In the last week the news has finally come out that Ecuador has signed official agreements with regards to drilling for oil in the Yasuni National Park. We all knew this was coming after recent leaks telling us that the government was in negotiations, but this is still an extremely sad day for those of us who value the environment and look to promote cleaner energy sources. This drilling agreement reflects badly on all of us, not just the Ecuadorian government – it essentially represents a failure of imagination on the part of the international community.
Yasuni, on the eastern border of Ecuador with Peru, is considered one of the most biologically diverse regions on the entire planet – in fact, by many standards it is literally the most diverse place in the world. Even in terms of human beings, the area contains at least two completely uncontacted tribes, uncorrupted by modern human civilization. Unfortunately, as well as containing all sorts of plants, animals, birds, and humans, it also contains a lot of oil – something that we as a society seem unable to resist. Drilling could now take place as soon as 2016, destroying the pristine environment of this beautiful place.
The Ecuadorian government had initially tried to avoid drilling through a very modern method – essentially crowdsourcing the money required to make it worthwhile not to drill. They claimed that if they were paid a total of $3.6bn over a number of years by the other countries of the world, then Ecuador could enjoy the developmental benefits that the oil would bring without having to actually extract it – allowing the rest of the world to benefit from the continued biodiversity of the region and the huge levels of carbon emissions that would not be released if the oil was kept in the ground. This was a potentially revolutionary idea, taking in concepts of climate justice and sustainability, and encouraging the world to work together to protect our natural environment.
Of course, it didn’t work. Despite a large amount of press when President Rafael Correa first announced the initiative, very few countries showed any serious interest in it – with Norway being the main honourable exception. Unfortunately, Norway alone cannot carry the burden for the whole world, and in the recent announcement Correa claimed that only $13m had been procured. Ultimately, the lack of cooperation of certain countries was too great a barrier. The oil industries of the US and Europe stood to gain too much from the chance to drill in Yasuni, and would have attacked any politicians that agreed to provide funding. The growing Chinese demand for fuel and their difficulties with managing their rapid growth in the coming decades meant that they too wanted access to Yasuni. And none of the developed nations wanted to set a precedent for accepting their responsibility for climate change or helping poorer countries deal with the changes that need to be made to avoid it.
Ecuador is not completely without blame, of course. They could still have taken a different approach to development, deciding not to drill anyway, and focusing on the many alternative sources of energy they have access to – abundant sunshine, geothermal energy, huge potential for hydroelectricity, and so on. It is a shame that Correa’s imaginative ideas did not extend to providing this kind of example to the world. But ultimately, we must all take responsibility for what will happen in Yasuni – we had the chance to show a commitment to the environment, to sustainability, to alternative energy, to a different way of doing things in general. And we shamefully failed to take it.
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