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PRETITLE |
10:00:25 SYNCPenti
MAP: Once this
was a green jungle here, our old territory. Now, only a small part of Ome,
our ancestral lands, is left inside what they call Yasuni National Park. PAUSE 10:00:36 SYNCPenti:
MAP There’re several oil fields here. In the
43rd, the work goes on to get the last barrels. PAUSE For us, it
means destruction and death. PAUSE 10:00:51 SYNCPentiINVISION:
We don’t want life to end. We’re humans who live with nature. 10:
00:58
COM:
After much controversy, in 2017, Ecuador, a South American oil-rich country, started to drill in a
new oil field inside Yasuni National Park. Yasuni
holds one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world and is home to indigenous
people. PAUSE
It
also contains a third of the country’s oil reserves. Ecuador
once proposed to leave the oil in the ground in exchange for international
compensation. 10:01:30 SYNCEsperanza
It was an
ecological appeal on behalf of biodiversity and climate change. 10:01:42 SYNCAlbertoAcosta: A new word appeared; “Yasuni” meaning something sacred. And “Yasunizar” - to make something sacred. We must make sacred the whole Planet. It’s the only way to prevent the
ecological disaster that threatens us all. 10:01:58 COM: It was a
revolutionary idea to fight global climate change. But
it clashed with potent interests. Cash-rich
China emerged a strong player in Latin America. In
Ecuador, it became a major stakeholder in new oil deals. 10:02:15 SYNCFernandoSantos:
The Chinese
arrived as conquerors. Like Spaniards who came here 500 years ago to take
everything. 10:02:25 COM: But China’s plan to grab Ecuador’s riches met resistance. 10:02:32 SYNCManari
We’re not going to allow the Chinese
companies that arrived from another continent, to own our resources. 10:02:47 SYNCManari: The big corporations do not
longer value the Earth. The Earth is becoming a dustbin. 10:02:58 COM: The extraction of
fossil fuels drives the world but it causes climate chaos. The
story of Yasuni forces a question: Should
we leave the oil in the ground? |
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TITLE |
THE CURSE OF ABUNDANCE |
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HUORANI
I |
10:04:48 COM: The Huaorani people were hunting and fishing
in their corner of the earth long before oil became a global obsession. 10:05:27 SYNCPENTI: This tree, the ceibo,
we call it Gemenebe in Huoarani.
It's ancient. PAUSE People were
hiding under these roots. It saved those who came close to it. PAUSE SYNCPenti : This tree is very significant. It
is sacred for us. PAUSE It's nice to
talk to it because it is alive. It
has hair and hands like a human. 10:05:59 COM: Penti Baihua is the leader of the Huaorani
from Bameno. They’re the more recently contacted tribe living deep inside Yasuni
National Park. Penti
was a boy when oil was discovered on Huaorani lands. He
remembers how foreign companies invaded their territory and started dividing
it into oil fields. 10:06:21 SYNCPenti:
It was a free
land where my parents and my grandparents lived. It was Huaorani territory. PAUSE 10:06:32 The
company took advantage of it. Nobody knew what was going to happen next. PAUSE 10:07:04 SYNCPENTI: It wasn't a peaceful and willful contact. The life became sad. How to say? In suffering. Our family died. PAUSE 10:08:01 COM: Texaco, a US oil
company, came to operate here in the late 60s. It
discovered that Huaorani were sitting on commercial quantities of oil and had
to be moved. Texaco allied with evangelical missionaries,
Ecuador’s government and the state-owned oil company. Huaorani were forced to live in a
protectorate. It shattered their world. 10:08:28 SYNCPENTI: When the oil company entered, it cut trees and built a road. And it brought people to colonize. PAUSE SYNCPenti: It was
difficult to relate to the oil world; to the smell of clothes, smell of food,
taste of things from the outside. And to the salt, they gave us to eat. PAUSE SYNCPENTI: The western world brought us
diseases like fever, vomiting diarrhea, polio, and bronchitis. |
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OIL
HOPES ARCHIVE FIRST BARREL |
10:09:51 COM: For most
Ecuadorians, the black gold meant a magic cure for the ills of the past. The
arrival of Texaco promised unknown prosperity. ACTUALITYVOICEOVER: The people can’t contain their emotions. They
stain their hands, hardened by work, with black oil, a symbol of their hope 10:10:16 COM: The first barrel
of oil became a national treasure. 10:10:21 SYNCSantos:
We had a military
dictatorship at that time. The uniformed army went out to parade on the
streets of Quito. They put this
first barrel inside the Temple of Heroes, where the remains of wars heroes
rest. 10:10:55 SYNCAlberto:
We felt we were
about to overcome our position as an old banana republic. I remember a
magazine with a title: "Ecuador,
a new Kuwait of the Andes." PAUSE 10:11:25 SYNCAlberto: Once I went on a trip to the
Amazon with my partner, Ana Maria. I
watched with enthusiasm how we’re lining the Trans-Ecuadorian pipeline. I said: “Ana Maria, this is the jugular of the
Ecuadorian economy. Here flows the wealth of our country, a source of our
financing. " Ana Maria, a
