T, he was rebuffed and told that parliamentarians were too busy with other matters. To date, only Germany has agreed to pay Ecuador $50 million annually for 13 years.
Inaction in the Global North has allowed Correa to take the moral high ground. In London he declared that rich countries were primarily responsible for climate change and it was they who should pay Ecuador not to release carbon into the atmosphere as “compensation for the damages caused by the out-of-proportion amount of historical and current emissions of greenhouse gases.” But while Correa’s fiery denunciations are certainly on target it would be a mistake to view the controversy over Amazonian resources as a simple struggle between the Ecuadoran government and wealthier, more polluting countries.
According to Alberto Acosta, Ecuador’s former Minister of Energy and Mines, the President has been an ambivalent environmentalist. An economist, Acosta left his post due to disagreements with other government officials about oil development in Yasuní. When I was in Quito doing research for my book Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008), I spoke with Acosta and he struck me as a dynamic and principled man. During our discussion he animatedly quoted Bertolt Brecht at length on the need for greater citizen engagement in politics.
In an interesting interview posted on the website Rebelión Acosta remarked that it was civil society and not Rafael Correa which originally pushed the ITT-Yasuní idea. For years, he says, Indians who witnessed the destruction wreaked by Texaco had called for a moratorium on oil exploration in the Amazon. Indigenous peoples were joined by a group of dedicated activists working with a non-governmental organization (or NGO) called Acción Ecológica.
When I was in Ecuador in the 1990s researching some stories about oil exploration in the Amazon I recall interviewing environmentalists working with Acción Ecológica including an insightful woman named Esperanza Martínez. Even before Acosta arrived in his post, Martínez pushed hard for ITT-Yasuní and held discussions with the economist. Later, Acosta took up the idea of ITT-Yasuní with other government officials, a development which provoked a “confrontation” within the Correa regime.
Acosta’s colleagues could not understand why the Minister of Energy and Mines no less would want to keep Amazonian oil in the ground. In particular, Acosta encountered resistance from the state oil company Petroecuador which sought to actually accelerate petroleum development in the rainforest. In addition to serving as minister, Acosta was president of Petroecuador’s board of directors during this time. However, little did Acosta know that behind his back the company’s executive president was seeking to seal deals with the Brazilian and Venezuelan state energy companies amongst others in an effort to move forward with controversial oil exploration.
Oil and gas blocks in the western Amazon. Solid yellow indicates blocks already leased out to companies. Hashed yellow indicates proposed blocks or blocks still in the negotiation phase. Protected areas shown are those considered strictly protected by the IUCN (categories I to III).
Image courtesy of PLoS ONE
At one tense Petroecuador board meeting, Correa himself showed up and heard the arguments both for and against oil exploration in the Amazon. At long last, the president agreed to leave the oil in the ground as long as Ecuador could acquire some sort of international financial compensation. Today in Copenhagen Ecuador is proud of its ITT-Yasuní plan but according to Acosta the president has been a reluctant environmentalist, at times raising objections to the scheme and at others moving to slow down momentum and crucial progress.
More significantly, in early 2009 the Ecuadoran authorities moved to shut down Acción Ecológíca — the very same organization which had proven so crucial in pushing the ITT-Yasuní proposal in the first place. Claiming that the group had “not complied with the aims for which it [the NGO] was created,” 