The Yasuní-ITT Initiative was a project that attempted to keep over a billion barrels of oil in the ground under the Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
[1] The aim of the initiative was to conserve biodiversity, protect indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation, and prevent CO2 emissions.
The initiative envisioned a transition to a sustainable economy, using the funds to create jobs in such sectors as renewable energy while protecting the region's biodiversity and social equality.
[2] After receiving pledges totaling $200 million by 2012, the Ecuadorian government announced that it would move forward with the Yasuni-ITT Initiative.
[3][4] However, in July 2013, the commission on the Yasuni-ITT Initiative's progress concluded that economic results were insufficient, leading Correa to scrap the plan on August 15, 2013.
Thus, the land was claimed by Europeans who exercised control over the indigenous populations and began oil extraction without consent or compensation to the local peoples.
All of these issues combined stripped indigenous people of large areas of their territory and endangered their cultural and economic way of life.
In their opposition, local residents sought to participate fully in discussions with multi-national oil companies and national governments on the issue.
While this discourse did not blossom fully in the 1960s, by the 1990s the political pressure that oil companies faced completely changed the way things were done.
Oil companies and governments now had to pay attention to the social and environmental impacts of extraction and long-term interests of local communities.
By ignoring the wants and needs of the native people, oil companies forced them to turn to political resistance as the only way to make themselves heard.
Town-meetings held by the Waorani were run in a consensus style, and although this is a different practice compared to the rest of the world, national governments recognized these meetings as legitimate political proceedings.
[21] While there is still much that needs to be done in the way of sustainable oil extraction, the discourse between the local population in the Ecuadorian Amazon has increased dramatically giving them a voice and a say in what happens to their land.
They also pushed the government in 2007 to prohibit oil, gas, and logging activities in the "Zona Intangible", which was 7,580 km2 of Waorani land.
The six dollars only covered local damages, it did not account for climate change and costs of carbon dioxide production, which also required payment for.
[23] The story-line about respecting and preserving the land of the "last free people" is the corner-stone of the ever-changing discourse underlining the Yasuní-ITT project, and is used every time human rights activists claim that isolated groups are affected by new oil activities.
[24] Leonardo DiCaprio and Edward Norton as well as Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison supported the proposal.
[30] Then vice president Jorge Glas led reporters around the drilling site managed by Petroecuador, the country's national oil company.
[7] A referendum on banning oil exploitation in the Yasuní National Park was held in Ecuador on 20 August 2023 alongside general elections.
The referendum was a popular initiative demanded by indigenous communities for more than ten years before being finally validated by the Constitutional Court in May 2023.