biologist and an environmentalist, said: " No, here doesn’t flow our wealth. Here runs the
blood of the Ecuadorian Amazon. We’re bleeding the Amazon.” |
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CHEVRON
TEXACO TOXI TOUR |
10:12:02 COM: Environmental campaigners
claim they have evidence to prove the guilt of big oil in damaging the
Amazon’s lifeblood - its water. 10:12:13 SYNCDonaldMoncayo:
This is the fresh
water that Chevron had left us in the Ecuadorian Amazon. PAUSE In this
sector, people don’t have drinking water. They
make a hole up to six meters deep to capture water for human consumption. The
underground waters are contaminated. 10:12:31 COM: Chevron, an
American oil company, had bought Texaco after it departed from Ecuador in the
1990s. Flare
stacks left behind by the oil industry still claim lives. 10:12:47 SYNC: DonaldMoncayo:
Thousands of
animals, nocturnal insects, burn here every day. PAUSE They believe
that it is the moon and they perform a dance of love. PAUSE They come
attracted by the light, the heat is very intense, and they burn. 10:13:10 COM: Pablo Fajardo is a lawyer in
a case against Chevron. He claims that during its 26 years of operation Chevron
Texaco was responsible for throwing more than 60 billion liters of toxic
water into the rivers of the Ecuadorian Amazon. 10:13:28 SYNCPabloFajardo:
It built more
than 1000 pits to store toxic waste. It spilled crude on more than1500
kilometers of roads. PAUSE 10:13:45 Texaco technicians taught classes
around the world how to operate the oil industry without significant impacts.
They never applied what they knew and preached in Ecuador. PAUSE 10:13:57 COM: Chevron Texaco is accused of leaving in its
wake a disaster dubbed “Rainforest Chernobyl”. But the company says it acted in compliance with
Ecuadorian law and Texaco spent more than 40 million dollars in clean-up
operations. It claims it now has no liabilities after
Ecuador’s government at the time signed off their clearance. The
people of Ecuador are still battling the
corporation in the international courts. PAUSE 10:14:35 COM: Much of northern Ecuadorian Amazon was affected by the rush for oil. Entire tribes of indigenous people disappeared. Those who live here continue to suffer. 10:14:49 SYNCDonald:
The illnesses and
deaths of many people buried here had possibly to do with the oil activity. PAUSE 10:15:02 There is a severe problem in this
area. We have lately obtained the results of a survey, carried out in the
families. We have 200 cases of cancer per year. 10:15:16 COM: Chevron says that there is no proven link
between high rates of cancer and oil activities in this area. |
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YASUNI
INITIATIVE IS BORN |
10:15:34 COM: In the 90s,
Ecuador discovered new oil reserves in the Yasuni National Park. For
the local tribes it was a curse of abundance they wanted to break. The
indigenous people, traumatized by the previous oil activity, demanded that
the oil stayed in the ground. Out
of this resistance, a bold idea emerged within civil society. 10:15:59 SYNCEsperanza We would stop exploiting oil in
Yasuni and the international community could or should collaborate with
Ecuador. PAUSE We wanted to
appeal to the world to support a moratorium. PAUSE 10:16:17 SYNCRoqueSevilla:
We planned to ask
the developed countries to collaborate. PAUSE They had
contaminated the air that belongs to everyone from the time of the industrial
revolution. PAUSE The rest of the states were not polluting because they were not industrialized. PAUSE 10:16:39 SYNCTARSICIO The developed countries have a historical debt, an ecological debt, and a climate debt, which needs to be paid so that together we can face climate change. 10:16:50 COM: Alberto Acosta was
one
of the
main architects of the proposal. When
he became an oil minister, he took it to a cabinet meeting. 10:17:00 SYNCAlbertoAcosta: There was a huge tension. I said:
"We must leave the oil in the ground" and the president of
Petroecuador said: "No - we must exploit it." Behind my back
they’re looking for deals with the Chinese, Chileans and the Brazilians to
exploit oil quickly. 10:17:19 COM: But the plot
failed. A
civil society proposal, inspired by the indigenous people protest, became an
official government initiative. In
2007, the newly elected president, Rafael Correa, spoke to the world. 10:17:39 SYNCCORRAUNITEDNATION CORREA: For
the first time, Ecuador, an oil country, where a third of the State's
resources depends on oil exploitation, renounces this income for the welfare
of all humanity. PAUSE And it
invites the world to join this effort and compensate us fairly so that
together we can lay the foundations of a more humane, just and sustainable
civilization. 10:18:08 COM: it was a big idea
that came from a small country trapped in a petro-curse. 10:18:16 SYNCHans
It is something
really noble. This is innovative because it is different from all we’ve heard about nature protection
and climate action. It was a really good idea. It came from a developing
country and not from the colonial forces, states and powers. Nothing looked
as promising as Yasuni. 10:18:46 COM: Ecuador asked for
$3.6billion in compensation - half the value of the Yasuni oil. The
