Yasuni: On 20 August the people of the Republic of Ecuador (17.8 million inhabitants) in a constitutional consultation (59% in favour), together with the presidential elections, offered Yasun the Biosphere Reserve (designated in 1989) the possibility of no more oil. If we take into account that in the Ecuadorian economic system oil is, together with agricultural products, the central part of the current economy, this decision is very significant. How in Ecuador? In the country that divides the line of Andean mountains and volcanoes from north to south, indigenous peoples account for 7 per cent of the total population (quechus, shuar or jíbaros, waoranis, awak, chachis, etc.). and their rights are protected in the new constitution of 2008. This exemplary constitution, for the first time in the world, also covers the rights of nature.

Ten years ago, President Rafael Correa abandoned the international initiative Yasuni ITT, born of indigenous peoples and social movements, for the limited subsidies of the international community, and authorized the extraction of oil. Popular movements and indigenous communities in Ecuador did not agree and began the constitutional consultation work now approved.

Yasunidos: Between 2013 and 2023, the successful campaign for Yasuni has not paralyzed, despite the continued attacks of state institutions, the police, the judiciary and the legislature, the economic elites. And I think we have the main lesson here: the strong political will, the new forms of construction and mobilization, and the broad alliances, outside the classic schemes of the political parties, have become winning formulas. Yasunidos’s tremendous work during this decade has been the key to victory. They have formed an open “movement” of social and popular movements, according to their words: “To respond to the ecosocial crisis and climate change, derived from capitalist and anthropogenic ideology, in the defense of life in all its forms and promoting active participation as a central political axis.” And above obstacles and severe blows (repression, threats, fines, faces and setbacks) have achieved the goal. We now need to know and follow this important step towards changing the energy model from every corner of the world.

Get involved! Nigerian activist Nnimmo Bassey recently read to Yasun that it was not just an area of the Amazon. The initiative from there was applicable and exemplary for the burial of oil throughout the world. That is the case!