The end of the road for Yasuni National Park

In the last week the news has finally come out that Ecuador has signed official agreements with regards to drilling for oil in the Yasuni National Park. We all knew this was coming after recent leaks telling us that the government was in negotiations, but this is still an extremely sad day for those of us who value the environment and look to promote cleaner energy sources. This drilling agreement reflects badly on all of us, not just the Ecuadorian government – it essentially represents a failure of imagination on the part of the international community.

Yasuni, on the eastern border of Ecuador with Peru, is considered one of the most biologically diverse regions on the entire planet – in fact, by many standards it is literally the most diverse place in the world. Even in terms of human beings, the area contains at least two completely uncontacted tribes, uncorrupted by modern human civilization. Unfortunately, as well as containing all sorts of plants, animals, birds, and humans, it also contains a lot of oil – something that we as a society seem unable to resist. Drilling could now take place as soon as 2016, destroying the pristine environment of this beautiful place.

The Ecuadorian government had initially tried to avoid drilling through a very modern method – essentially crowdsourcing the money required to make it worthwhile not to drill. They claimed that if they were paid a total of $3.6bn over a number of years by the other countries of the world, then Ecuador could enjoy the developmental benefits that the oil would bring without having to actually extract it – allowing the rest of the world to benefit from the continued biodiversity of the region and the huge levels of carbon emissions that would not be released if the oil was kept in the ground. This was a potentially revolutionary idea, taking in concepts of climate justice and sustainability, and encouraging the world to work together to protect our natural environment.

Of course, it didn’t work. Despite a large amount of press when President Rafael Correa first announced the initiative, very few countries showed any serious interest in it – with Norway being the main honourable exception. Unfortunately, Norway alone cannot carry the burden for the whole world, and in the recent announcement Correa claimed that only $13m had been procured. Ultimately, the lack of cooperation of certain countries was too great a barrier. The oil industries of the US and Europe stood to gain too much from the chance to drill in Yasuni, and would have attacked any politicians that agreed to provide funding. The growing Chinese demand for fuel and their difficulties with managing their rapid growth in the coming decades meant that they too wanted access to Yasuni. And none of the developed nations wanted to set a precedent for accepting their responsibility for climate change or helping poorer countries deal with the changes that need to be made to avoid it.

Ecuador is not completely without blame, of course. They could still have taken a different approach to development, deciding not to drill anyway, and focusing on the many alternative sources of energy they have access to – abundant sunshine, geothermal energy, huge potential for hydroelectricity, and so on. It is a shame that Correa’s imaginative ideas did not extend to providing this kind of example to the world. But ultimately, we must all take responsibility for what will happen in Yasuni – we had the chance to show a commitment to the environment, to sustainability, to alternative energy, to a different way of doing things in general. And we shamefully failed to take it.

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Historical Justice, Brought Up-To-Date

A big topic of conversation today (well, it's a big topic among the people I talk to, anyway...) is that of climate justice. Roughly speaking, this means the need to take into account that some countries have a historical responsibility for the large amounts of pollution they have created, while other countries need help dealing with the effects of that pollution, and with ensuring that they do not create an equally large amount of pollution. Thus, the historically responsible countries should help the other countries. Simple, when you put it like that, but it's actually quite complex to arrange in practice.

It does bring to mind another similar, but much older, issue that has also been in the news recently – that of reparations for slavery. The effects of the slave trade between Africa and North America and the Caribbean are still being felt sharply even today, 150 years after the American Civil War ended slavery on that continent (and even longer since it was ended in much of the rest of the world). We see the relative poverty and discrimination against black people in the US; the resource based economies of the Caribbean that keep them poor; and the conflicts and troubles of places in West Africa where slaves were taken from.

Whenever these issues are brought up, western nations tend to try and bury their heads in the sand and ignore the people asking the questions. They are scared that if they admit any wrongdoing in the slave trade, they will be expected to pay billions of dollars in compensation and reparations for the damage they did over the centuries. And although we might say that maybe they should pay that money, they rightfully point out that handing over huge amounts of money to governments in countries that have conflict and corruption problems may not be the wisest solution – unless we want to help boost the balances of a few secret Swiss bank accounts.

However, a recently announced plan by the heads of various Caribbean states provides a much better way of looking at the reparations issue. Rather than directly asking for money, they are asking for European nations to help with medical treatment and education on the islands, and to help forge cultural and political links between the Caribbean and the West African nations that most of their citizens originally came from. This could help these countries become less reliant on western money, rather than more so – as an educated, healthy population with strong trading links with others countries would be much more able to fend for itself.

Hopefully, this plan will prove more amenable than demands for monetary reparations have proven to be in the past, and the European states will help it to get off the ground. It could provide some excellent opportunities for communities that have been oppressed and exploited throughout history, but it could also provide a good example for how we can approach climate justice in the future. Rather than obsessing about money and figures, we can instead focus on working together to provide the skills and resources necessary for poorer communities to survive climate change – whether that be the ability to make their own solar panels or hydro electricity, or to build houses in ways that will resist sea level changes, or anything else. This will take a lot of coordination, and, yes, will cost some money – but if we can manage to agree to do this kind of thing over the incredibly divisive topic of slavery, then we should be able to manage it when it comes to environmental issues that affect us all.

[ historical justice, climate justice, American civil war, Carribbean states, European states, Swiss bank accounts ]