money, managed by the United Nations trust fund, would help Ecuador’s transition towards a post-oil country. MAP/GRAPHIC 10:19:12 COM: The proposal
became known as Yasuni ITT Initiative, after three oil fields of Ishpingo,
Tambococha, and Tiputini or field 43 inside the Yasuni National Park. |
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YASUNI
ITT- WHY SAVING YASUNI |
10:19:35 SYNC: KellySwing:
Wow! This is
just absolutely fantastic. This is gonna to change
not just the landscape for conserving nature in Ecuador. But this can be a
model for the world. So we were just up in arms, you know, literally dancing
on the street. 10:19:53 COM: Kelly Swing came to Ecuador from America in 1990, for a year, to study nature in Yasuni and stayed. Today, he speaks for the rainforest 10:20:10 SYNCKellySwing:
the fauna is
disappearing from this region. And it depends on the stage of intervening by
the oil industry. As oil expanse more and more in Yasuni, we are loosing
tremendous number of species on per hectare scale here. 10:20:34 SYNCKelly:
You have an
opportunity to see many organism that we see as absolutely emblematic, iconic
for the rainforest, and the kind of things that people only dream about. 10:20:52 SYNCKellySwing: The best
estimates for the whole amount of species for the planet are less than ten
million. Yasuni very likely has one million species. SYNCKelly: We can save 10% or maybe 15% of all species
for the planet. Why on earth would we not do that? How could we possibly be
so stupid? PAUSE 10:21:18 SYNCKellySwing:
Only a small proportion of species here have
even been given scientific names. Something like 80% doesn’t have scientific
names. We don’t even know who they are, much less what their value might be. There is
probably some plant out there that can treat everything from cancer to high
blood pressure or problems with cholesterol.
10:21:43 COM: Leaving the oil in
the ground would also protect humans. 10:22:03 SYNCKelly:
Yasuni
is one of those few places that still have uncontacted people. There are
several clans scattered across the southern part of Yasuni who are living in
a voluntary isolation In most cases
we see those few brown people as being in the way of the happiness and
wellbeing of the masses. Do we go for
the money or do we let these people continue to live their lives as they have
for thousands of years? 10:22:44 SYNCKelly: The last Da Vinci paining sold for $450 millions. Why is it
worth so much? Because it is one of very few. PAUSE 10:23:15 This idea of rarity means value.
But somehow we don’t value humans as much as we value things. |
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YASUNI SCIENCE POTSDAM |
10:23:51 COM: Ecuador’s Initiative was seen as benefiting the whole planet. 10:24:00 SYNCHans:
The rain forest
is the most productive actually ecosystem in the world when it comes to
carbon storage. If you destroy rainforest you have an immediate addition to
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Secondary, you
kill very important carbon sink on this planet. 10:24:20 COM: Ecuador’s
rainforest is a small, but important part of the Amazon Basin. And
Yasuni plays a critical role in mitigating climate changes because of its
unique biodiversity. A study from 2015
confirmed it. 10:24:37 SYNCKristen:
Here is an animation of a forest patch in
the Ecuadorian rainforest. What we see here is the growth of these trees and
how they collapse under the climate change. 10:24:56 SYNCKristen:
To recover the entire forest structure and
also a biomass it stores it would take a long time. Several centuaries. SYNCKristen: Biodiversity
really contributes to the resilience of the Amazon rainforest. It shows us
that this is a must have. Not just nice to have. SYNCKristen: The National Park has the highest plant diversity as we know and it is
important for the entire Amazon region because of its biomass and its role as
the carbon store. 10:25:32 SYNCKristen: Because it is a rainforest, it is a huge
producer of water and clouds and has an important role in regional and also
global climate. We need it as
a lung for our world climate and for sustainable future. PAUSE 10:26:19 SYNCHans:
You cannot
benefit from globalization and at the same time think that climate change
will not affect you at all. This is just morally unacceptable. It is plain
stupid. 10:26:45 SYNCHans:
If we lose
Yasuni to the oil, we more or less lose hope of a new way of protecting the
climate. |
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SAVING
YASUNI GLOBAL |
10:26:56 COM: Saving Yasuni
became a global mission. Ecuador’ s revolutionary Idea
raised hopes for a future free from oil dependence. 10:27:06 SYNCFanderFalconi: The international community received very well the Initiative. It generated great recognition. The world debates where to stop extracting fossil fuels, and the answer has to be; "in places where biodiversity and culture have greater value and where people live in voluntary isolation”. 10:27:26 SYNC: Alberto: The Initiative received a massive boost in
the German Parliament, the Bundestag. PAUSE All the
parties told the First Government of Angela Merkel "we must support this
Initiative.” 10:27:40 COM: With such backing maybe the Huaorani could
