Ecuador has an historic chance for planet and people - even the ‘uncontacted’
On 20 August Ecuadorians can vote on whether oil operations should continue in part of the Yasuni National Park in the Amazon.
Something remarkable is about to happen in Ecuador. Tomorrow over 13 million men and women will not only have the chance to vote for their President, Vice-President and parliament, but also to decide - through a national referendum - whether oil operations should continue in a concession in one of the remotest parts of the Yasuni National Park, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in the far north-east of the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Much of Yasuni, now something of an international cause célèbre, is the ancestral homeland of the indigenous Waorani people and it is mainly because of their stewardship over the years that the park is considered to be one of the most biodiverse places in the world. In fact, according to some people, it is the most biodiverse place in the world, thereby beating other likely contenders such as the Manu National Park in Peru or the Madidi National Park in Bolivia.
“My country could be the first to limit fossil fuel extraction through direct democracy,” Waorani activist Nemonte Nenquimo wrote in a powerful op-ed in The Guardian yesterday. “It is a vote on the possibility of limiting greed and plunder in the name of life and respect. It is a vote that will resonate around the planet.”
The question that Ecuadorians are being asked is: “Do you agree that Ecuador’s government should keep the oil in the ITT, known as Block 43, underground indefinitely?” Another, perhaps more easily understandable way of putting that: “Do you agree that Ecuador’s government should forgo forever exploiting the oilfields known as Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputuni in the concession officially called Block 43?”
This referendum on Yasuni is the culmination of a 10-year struggle launched by a collective of civil society organisations and individuals calling themselves YASunidos, following the government’s decision in 2013 to formally abandon a pioneering proposal to leave the ITT oil in the ground in return for several billion US dollars in compensation from international donors. How else to protect such a magnificent swathe of forest? After collecting more than three quarter of a million signatures in 2013 and 2014 - enough to demand a referendum, as in accordance with Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution - and subsequent accusations of state fraud, “serious irregularities” and violent policing regarding the submission and acceptance of those signatures, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court finally ruled in May this year that a referendum should be held. This was so late in coming that oil production from Block 43 has now been going on for years - since 2016 - but nevertheless it was an historic ruling that now presents an equally historic opportunity to stop those operations and banish oil firms from that part of Yasuni altogether. According to Mongabay, “yes” and “no” campaigns have since “exploded” across the country, with several recent polls showing “yes” in the lead.
Of course, there are many obvious reasons why oil operations should be banned in Block 43 - “It’s a national park, stupid!”, “It’s a biodiversity hotspot!”, “Oil companies can’t be trusted not to trash it!”, “We’re facing climate catastrophe and urgently need to stop burning fossil fuels, so the last thing anyone should be doing is drilling deep into Yasuni!” - but another one, perhaps less immediately obvious, is the danger posed to indigenous people living so remotely in the Amazon that they don’t have any kind of regular contact with anyone else - not even the Waorani or other indigenous people. Ecuador’s Constitution refers to them as “peoples living in voluntary isolation”, but sometimes they’re just known as “los no contactados” - literally, the “uncontacted ones.”
The biggest concern is the Ishpingo field - a good chunk of which lies under the official Buffer Zone of the Tagaeri Taromenane Intangible Zone (Spanish acronym: “ZITT”), and part of which lies under the ZITT itself. The ZITT was established in 1999 to protect the “Tagaeri”, ultimately related to the Waorani, and “Taromenane”, as Ecuador’s people in “isolation” are most commonly called. Continue to permit oil firms to operate there and you’re continuing to violate “isolated” peoples’s rights under international law, not to mention inviting potential catastrophe if contact is made, violence occurs, previously-unknown diseases are transmitted and epidemics break out. Just look at the experiences of many other indigenous people across the Amazon to understand how that usually plays out.
Ecuador is just one country among several in Latin America that counts indigenous people in “isolation” among its citizens, and now Ecuadorians have an unprecedented, truly extraordinary opportunity to do something for them. Sí al Yasuní!