FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Ecuador's Plan to Drill in the Amazon Is Moving Ahead, Despite Opposition

A referendum vote was considered the best shot at halting a plan to drill for oil in the Amazon.
Ecuador's Yasuni National Park. Image: Jason Koebler

Last August, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa said that, if people in the country could garner the signatures to trigger one, he would put the country’s controversial plan to drill for oil in the world’s most important part of the Amazon Rainforest to a vote. Well, activists say they got the signatures, and it appears that Correa’s government has decided not to honor them.

Earlier this week, Ecuador’s National Electoral Council officially notified Yasunidos, the activist group trying to save the country’s Yasuni National Park from vastly expanded oil drilling, that the 757,623 signatures they got opposing the plan are considered invalid. The group says that it had nearly 200,000 signatures more than was necessary to trigger a referendum vote.

Advertisement

The government suggested that some of the signatures were "from children" and some signatures appeared multiple times. The government threw out more than half of the votes. Yasunidos has said the government tampered with the signatures and announced today it is officially appealing the decision. The BBC reports that some of the signatures are demonstrably fake, though it's unclear how many. The organization has also started a "defend your vote" letter-writing campaign.

A recent poll by the country’s El Telegrafo newspaper found that 72.3 percent of voters oppose the plan, which would call for Ecuador to extract roughly 800 million barrels of crude oil from a 4,000 square-mile area of the national park, known at the ITT, which is considered the most biodiverse part of the world and has several hundred members of an uncontacted indigenous tribe living in it.

Firmé x el #Yasuní Este es mi #PedidoEscritoEIndividual al @cnegobec Exijo se pronuncie. #defiendetufirma @Yasunidos pic.twitter.com/4sFJodeRpb

— Rosa María Torres (@rosamariatorres) May 14, 2014

In recent days there’s been a shift in the protest’s message—what was once strictly a protest intended to save the environment and the indigenous people living in the ITT has become fiercely political, with protesters marching in Quito carrying signs that say “Democracia en extincion”—democracy in extinction.

Correa’s decision to invalidate the signatures probably shouldn’t come as a surprise—the president has been slowly increasing his power in the country and has changed his tune about drilling in the Amazon. He was seen as an innovator for originally asking the world to donate money to offset the amount of money the country would earn by extracting the oil, framing it as an environmental gift to the world.

Por allí veo a darth vader #CNETransparente #DefiendeTuFirma @lolacienfuegos @kevinhurlt @jennifercoloma pic.twitter.com/Ehs25cikDq

— Horacio Yépez (@HoracioYepezM) May 7, 2014

But, since August, he has been fiercely pro-drilling, and protesters have been shot with paintballs and otherwise beaten back. Ecuador’s constitution says that any petition that garners signatures representing 5 percent of the country’s voters will be put to a referendum. Yasunidos says it has collected signatures from roughly 7 percent of voters.

The referendum vote was considered the last and best remaining hope of stopping the drilling, but it appears increasingly likely that Correa doesn’t care either way.