continue to practice their traditions such as hunting for turtle eggs. But the Yasuni Initiative
attracted some dissent too. 10:27:57 SYNCRoqueSevilla: Other countries had doubts: “If we accept this, what will we do if Saudi Arabia proposes the same, or Russia, the biggest oil producer? PAUSE Will we have
to give them tens of billions of dollars for leaving the oil in the ground as
well’? |
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YASUNI
ITT- ECUADOR |
10:28:21 COM: Ecuador was the
first nation in the world to put the rights of nature and protection of
uncontacted tribes into its constitution. The
Initiative exposed a country torn between its green ambitions, economic
reality, and big oil interests. 10:28:42 SYNCFanderFalconi:
On the one hand, there is at stake an
extraction of nearly one million barrels of heavy crude oil, and the reserves
seem to have expanded. Or you can save a whole set of social, cultural and
environmental values. It is a dilemma of nature conservation. |
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YASUNI
ITT- HUORANI |
10:29:14 COM: Huaorani from Bameno
became the protagonists of the Yasuni official campaign. Except,
they didn’t know it. They
found out about the Initiative by chance. 10:29:54 SYNCPenti:
The government
used the images of my family, my wife, my image, those of my father and of my
uncle Kemperi without consulting us. PAUSE It showed this
film around the world, but never had permission to use our images in its
Yasuni campaign. 10:30:13 COM: The Huaorani became suspicious of the Initiative. They’re used to being on the alert and watching out for possible danger. 10:30:37 SYNCPenti:
I said: The government won’t keep the oil in the ground. It
will extract it because it needs resources. PAUSE SYNCPenti: The
government will cheat. |
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YASUNI
PLAN & PLAN B |
10:30:51COM: It sounded like an
ominous prophecy. Perhaps
not without reason. There
was a catch in Ecuador’s revolutionary idea. 10:31:03 SYNCEsperanza
There were two
Plans. Plan A and Plan B. PAUSE President
Correa said that the Plan A would give the international community a chance
to support our Initiative. PAUSE The Plan B was
developed better and meant oil extraction. PAUSE Both plans
started to compete. It was a race between Ecuador the oil country and
post-oil Ecuador. Each launched
its battle. 10:31:34 SYNCAlbertoAcosta: it was a somewhat macabre competition. We had pressures from the
Brazilians and the Chinese. PAUSE The Chinese
were becoming the main creditor of the Ecuadorian economy. |
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INTRODUCING
CHINA |
10:31:51 COM: Critics say China wanted to
paint red the whole of Latin America. Its
influence started to emerge not only in Ecuador. 10:32:03 SYNCPaulinaGarzon: in 2008, the year of the global financial crisis, Chinese
banks had already prepared themselves financially, technically and
politically to go outside. They had the entire going out strategy of
China and got ready to be a cash machine for Latin America. 10:32:22 COM: At the same time,
Rafael Correa reduced Ecuador’s dependence on the
United States. He
broke with the World Bank, the IMF and defaulted on foreign debts. The
president’s trip to China started
a new era of partnership. Chinese
loans were on the way. 10:32:47 SYNCPaulinaGrazon:
2009 was the
moment when a rocket race started in Ecuador and the rest of Latin America
for loans from the Chinese banks. Ecuador went into a massive debt with China as
of 2009. 10:33:03 COM: Chinese banks
became a cash dispenser and dictated the terms. Ecuador
went into a new dependence with unforeseen consequences. 10:33:13 SYNCPaulina: Foreign debts are paid with oil, not with
money. Ecuador compromised its future capacity to produce oil. The majority
of Chinese loans are tied to the hiring of Chinese companies and Chinese
workers. PAUSE 10:33:34 SYNCESPERANZA: The Chinese started entering and
buying some of the oil fields. China and its companies kept increasing
their power over our country. |
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COPENHAGUEN
SUMMIT 2009 |
10:34:07 COM: In 2009, Rafael
Correa sent his Commission to Copenhagen to sign a deal with the UN. Many
countries gathered in hope to break a deadlock on the climate change. BarackObamaActuality “ I came here not to talk but to act” 10:34:25 Ecuador was ready to
lead common efforts. 10:34:30 SYNCNataliaGreen:
Many called it Hopeenhague. It was a critical moment to make much more
ambitious decisions than ever before. PAUSE 10:34:41 SYNCNataliaGreen:
And our small
country offered a solution; let's talk about the gasoline and the oil we all
put into our cars. This causes the climate change. PAUSE 10:34:55 SYNCNatalia:
There was a
feeling that leaving the oil in the ground was the solution. At last, someone
was telling the truth. But people
were reticent that it was Ecuador’s proposal. Will they comply? The country
didn’t pay its
debt, and has a corruption problem. People
also felt it was blackmail. Some European parliamentarians asked: “If they don’t get that cash, it means they
will exploit?” PAUSE 10:35:19 SYNCNatalia:
We were ready to
sign the trust fund, the UN was ready. Everybody had that beautiful illusion.
