page_title: Yasuni National Park
section_title: Oil reserves
hierarchical_section_title: Yasuni National Park / Oil reserves
caption_attribution_description: English: The slow moving waters of the Yasuni River are perfect for hosting caiman species such as the one pictured here.
context_page_description: Yasuni National Park is in Ecuador with an area of 9,823 km² between the Napo and Curaray Rivers in Napo and Pastaza Provinces in Amazonian Ecuador. The national park lies within the Napo moist forests ecoregion and is primarily rain forest. The park is about 250 km from Quito and was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989. It is within the claimed ancestral territory of the Huaorani indigenous people. Yasuni is also home to two uncontacted indigenous tribes, the Tagaeri and the Taromenane. Many indigenous people use the riverways within the park as a main mode of travel. Several waterways in the area are tributaries that lead into the Amazon River, including blackwater rivers high in tannins boasting vastly different floral composition than the main riverways. The spine-covered palm, Bactris riparia, and aquatic plant Montrichardia linifera typically line the edges of these slow moving rivers, often referred to as Igapós.
context_section_description: Yasuni National Park is home to an estimated 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil - 40 percent of Ecuador's reserves – in the Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT) oil fields. Environmentalists and scientists such as Jane Goodall, E.O. Wilson, and Stuart Pimm urged the government to leave the resources untapped. Indigenous people and environmentalists called for a national referendum on the issue. This referendum called the Yasuní-ITT Initiative was enacted in 2007, and by 2009 pledges of support from around the world came to around 1.7 billion dollars. In response, President Rafael Correa launched the Yasuní-ITT Initiative to protect the park's natural resources in June 2007. The initiative promised to leave the park undisturbed in exchange for compensation from the international community. Not drilling in the park would prevent 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the air, officials said.  The government hoped to generate funds of at least 50 percent of the profits that it would receive were it to utilize the oil reserves.  In total it hoped that US$3.6 billion would be raised over 12 years. At the time, the plan was hailed by environmentalists as a precedent setting decision that would reduce the burden of environmental preservation on the world's poorer countries.
  Actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Edward Norton, filmmaker and global ecological activist/scientist Michael Charles Tobias, and former Vice President of the United States Al Gore were among those who pledged support to the Ecuadorian government. Countries contributing funds included Turkey, Chile, Colombia, Georgia, Australia, Spain and Belgium. However, fundraising efforts were inhibited by Ecuador's insistence that the government alone would decide how any funds raised were spent.
  
  In July 2013, Correa formed a commission to evaluate the Yasuni-ITT initiative's progress to date. The commission concluded that the economic results were not sufficient. On August 15, Correa scrapped the plan citing poor follow-through from the international community. "The world has failed us", he said, calling the world's richest countries hypocrites who emit most of the world's greenhouse gases while expecting nations like his to sacrifice economic progress for the environment. Through an executive order, he liquidated the Yasuni-ITT trust fund formally ending the initiative. During the six-year history of the initiative, only US$336 million had been pledged, Correa said (in contrast to the $1.6 billion stated in the report cited above), and of that only US$13.3 million had actually been delivered.
  Correa also said he had commissioned economic, legal, and technical studies on drilling in the region in preparation for the national assembly formally opening the park to drilling.  He said expanding Ecuador's oil production was essential to furthering his economic projects that have won him widespread support among the nation's poor. He said the drilling would affect only 1% of the Yasuni basin.  A spokesperson said the drilling could be conducted without damaging the environment.  Environmentalists strongly objected to opening the park to oil exploration. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the presidential palace after Correa's announcement. The money pledged insured that it would be possible to fund the initiative, with support from the international community. Oil production accounts for one-third of Ecuador's national budget.
caption: The Yasuni River is home to many different species of caiman.
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