The new Chavez? Oil trumps rain forest in Ecuador

[Bacchus4.0]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/chavez-oil-trumps-rain-forest-171253116.html

By Anna Andrianova | CNBC

Six years after trotting out a highly acclaimed commitment to protect its rain forest, Ecuador's leftist president wants to yank the plan in favor of oil exploration, saying the world "failed" to pay Ecuador to spare the forests.


Rafael Correa in 2007 asked the international community to donate $3.6 billion that he said would allow Ecuador to forgo exploring and drilling for oil in Yasuni National Park, an area designated as a World Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations. But now Correa wants to start drilling in the area-which is populated by isolated indigenous peoples-and is blaming the global community for not sparing the forests.

"Unfortunately we have to say that the world has failed us," Correa said in a televised announcement this month. "But no one should be fooled that the main factor of the failure is that the world is a great hypocrisy."

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The area in dispute, called Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini, comprises 200 hectares (490 acres) of the 1 million hectare (2.5 million acre) park, and sits on more than 920 million barrels of oil-20 percent of Ecuador's total reserves-the presidency said in an official statement. In a recent Twitter post, the president said oil exploration will affect less than 0.1 percent of the park.

[Zorro]

1. Reminiscent of that iconic 70s NatLamp cover

Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog!

Well, Correa shot the dog. And it's everybody else's fault.