10:35:28 COM: Then a phone call came
from Rafael Correa’s legal secretary. 10:35:32 SYNCNatalia: “ Don't sign." The president
said through Alexis Mera: "We can’t sign a document that violates
the sovereignty of the country." 10:35:42 COM: Plan
B, which was pushing for oil extraction score a victory. 10:35:52 SYNCRoqueSevilla: Those interests weighed more than
anything else. Another reason was president’s unprecedented push to grasp
power and control everything. SYNCRoqueSevilla: For him it was unacceptable to have a trust
fund he could not control. PAUSE 10:36:16 COM: The Copenhagen
Summit turned out to be a disaster. There
was no meaningful agreement. 10:36:16 SYNCHans:
China, because of
their land grabbing strategy, simply didn’t want this to happen. The Chinese
simply said: We insist on our position. It is your problem to reduce
greenhouse gases emission, so we don’t want to have any agreement.” They are a
developing country, that means they are entitled to emit whatever they like
to emit. 10:36:59 SYNCHans:
Copenhagen was
just such an unhappy event where everything went wrong in the end. We came
together in Copenhagen to save the world and endedd
up with more or less nothing. You physically felt this collapse, I recall
very well this last night. How could you think of a wonderful Initiative like
Yasuni to flower? Many flowers were killed during that night. Yasuni may be
just the most beautiful of all. |
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YASUNI
ITT CANCELLATION |
10:37:43
COM:
Ecuador and the UN signed a deal on the Yasuni Trust Fund in the end. But
it came too late. The
biggest donors backed off, disappointed with not enough guarantees. No
one else was coming forward. In
2013 president Correa again
spoke to the world. 10:38:04 SYNCCORREAUN "We did not ask for charity. We
asked for co-responsibility in the fight against climate change. PAUSE Ecuador is a marginal polluter, and
yet it proposed to sacrifice 3,6 billion dollars in oil revenue. PAUSE Unfortunately, we have to say that the world has failed us.” 10:38:32 COM: The president
cancelled the initiative. A
few months later the government signed permits for drilling for oil in Yasuni
ITT oil field. 10:38:43 SYNCHans:
If you decide
for yourself and your country, that the life and happiness of future
generation is worth nothing what can we do? Then you go for destroying the
planet. SYNCHans: What is going on in Yasuni is going
on in Brazil, in Peru. The same driving forces that tend to destroy the
rainforest. SYNCHans: We are killing our best friend, namely the
natural carbon sink at the same time when we destroy forests. That’s the most stupid thing you can
do. You kill your friend. The Yasuni
Initiative was a narrative how we could preserve our friends and diminish our
enemies. 10:39:37 COM: The idea of saving
Yasuni started to fade in the world. In
Ecuador, people were not giving up. |
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YASUNIDOS |
10:39:37 SYNCAntonella:
We decided to take to the streets the day
the president cancelled the Initiative. We began to work and struggle
together for a single cause PAUSE SYNAntonella: We were
outraged. And we asked what do we do to prevent it. 10:40:02 COM: Out of this anger
Yasunidos- a movement of young Ecuadorians emerged. They
were determined to rescue the Initiative and called for a referendum. 10:40:14 SYNCAnyonella:
We initiated a debate in the whole of society. But we faced a government
that was not interested in this democratic process and started to discredit
it. 10:40:43 SYNCAntonella: It dismissed us as liars and said we didn’t know the reality of this country, that’s why we don’t want to exploit the oil. PAUSE 10:40:54 SYNCAntonellaCalle:
The government
infiltrated our group, our conversations and our meetings. 10:41:07 SYNCAntionella: With all these obstacles that the Government put
us, we managed to gather more of the percentage of signatures then it was
required. 10:41:18 COM: But the government
invalidated many signatures and dismissed the request for the referendum. The
official narrative of Plan B: “Ecuador needs oil money to fight poverty” scored another
victory. 10:41:34 SYNCAntonellaCalle:
OK, we need the
money to get out of poverty, but fossil fuels extraction and climate change
will not cause poverty as well? 10:41:46 SYNCAntonella: The government mishandled the Initiative. It took credit for it but
didn’t recognize it was a collective process. It hijacked the Initiative and
killed it off. PAUSE 10:42:04 SYNCAntionella:
The government
never had a genuine interest in the idea of leaving the oil in the ground.
