government will begin to look into tapping the oil reserves.
“If they don’t accept our conditions, they can keep their money and we’ll drill,” Correa told The New York Times.
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