The Ecuadorian Waoranis tribe is celebrating a court ruling that blocks access to oil companies that have been trying for years to oil in the Amazon.

The government of Ecuador had released about 180,000 hectares for oil drilling.
Although the state of Ecuador possessed the mineral wealth, it had to first discuss plans for a possible use of resources with indigenous groups, the court said after a two-week trial and there was a request by the Waorani.

In their territory with an area of 180,000 hectares on the Amazon must not be drilled for oil.

Already in 2014, the CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) signaled interest in two oil blocs, one of which – as well as the neighboring ITT bloc – is home to the indigenous people of the Waorani, who live there in voluntary seclusion.
China’s economy and its global influence are growing at a rapid pace. Nowhere is this clearer than in Ecuador, a country to which Beijing lent $ 9 billion.

Rainforest against oil companies

The government of Ecuador reached an agreement with the Waorani on the search for oil in 2012, but the Waorani declared in court that they had been deceived.
As a result, the court ordered new talks to transpose the provisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CIDH) based in Costa Rican San José.
As already written, a historic victory, but against this decision the government of Ecuador can and will proceed.

“Our territory gives us life. We will not allow oil drilling to poison our streams and our fishing areas.
We will not allow explosives to be placed in our hunting grounds for earthquake testing.
The construction of railway tracks, pipelines or roads is not permitted. We do not realize what the government calls oilblock 22. Our woodland is not an oil block, it is our life “- said the Waorani in an open letter >>>

You can sign up to support the Waorani https://waoresist.amazonfrontlines.org/action/

In the northeastern part of the Amazon Basin in Ecuador is one of the last large jungle areas of the earth whose vast biodiversity has been largely preserved. Yasuní National Park has a single hectare of forest that is as diverse as the Mexican, US and Canadian communities. In 1989 the area was declared a Biosphere Reserve by Unesco.

Only 2.5 hectares of Yasuní contain more trees than the US and Canada together. The area is also home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane, indigenous communities that have decided to live in isolation. Contact with the outside world would endanger their cultures and their lives.

Precisely because large parts of the Amazonian landscape, especially on the Peruvian side, have been sacrificed to the oil industry, the ITT Yasuní initiative represents a reversal in current economic governance; that the world can do other things than destroy its most beautiful and valuable ecosystems.
But Ecuador is a poor country and still lives on oil today. To protect a natural park, Ecuador wanted to forego the exploitation of oil fields and be compensated for it by the international community. The money was missing – Germany was guilty!

The background of the story

The ITT initiative promised to leave the oil in the ground, thereby preventing more than 400m tonnes of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere, if half the $7.2bn value of the reserve could be raised by the international community by 2023.

2011 became known: The federal government of Germany blocked the funds for the Yasuní project, which was to protect a large rainforest area from oil drilling.

Non-governmental organizations and representatives of Ecuador at that time hoped for the mobilization of the public.

The Federal Goverment of Germany had welcomed the project in 2008 with the votes of all groups, but then came the change of government and with it Dirk Niebel (FDP = Liberal Party) as the head of the Development Ministry.

In the fall of 2010, Niebel wrote a letter that Yasuní will not support for reasons of principle, on the one hand, and because a number of questions remain unanswered, on the other hand. After public protests Niebel moved back a bit more from basic justifications, but the state was the same: there was no money for Yasuni!! The former Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa then announced the cooperation with Germany, and said the Yasuní initiative for failed.

Background of the dispute were cheeky statements by German government officials.
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa scolded a television program about “third-rate officials” who have the “impudence” to “teach lessons” to the government in Quito !!
Correa said that it is easy to judge “with a well-filled belly” while there are countries in Latin America where poverty and misery still prevail.

“Do not fray, do not fetch anything from the ground, die of hunger, but as tourists we enjoy the jungle that you, the useful idiots, receive,” said the ex-president.

The ruling immediately suspends the possibility of selling the land to the community for oil exploration. It is also an important precedent for other rainforest communities in the southern Amazon region of Ecuador.

We are very happy and congratulate the brave fighters!!

https://netzfrauen.org/2019/04/28/waorani/

My comment: The ex- German Development Minister Dirk Niebel is known not only as a lobbyist of industry, but as a person with a strictly colonial view of the world. And not only that.
He belongs to a party known for its mean and corrupt behavior.

Correa himself had announced the initiative in 2007. “We want to protect biodiversity and the people living there,” Correa said in April 2013 during his visit to Germany. If the funding does not come from the world community, he has no choice but to promote oil.

“With deep sadness, but out of responsibility to our people and our history, I have to make one of the hardest decisions of my term,” Correa said afterwards. “The world has failed us.”

Seen in this way, one understands the decision of ex-president Rafael Correa at that time.

My best regards, Venus