Rafael Correa never gave up on oil economic interests. |
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DOCUMENTS
SECTION |
10:42:21 COM: This document
emerged after the president canceled the Initiative. It
says Ecuador was negotiating a $1billion deal with the China Development
Bank. It included a request to help two Chinese companies to conduct oil
operations in the Yasuní Park. Both
parties talked as Ecuador was seeking donations to forgo oil exploitation. The
government insisted the document
was fraudulent. PAUSE-
MUSIC… COM:
This list of loans based on Ecuador’s own data confirmed the country
had got $1billion from the Chinese
bank towards “Investment programs”. |
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PRIEST
AND ROCAFUERTE |
10:43:24 SYNCJoseMIguelGoldaraz:
Where is this
money that, according to president Correa, should be spent here to help
Ecuadorians to get out of this stagnation? Such nonsense! 10:43:36 COM: Jose Miguel
Goldaraz, a Capuchin priest, arrived here more than 40 years ago. He helps the indigenous people to fight for their rights and
knows how the official narrative works. 10:43:49 SYNCJoseMIguel: It is a carrot policy. The government promises everything: people will have jobs, education, health service, development, canoes and beer. And the indigenous believe it. If they don’t believe, there comes a stick. The government uses the militaries and the police as forces of repression. It is a state terrorism on behalf of the companies to silence the communities. 10:44:17 COM: The government
denies it. It
argues that for the Amazon people “Life is Better with Oil” as says this upside down poster. 10:44:26 SYNCJMGoldaraz:
This is one of
the poorest provinces in Ecuador. And it has the most oil. 10:44:37 SYNCJMGoldaraz:
Young people commit a lot of suicides here. But
people don’t talk about it because it is against their culture. They say that
someone died. It stays covered up. The situation is terrible. PAUSE 10:44:50 COM: Jose Miguel
insists the Yasuni Initiative was a utopia. 10:44:56 SYNCJMGoldaraz: The proposal was so beautiful that even the most blind believed it. Why do I say blind? Because no one visited this area. Nobody knew what was going on here. |
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ECOLOGICAL
TRIAL PADOVA |
10:45:22 SYNCMassimo: We are inside the oil field number 31. Beyond, there is a field number 43, also known as the ITT. SYNCMassimo: This is a road that leads to the oil rig. The black spots are tanks for oil sludge. This grey is the soil prepared to support the platform. The green of the Amazon jungle was cut down to set up this structure. 10:45:56 COM: In 2011 Massimo De Marchi went to
Yasuni with a group of environmental investigators. At that time, Ecuador was still promoting the idea of leaving the oil in
the ground 10:46:11 SYNCMassimo: In Yasuni and around, all the structures were already mostly set up for oil exploitation. We saw gas flairs, pipes and connections. PAUSE 10:46:11 SYNCMassimo: We bought more detailed images and discovered
that there was a road inside the 31st block, close to the ITT
field. 10:46:38 COM: The government
insisted the road was an ecological trail built with care for the
environment. 10:46:46 SYNCMassimo:
They demolished
an area of 60 meters to build a 5-meter lane. This road
should be 15 meters wide and it reached 60 meters. SYNCMassimo: There
are heavy trucks moving. It is a road to serve oil activities. We can call it
as we want: a road or an ecological
path. It secures the movement of people and materials. PAUSE SYNCMassimoInterview: A discovery of the road and all
the activity confirmed that the Plan B, which should have been secondary, was
the main plan. TRANSITION
TO PENTI 10:47:31 SYNCPenti: This is not an ecological trail. It is a proper road. I walked there. There was a tremendous noise, a lot of car traffic. Many people were drilling. I saw the spills with my own eyes. There was a
spill inside the field number 31 over one hectare of territory. We found dead
animals such as anaconda, deer, tapir. But nobody wants to inform the world. If you damage
a small part of the territory, the rest dies as well. We are left
with just a tiny area and we want to defend it because our life depends on
it. PAUSE 10:48:13 SYNCPenti: How can I persuade the government to leave us in peace? Let us live! We want to live as Huaorani. We don’t want more oil exploration here. |
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10:48:30 COM: Huaorani appeals can fall
on government’s deaf ears. 10:48:36 SYNCTarsicio: And where would we get four billion dollars a
year the ITT field produces? It is our right to extract oil.
