Ecuador indigenous communities oppose effort to ban oil production in Amazon block
La Prensa Latina MediaJun 22, 2023
The Facts
Ecuadorians have voted in a referendum to halt all new oil developments in the Yasuní national park, a UNESCO world biosphere in the Amazon rainforest.
The 1M-hectare reserve is home to 610 species of birds, 139 amphibians, and 121 species of reptiles. It is also the home of the Tagaeri and Taromenani tribes, who live in voluntary isolation.
The Spin
Right narrative
This ban will have an adverse effect on the communities it aims to protect. There are a wide array of views among the indigenous tribes of Ecuador, with many supporting the oil developments. Petroecuador helped bring healthcare, education, and economic stability to disparate communities and worked to mitigate all environmental damages. Countless Ecuadorians will now suffer as a result of this feel-good move.
Left narrative
The Amazon rainforest is one of the most environmentally important regions in the world, and Ecuador took a big step to ensure it remains protected. Any given hectare of Yasuní will contain more animal species than in all of Europe, and we cannot let the short-sighted prospect of oil money destroy such a bounty. Ecuadorians voted not just to protect the Amazon but the biodiversity of the natural world itself.
Nerd narrative
There's a 29% chance that over 33% of the earth's land area will be covered by forest in 2050, according to the Metaculus prediction community.