Tag Archives: Yasuní National Park

‘Major Victory for Indigenous Peoples’ as Ecuadorian Court Rejects Drilling in Protected Area

“It is also a reminder for oil companies and investors that expanding oil extraction in Ecuador’s Amazon is a risk and full of potential legal liabilities,” said Amazon Watch’s climate and energy director.

By Jessica Corbett.  Published 2-2-2022 by Common Dreams

Amazon Watch climate and energy director Kevin Koenig said Wednesday that “plans are underway to drill 600+ wells in the Ishpingo, Tambococha Tiputini fields, known as Block 43.” (Photo: CONFENIAE)

The advocacy group Amazon Watch celebrated Wednesday after Ecuador’s top court struck down parts of a 2019 decree that would have allowed oil drilling in an area that is protected for isolated Indigenous peoples.

Amazon Watch climate and energy director Kevin Koenig called the Constitutional Court of Ecuador’s decision “a major victory for Indigenous peoples and an important step in protecting some of the most environmentally fragile and culturally sensitive places in the Amazon.” Continue reading

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Oil exploitation is threatening the Ecuadorian rainforest – and the planet

‘No to Block 28!’ Indigenous and peasant communities are fighting to protect nature and their way of life in a remote corner of the Amazon

By Andrés Tapia.  Published 4-21-2021 by openDemocracy

Clear water coming down from the ‘blue mountains’ in Pastaza, Ecuador | Andrés Tapis

 

I grew up in the Ecuadorian countryside. My first memories are from around 1990, when my family and I were living on a 28-hectare farm, a pioneering conservation project in the tropical rainforest.

Often, I would sit with my sister on the front steps of our house, gazing at the “blue mountains”. It was my father who coined that phrase, after their distinctive colouration. Decades later, while studying field biology at university, I learned that these were the subtropical Andes. Specifically, the Abitahua Protected Forest of the Llanganates Sangay Ecological Corridor, a transition area (also known as an ecotone) that connects the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes with the Amazonian lowlands. Continue reading

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