The state offered an alternative; “compensation or we will drill.” There was no compensation, so the
state proceeded to exploit the ITT field. PAUSE 10:48:58 SYNCTarsicio:
We’ll force them all: Chinese,
non-Chinese, Ecuadorians, French or Germans to do things properly. If you exploit
oil in a right way, you don’t harm the ecosystems, let alone the traditional culture and life. PAUSE 10:49:16 SYNCAlberto: It is a grave mistake to think that a cutting edge technology is a solution. PAUSE It is like believing that Dracula will turn a vegetarian and we can entrust him with a blood bank. |
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SECRET
FILMING ITT |
10:49:50 COM: And there is some evidence to suggest that
Dracula may be indeed on the loose. These
are some secret filming images, taken in late 2017, inside Yasuni field
number 43. There
is no sign of a cutting edge technology. Dead
insects are like those found in the north of the Ecuadorian Amazon. The government insists it monitors oil exploitation here and says there’ll be no mistakes from the Chevron Texaco era. |
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BOCA
TIPUTINI PROTEST INSIDE FIELD 43 |
10:50:29 SYNCBasilio: We had everything on the river’s banks. We had animals and
families lived nearby. Now the company occupies here and takes our farming
away. People are leaving, but they do not know where to go. 10:50:47 COM: Basilio Mamallacta lives in Boca Tiputini, a community inside tightly
controlled Yasuni oil field number 43. Petroamazonas, one of Ecuador’s state oil companies, operates here. 10:51:03 SYNCBasilio: When the company arrived, it promised to use advanced technology to avoid contamination. It was a lie. One watercourse on the left is coming from the platform another on the right goes to the river. Heavy trucks pollute here. When it rains everything goes to the river. The river turns around and comes here. Before the river
was clean, there were fish. We had wild animals, flora, and fauna. Everything is contaminated with
fuels from those engines of company’s barges. 10:51:52 COM: A group from Yasunidos
movement stages a protest against company’s operations. They help the locals to collect evidence of the oil damages. 10:52:14 Petroamazonas set up
the oil infrastructure and works here. But
the Chinese company is a subcontractor, according to the terms of the loans. 10:52:28 SYNCBasilo: The Chinese are even in this field. They are drilling. There are four platforms, forty oil wells. Each platform has about thirty or forty wells. It is Sinopec. And Sinopec
pollutes the most. The
subcontractors contaminate the most. 10:52:49 COM: Sinopec is not just accused of
destroying nature here. 10:52:57 SYNCBasilio: The Chinese take work from us. They even work here as cooks, do secretarial and domestic work. We are not just one community in need of work. The whole Aquarico District needs it. SYNCBasilio: If the company stays here, there will be a crisis. There will be no
more forest and no more fishing. Imagine! The animals are already moving away
to other communities that protect their forest. 10:53:32 COM: Sinopec keeps a low profile and doesn’t
respond to public criticism. Oil companies elsewhere in the
Ecuadorian Amazon are also under fire. |
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MANARI
I |
DRAWING 10:54:12 SYNCManari:
Lets say they will enter
into this territory and put every 15 meters pentolites with explosives that
measure more or less 12 meters, and they will drill 50 meters deep. They will put pentolites at the distance of 15 meters, measured from here to here, and down here is also 15. 10:54:42 COM: This is a plan to
search for oil. 10:54:50 In 2016 Ecuador signed
an exploration contract with Andes Petroleum, another Chinese company, inside
the fields 79 and 83. They
are in the southern province of Pastaza. It
is one of the last parts of the Ecuadorian Amazon untouched by oil
activities. DRAWING II 10:55:11 MANARI: It means they will put dynamites of 10 meters long, 50 meters deep and
they will explode them with a machine. It will be like putting
dynamite into our life, into our knowledge. If they detonate, they're going
to kill us. 10:55:34 COM: Manari Ushigua is
a leader of the Sapara nation. There
are only about 500 Sapara left and they speak a unique language. The UN has recognized the group’s cultural importance. Oil
fields 79 and 83 cover most of their land. Sapara watched in horror how other tribes fell victim to the oil. They are determined to keep the
Chinese companies out of the their territory. 10:56:14 SYNCManari:
the Chinese told us that they’d bought those two oil fields. And that land already belongs to
them. PAUSE SYNCManari: We have
argued in a thousand ways: "The country doesn’t need to exploit the oil here. It
is already drilling in the north and has so many problems there they can’t solve. PAUSE Do they want
more troubles here? SYNCManari: Our position is firm; We are saying “No” to oil exploitation in our territory. PAUSE And with that
"No" we made a campaign within and outside the country. WASHINGTON
DC MARCH, PIX ETC- MAY 2017 10:57:02 SYNCManari: We fought at the international level. We presented a denunciation to the Inter-American Court. We put a denunciation before the United Nations and we made our voices heard in the world. PAUSE But the
Chinese told us: " Whatever you do, the Ecuadorian government had
already taken the money." 10:57:24 COM: The constitution
in Ecuador says the state owns the resources, but the government must
consult with local communities before granting concessions. 10:57:36 SYNCManari:
But the
government entered with threats. The constitution doesn’t say, “ to put threats.” It says
you have to ask: “Do they want or they don’t?” PAUSE SYNCManari: We received many threats to kill us. They said that we were terrorists and saboteurs. PAUSE 10:57:54 SYNCManari:
