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Yasuní.

Yasuní National Park.- is one of Ecuador’s last great wildernesses and the country’s largest mainland national park. The 9,620-square-kilometer terrain ranges from upland tropical forest to seasonally flooded forest, marshes, swamps, lakes, and rivers.

The future of the park depends enormously on the government’s Yasuní-ITT project, which aims to secure payment for Ecuador to leavean estimated 900 million barrels of oil unexploited underneath the park. But with or without permission, oil companies continue to flout environmental regulations in the area.













The Yasuní National Park is famous for its extraordinary and unique biodiversity and has been recognized by UNESCO for its ecological and cultural importance. It is home to various groupsof indigenous people such as the Waorani, Kichwa and Shuar, some of which live in voluntary isolation from the outside world.

However it is currently threatened by a proposal to exploit the oil from the ITT reserves beneath the Yasuní Park. Even the most optimistic estimates predict there to be only 11 days worth of oil in the reserves.

Extracting this oil will have huge environmental impacts such asthe extinction of known and unknown species, oil contamination of water and soil and a large contribution to climate change through further oil production and extensive logging. It will also mean the final extermination of indigenous people living in voluntary isolation through violence and disease. It would not only be a violation of national environmental law but also international human rightslaw.

The national government of Ecuador has stated that it is prepared to leave the oil in the ground in return for international compensation. While it is a bold proposal, it leaves Yasuní vulnerable to future oil exploitation. However it also has the potential to be revolutionary — to become a principal that could help other developing countries across the world save their nationaltreasures without sacrificing economic development. It also asserts the first real solution to climate change.
Yasuní Green Gold campaign calls for international support for the government of Ecuador to improve the proposal by committing to unconditionally conserving the Yasuní, allowing the local and indigenous people of the Yasuní to participate in the decision-making which affects their lives and makingsure no parallel agreements are made which conflict with the preservation of the Yasuní.


Yasuní National Park:

According to scientific studies, Yasuní National Park, located in the Ecuadorian Amazon region in the provinces of Orellana and Pastaza, is the most biologically diverse region in the world.


On 20 November 1979 Yasuní was declared a National Park, in recognition of the factthat it contains great natural wealth that must be preserved.

In 1989 Yasuní National Park was made a World Biosphere Reserve as part of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme of UNESCO. As a consequence of this declaration, the park’s management must comply with the Seville Strategy for Biosphere Reserves, adopted at the International Conference on Biosphere Reserves held in Seville,Spain in March 1995. The strategy stipulates that in order to preserve their natural equilibrium and prevent pollution, the only activities that can be undertaken in a biosphere reserve are “cooperative activities compatible with sound ecological practices, including environmental education, recreation, ecotourism, and applied and basic research.” 

In 1999, a portion of the park was declared an“untouchable zone”, which was delimited by the government in 2006. These zones are protected areas of exceptional cultural and biological importance in which no form of extractive activity can be undertaken due to their environmental value, not only for the region, but also for the country and the world.


All of these categories of protection were granted to this area with the goal of...