Ecuador government may approve oil drilling in area just outside of Yasuni where indigenous tribes live:
A ban on drilling in the Yasuní-ITT oil field would only partly satisfy environmentalists and defenders of indigenous rights. Another oil lease near that field also overlaps territory used by the semi-nomadic Tagaeri and Taromenane, and the government plans to auction off a dozen more leases in the central and southern Amazon, affecting as many as seven other communities of Indigenous Peoples.
Correa’s critics say it is contradictory to offer to save the Yasuní-ITT area while moving ahead with oil exploration elsewhere in the Amazon. They also say the president is undermining the Yasuní-ITT initiative’s credibility by threatening to go ahead with plans for drilling in that area if Ecuador does not collect $100 million by this December.
