Carbon vs Do Nothing

Mohamad Rayan.Clipping.

Ecuador leads on initiative to leave oil in the ground untapped
By Raquel Thompson

26 May 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: As oil prices reached a six-month high this week, Ecuador informed the United Nations of its landmark proposal to be the first country in history to decide to leave oil reserves untapped and in the ground.

If successful, the initiative would result in almost one billion barrels of oil left untouched and approximately 410 million metric tonnes of carbon maintained underground in the world’s largest and most bio-diverse rainforest. It would also ensure the continued existence of two of the few remaining indigenous communities in the world still living in voluntary isolation.

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa first came to the UN in September of 2007 to announce the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, which asks the international community to contribute to a capital fund that would allow the Ecuadorian government to forgo the significant income it would otherwise generate by exploiting the oil reserves. Correa said the initiative would move forward if Ecuador became confident that it would be able to obtain at least 50 percent of this lost income from the international community.

At a panel held on Tuesday at the UN, Yolanda Kakabadse, Special Representative of the President of Ecuador for the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, revealed that the Initiative has garnered a strong response since Correa first spoke at the UN. Germany has called Yasuni-ITT a “visionary proposal for the future” and, along with Spain, has contributed funds to Ecuador to undertake an exhaustive investigation into the viability of the Yasuni-ITT project, including identifying potential sources of income for the capital fund needed to keep the oil in the ground.

Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations, told MediaGlobal, “We have finalized all the technical proposals, and we have the figures, we have the numbers, and now we are ready to present the final outcome of the final design of the proposal to some interested governments.” Espinosa included Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom on this list.

Kakabadse explained that a critical area of concern for the success of the Initiative is whether the European countries will allow Ecuador to enter their respective carbon markets. Market sales from carbon credit for the unexploited emissions are expected to be one of the two main sources of contribution to the capital fund.

Voluntary contributions are the other main source. Friendly governments and multilateral organizations can contribute through cash donations, or through slightly more intricate mechanisms such as debt swaps. Civil society organizations, entities with social and environmental responsibility agendas, and ordinary individuals can also contribute through donations or by investing in Yasuni-ITT bonds redeemable if the country ever decides to exploit the oil in the ITT Field.

The capital fund will be managed by an international Trust Fund with the participation of the Ecuadorean government and civil society, and major donors.

The interest from the fund will be used toward preserving Ecuador’s 40 protected areas, reforesting another one million acres of land, providing the indigenous communities living in the protected areas with social development programs, and investing in renewable energy sources to facilitate Ecuador’s shift to a new and sustainable energy model.

“There has already been strong support for these initiatives among civil society, common citizens around the world,” Ambassador Espinosa added. Nobel Prize winners Desmond Tutu, Rita Levi Montalcini, Rigoberta Menchú and Mohammed Yunus have also declared their support for the initiative, as well as Former Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev (USSR), Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil), Ricardo Lagos (Chile), and former Prime Minister Felipe González (Spain).
Feedback from within the UN has been equally strong. Yiping Zhou, the director of UNDP’s Special Unit for South-South Cooperation offered “a word of congratulations” during Tuesday’s panel and said, “This is definitely one of the most innovative and imaginative initiatives.”
Zhou also assured Kakabadse that the Unit intends to actively facilitate communication between Ecuador and the 15 other developing countries Kakabadse identified as possessing high levels of biodiversity and fossil fuel reserves considered necessary to emulate the Initiative.

One aspect of Yasuni-ITT has received recent criticism. After sharing her support for the novelty of the Initiative, Victoria-Taulia Corpuz, Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told MediaGlobal, “but we have also heard that there were some concerns because indigenous people who live in those territories say that they have not really been adequately consulted by the Ecuadorian government when they designed this [Initiative].”
Ambassador Espinosa responded, “Until we have the total security and assurance that it is going to work we cannot go to the community and create false expectations.”

Penti Baihua, community leader for three of the “contacted” indigenous communities living near the ITT area underscorded his concerns to MediaGlobal, “I worry that if the Initiative is successful, the government will impose their own plans and programs that may not correspond to the actual desires and needs of the Huaroni people.” Baihua also said that he was concerned that if the government was not able to acquire the necessary funding for the project, it would decide to extract the oil for the sake of revenue, leading to further contamination of his ancestral lands.

Ecuador openly admits that “the extraction of oil and wood has had a negative effect on this culture: most of its population has concentrated in small communities, changing their ancestral way of life.”

Kakabadse heads to Germany in two weeks to try to prevent further exploitation of oil in this area. She is excited and optimistic. She insists that this is Ecuador and the developing world’s opportunity to “harness our rich ideas and resources.”

“And who knows,” Kakabadse continued, “maybe we will even establish a new way that is called the Yasuni Protocol.”

Kakabadse’s words are reminiscent of those uttered by President Correa in September of 2007: “This would be an extraordinary example of collective global action that will not only allow us to reduce global warming for the benefit of humanity, but will also help us establish a new economical logic for the 21st century, which compensates the generation of value and not just the generation of goods.”

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