Sí al Yasuní! Ecuador votes to stop oil drilling in Yasuní National Park
A major victory for Indigenous Peoples, including those living in voluntary isolation.
In 1997, at the United Nations climate meeting in Kyoto, Oilwatch launched its worldwide campaign for a moratorium on oil activities with a position paper that argued that Governments should be paid for keeping fossil fuels in the ground.
Ten years later, Rafael Correa, then-president of Ecuador, gave a speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations. He announced that Ecuador was prepare to make “enormous sacrifices” to address “global warming”.
Correa proposed permanently leaving about 920 million barrels of oil underground in the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini field in the Yasuní National Park.
The area is inhabited by Indigenous Peoples, including some living in voluntary isolation, and is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. In 1989, UNESCO designated Yasuní and neighbouring areas a world biosphere reserve.
Correa announced the creation of the Yasuní-ITT Environmental Fund and asked for US$3.6 billion from the international community in return for leaving the oil underground.
But in August 2013, abandoned its plans to leave the oil underground. After six years, Ecuador had received only US$13 million.
Yasunidos campaign for a referendum
Since then Indigenous and environmental organisations in Ecuador have campaigned for a referendum. In an open letter written shortly after Correa announced that drilling would go ahead in Yasuní, activists wrote that,
The only dignified, democratic and just way out is not to exploit ITT, and if there are any doubts, to conduct a national referendum.
A group calling themselves Yasunidos was part of a coalition of human rights activists, environmentalists, feminists, and Indigenous Peoples campaigning for a referendum to determine whether oil extraction should take place in Yasuní.
In order for a referendum to take place, according to Ecuador’s 2008 constitution, they needed 583,000 signatures.
By April 2014, they had collected more than 750,000 signatures. But the National Electoral Council announced that only about 350,000 of these signatures were valid.
The Yasunidos activists faced persecution, harassment, and threats from the government. In May 2015, a leaked intelligence report exposed that the campaigners were subjected to intense government surveillance.
The Yasunidos continued their campaign using peaceful protests, online actions, and press conferences. A 2021 investigation revealed that the National Electoral Council’s verification process was designed to disqualify a large number of the signatures collected by the Yasunidos.
The referendum
In September 2022, Ecuador’s electoral court ordered the validation of all of the more than 750,000 signatures. And in May 2023 the Constitutional Court approved a referendum.
The question asked in the referendum was: “Do you agree that Ecuador’s government should keep the oil in the ITT, known as Block 43, underground indefinitely?”
Journalist David Hill explains the importance of this referendum:
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’ 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.
A major victory
The referendum took place on 20 August 2023, along with the first round of the presidential election. Almost 60% of people voted against drilling for oil in Yasuní.
Following the referendum, Ecuador’s state oil company, Petroecuador, will have to dismantle its 39 oil wells in Yasuní.
In a statement, Sarah Shenker of Survival International describes the referendum as a “major victory for Ecuador’s Indigenous movement, and for the global campaign to recognize the rights of uncontacted tribes”.
She adds that,
“The uncontacted Tagaeri, Dugakaeri and Taromenane have for years seen their lands invaded, firstly by evangelical missionaries, then by oil companies. Now, at last, they have some hope of living in peace once more. We hope this prompts greater recognition that all uncontacted peoples must have their territories protected if they’re to survive, and thrive.
“Apart from anything else, we know that their territories are the best barrier to deforestation, particularly in the Amazon rainforest. Uncontacted tribes are our contemporaries, a vital part of humankind’s diversity, and the guardians of the most biodiverse places on Earth.”
Nemonte Nenquimo is an Indigenous activist and member of the Waorani Nation. In 2020, she won the Goldman Environmental Prize. She told The Guardian that,
“Today is a historic day! As a Waorani woman and mother, I feel overjoyed with Ecuadorians’ resounding decision to stop oil drilling in my people’s sacred homeland.
“Finally, we are going to kick oil companies out of our territory! This is a major victory for all Indigenous Peoples, for the animals, the plants, the spirits of the forest and our climate!”
I would cautiously applaud this victory, however, the word "indefinitely" could be a problem; it should have been stated as "permanently." This could end up as a situation where "No" means "not now" rather than "never," and future administrations could have another try at getting to "yes" which always means "forever." There needs to be another level of legal repose situated between Constitutional Law and statue law; let's call it BTDT - been there, done that. Large advances in societal change that do not need the power of a constitution amendment but need protection from electoral turnover could be entered into BTDT by default and would require a super-majority vote as well as stakeholder approval to be altered. Such a system would have been beneficial in USA during the "Reconstruction" period.