Ecuador Scraps Yasuni No Oil Drilling Plan
Ecuador a few years ago agreed to set aside Yasuni National Park from oil drilling: for a price. Rafael Correa had asked for $3.6 billion but the by the end of 2012, the fund had only $6.5 million in it. Now, the government looks to go forward with plans on limited oil drilling, with environmentalists mobilizing in protest. This from NPR:
The government of Ecuador has abandoned a plan that would have kept part of the Amazonian rainforest off limits to oil drilling. The initiative was an unusual one: Ecuador was promising to keep the oil in the ground, but it wanted to be paid for doing so.
The oil sits under the Yasuni national park, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth — orchids, jaguars, monkeys, birds. To get to the corner of the park that holds the oil, you have to take a plane, then a motorboat, then paddle a canoe. “Even the sound of the motor will destroy the fragility of this place,” Ivonne A-Baki, who works for the Ecuadorian government, told me this year. …
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