One year since Ecuador citizens voted on Aug. 20, 2023, to halt all future oil drilling in Yasuní National Park, the government is nowhere near close to meeting its deadline. After the historic referendum, the country’s Constitutional Court gave the government and the state-owned oil company Petroecuador one year to close the 43-ITT oil block (known as Block 43 or Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini) in the protected area home to isolated peoples in the country’s eastern Amazon. Progress toward the goal has been small, say the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE). Besides the creation of a commission to oversee the implementation of the referendum results, which was announced nine months after the vote, the government has not carried out any actions to decommission the 43-ITT oil block. According to Petroecuador’s statistical report, the state-owned oil company responsible for the oil block, they were still carrying out operations up until June, when they had their latest assessment of oil production. Between January and June, the block produced 50,454 barrels of oil per day, which is only 3.6% less than they had produced during the same period last year. “So far, no one has approached the Waorani nationality,” Gilberto Mincaye Nenquimo Enqueri, the ex-president of the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador (NAWE), told Mongabay. Their ancestral territory includes the entire Yasuní Biosphere Reserve region, and like other Indigenous peoples, they are not included in overseeing the implementation of the referendum results. “The Constitutional…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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