The government told us it’d militarize our territory to get
the oil, if we don’t allow it. PAUSE It already
tried to bring the military here, passed helicopters. It threatened us in a
thousand ways. PAUSE – INTO COSMOLOGY TABACCO
SEQUENCE 10:58:13 COM: Sapara’s resolve to fight against the oil is rooted in their unique
cosmology. It’s an alien perspective to the western world, but it fuels their
crusade to keep the oil in the ground. 10:58:34 SYNCManari: Oil is a natural resource that
maintains the balance of nature. 10:58:46 SYNCManari:
Earth’s natural resources are alive and deserve
respect, like us. 10:59:04 SYNCManari: In our vision, if we connect at this moment with a place where the oil is, we see spiritual beings living there. They are connected with the plants, with a space and with the stars. They create balance, in which we can exist. 10:59:25 SYNCManari: Our determination to keep the oil in the ground will keep us strong in our fight until we convince those who say that they must exploit the oil. |
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CHINA
LAST |
11:00:06 COM: Most of the oil barrels buried in the fragile areas of the Ecuador’s Amazon are already committed to the Chinese companies. Ecuador
has to pay back billions of dollars it owes to China with oil, according to
the loans’ terms. The
current balance is forcing the country to drill until 2024. 11:00:28 SYNCPaulinaGarzon: Ecuador has mortgaged its future, because its level of debt to China forces the country to exploit oil in places of high environmental sensitivity. Right now, the
country, due to its tough economic situation, can hardly meet the payments to
China. Its position is precarious. It also depends on the Chinese investors
in other areas. 11:00:57 COM: In 2016 Ecuador and
China signed a strategic partnership. It’s one of the highest levels of relationship China has with any country
in the region. Oil
remains high on the Chinese list of interests. Next
is mining for Ecuador’s rich minerals. 11:01:17 SYNCPaulinaGarzon: China made a map of Ecuador’s mineral resources and knows exactly where the different types of minerals are. China also made a plan to manage watersheds in Ecuador. PAUSE 11:01:35 China is not just a lender, an investor and a commercial partner. It is a country with a technical capacity to map where the natural resources are and plan its future investment strategies. PAUSE 11:01:52 SYNCAlbertoAcosta: We believed that we’d liberated ourselves from the North American imperialism and we’re free from the diktats of the IMF and the World Bank and didn’t have to fulfill the conditions from the Washington consensus. It was false. We fell into the clutches of China. |
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MANARI
LAST |
11:02:08 SYNCManari: We will not allow that. PAUSE 11:02:14 We are not afraid if someone points a rifle at us and says: "Hey, I'm going to kill you." Kill me. I am going to die, but people will fight. The Chinese can enter by force, but we are here. For each step they make, we also make one. PAUSE 11:02:37 Oil means economic development for the modern world. For us it means death. |
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YASUNI
LAST/PENTI |
11:02:52 COM:
Drilling of new oil wells is well under way deep inside Yasuni National Park. Environmentalists say it
is the most intrusive development yet in the field 43, or ITT, area of
Yasuni. Like Manari, the Sapara leader, Penti from Bameno is ready
to face a new challenge from the oil companies. 11:03:14 SYNCPENTI: We don’t want oil extraction here. My parents fought against it, my grandparents did, and I am here to lead my community to defend this territory and the culture, so that the future generations of Huaorani can live in this jungle for many decades. |
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YASUNIDOS
LAST/NEW |
11:03:46 SYNCEsperanza
a
decisive battle is taking place around the world. The idea to leave the oil
in the ground is no longer crazy and surreal. It is absolutely necessary. 11: 04:07 We refuse to accept
that we lost Yasuni. Yasuni for us was like the “U” of utopia. It was a place
where we could make this great step, and I think we can still make it. 11:04:20 COM: The Initiative proved to be ahead
of its time. But people who
still fight for Yasuni believe their efforts are not in vain. In Ecuador,
Yasunidos are now taking a lead in new battles and they dream big. 11:04:34 SYNCAntonella: The older generations planted that seed so
we can carry on fighting. We decided
to live differently and we believe that things have to change in this country
and in the world. 11:04:59 SYNCAntonella: the struggle to stop climate
change begins in your own country, but it has to be expanded worldwide. We
are planning an international ecologist movement. It doesn’t work if you just plan for
Ecuador. You have to go global. |
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CLOSING
THOUGHTS |
11:05:28 SYNCAlbertoAcosta: It gives us hope. People are much more responsible than the governments, stuck in the logic to treat nature as a commodity that secures the accumulation of capital. And we need to subordinate our lives to its demands. But people react, organize themselves, and protest in all parts of the planet. 11:06:04 SYNCHans: if things like Yasuni fail and the symbol of
hope gets destroyed, and we really wreck havoc on this planet, and we destroy
the rain forest, the climate turns mad, the sea levels rise, icecaps melt and
the deserts extend and increase, what will happen to the 10billion people who
are on Earth? 11:06:34 COM: Incredibly, it
will take the world only several days to burn Yasuni oil. It
is our Earth and we decide. |
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