Quito - The move taken up by the government of President Rafael Correa on the matter of the non-exploitation of oil in the Yasuní reserve restored the confidence of environmental groups in Ecuador.

On the morning of August 3, a Tuesday, at the building of the Ministry of Foreign Relations and in the presence of vice president Lenin Moreno, the government signed a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the creation of the ITT Yasuní Trust, a financial investment that will receive contributions from the countries, organizations and citizens who join the initiative of non-exploitation of the 846 million barrels of oil that lie within the Yasuní National Park, one of the largest biodiversity reservoirs still on this Planet.

See the photographic essay Yasuní, a place that inspires

The Park was created in 1979, acknowledged as a Biosphere Reservation in 1989 and covers 982 thousand hectares in the basin of the Napo River, in the western Amazon, in Ecuador.

The project to avoid the extraction of oil from below ground to prevent the contamination of the area had to face a halt forced by last year’s crisis, when President Correa refused the proposal that offered the liberation of funds in exchange for the non-operation.

In the fund signing ceremony, aside from the vice president, UNDP’s administrator Rebeca Grynspan was also present, as well as the Minister of Patrimony, María Fernanda Espinosa and the Minister for Foreign Business, Commerce and Integration, Ricardo Patiño. A noted absence was that of President Correa.

The project, yet to be consolidated, will prevent the emission of 470 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and there are already some good indicators of its success: Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Holland, Italy and Norway have already announced their support. The final goal is to obtain US$ 3,6 billion as indemnification.

"We are signing the real birth of the Yasuní-ITT initiative, it is the first landmark, the first major step”, said Minister Espinosa. On her part, Grynspan pointed out "Ecuador’s innovative, bold and vanguardist character in contributing towards Humanity by showing the world a different path to development, improving its citizen’s well-being and evidencing its awareness towards climate changes".

The funds collected will be invested in five areas: investments in science and technology, sustainable development, the fight against poverty in the neighboring areas of the Yasuní National Park and changing the energy matrix, among others. Next week, the government will begin to promote the fund at Shanghai Fair in China.

The Yasuní contains 2,274 species of trees and shrubs: within a single hectare there are some 655 species, surpassing the total numbers of native arboreal species of the US and Canada. Some 593 species of birds, 80 species of bats, 150 of amphibians and 121 of reptiles have been reported in the region and also more than 4,000 species of vascular plants over 1,000,000 hectares. The estimated number of insects, around 100 thousand per hectare, is the largest in the world.

Further reading: "Are the days of the Yasuní ecosystem, numbered?"

Ricardo Tello is a free-lance journalist.  He was the editor of daily newspapers El Universo of Guayaquil and El Tempo of Cuenca. He has won several awards such as the Jorge Matilla Ortega, in Ecuador and in the first call for Grants for Investigative Journalism by the Avina Foundation. Currently, he divides his time with being a University teacher.