‘The Amazon Is Not for Sale’

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa did not attend the U.N. General Assembly meeting last week. He stayed in Ecuador, which has been rocked by a national strike launched in protest of the removal of a fuel subsidy, a gutted public sector, civil rights repression and expanding extractivism. As Noboa declared a state of emergency, he sent Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld to New York in his place. Addressing the General Assembly, Sommerfeld emphasized her country’s multilateralism “to address global challenges” and called for more financing to protect the Amazon and Galapagos Islands, “which are the treasure of humanity.”  

She did not address her government’s role in the destruction of Ecuador’s environmental riches, its recent dissolution of the Environment Ministry or its civil rights repressions against those who dissent from the expansion of oil development in the Amazon Basin. The expansion of extractive development in the Amazon is one of the driving causes of the national strike, led by the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador. Seven Indigenous nations who recently joined the CONAIE-led strike sent representatives to New York to deliver their own message: “The Amazon is not for sale.”

Currently, more than 2 million hectares (almost 8,000 square miles) of Amazonian rainforest are under imminent threat from plans to auction 14 oil blocks along the Ecuador-Peru border by early next year. The Andwa, Shuar, Achuar, Kichwa, Sápara, Shiwiar and Waorani nations reject this development on ancestral territories without their consent. “We have not and will never give consent for the [oil auction] in our territories,” Kichwa leader Nadino Calapucha said, stressing that sacrificing the Amazon for economic prosperity “will not generate development, but impoverishment and destruction.” 

Ecuador’s Energy and Mines Ministry laid out a national hydrocarbon strategy at the annual Oil and Gas Expo in Quito, where politicians and industry leaders discussed plans to make fossil fuels the engine of the country’s economic growth. Detailed plans for the hydrocarbons strategy are expected in November.

As national protests spread, Ecuador’s vice minister of hydrocarbons, María Daniela Conde, affirmed that oil is the “backbone of the country” and committed to hold the auction by 2026. 

“The government is dusting off plans from previous administrations to open up very remote rainforest that is far from oil infrastructure, [which will further] trap Ecuador in a downward spiral of debt and dependency,” said Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch. “They are setting Ecuador on a path to open some of the last remote, pristine areas of intact, roadless rainforest in the entire country.”

At least 60% of the Ecuadorian Amazon region is currently under oil concession, and a fight in the streets and the courts has been raging to protect what’s left. Two years ago, a national referendum banned oil drilling in the Yasuní National Park in the northern provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana. More than 700 million barrels of crude oil were to remain underground, and hundreds of wells closed down by 2029. 

But the Noboa government has largely disregarded the referendum. In July, Ecuador and Peru announced a binational agreement to construct a new 60-kilometer pipeline skirting the boundary of Yasuní National Park and connecting with Peru’s Talara refinery. In August, Ecuador approved continued oil production in Yasuní for another five years as current reserves deplete.

A coalition of Indigenous Amazonian nations of Ecuador and Peru responded with protests and a clear statement: “We cannot trust governments that have ignored Ecuador’s democratic mandate to leave oil in the ground in Yasuní, or those that continue to neglect the cleanup of oil spills that have already reached the Pacific coasts of both countries.” 

Indigenous nations continue to draw global attention to what is happening in northern Ecuador, and the looming threat to Ecuador’s southern Amazon. In California, the state Senate voted on Aug. 25 to investigate “the impact of California’s role in the consumption of crude sourced from the Amazon region” and to explore policy reform. The protests in New York last week drew further attention to the United States’ role as the largest global consumer of Ecuadorian oil.

The problem is bigger than Ecuador. With U.N. climate change negotiations soon convening in Belém, Brazil, all of the Amazonian countries continue to push fossil fuel extraction deeper into ever-more remote regions, threatening to tip one of the world’s most important carbon sinks past the point of no return. Scientists currently estimate that nearly half of Amazon forests may be stressed to the point of collapse before 2050. Ecuadorian ministers have highlighted the country’s war on narcoterrorism in the halls of the U.N., but ignore the ways oil development in the Amazon contributes to the spread of illegal activity and fuels conflict and social disintegration on Indigenous land, where local populations otherwise serve as natural protectors of healthy forests.  

“It’s putting these communities on the front lines and putting them in danger,” said Koenig. “Whether it’s from state repression, criminalization and persecution, or from armed actors that are involved in these illegal economies, opening up of the Amazon is really dangerous.”