Back environmental project

Ecuador asks UN:

UN: Ecuador called on the world, particularly the industrialized countries, to back the Yasuni-ITT environmental initiative for saving the space of the Amazon with the greatest bio-diversity, and reiterated its condemnation of the blockade against Cuba.

In a speech to the UN National Assembly, the Ecuadorian Vice President, Lenin Moreno, affirmed that Cuba is the nation that has shown the greatest solidarity in the Latin American sub continent.

At the time of giving assistance, Cubans do not take into account that they are still suffering the most monstrous, illegal and unlawful blockade in living memory, and which Ecuador firmly condemns with the force of a grateful people. He highlighted Cuba’s activity in bio-psychosocial and clinical genetic research to disabled people carried out in Ecuador.

Moreno emphasized the importance of the Yasuni initiative and recalled that in 1989 that territory was declared a world biosphere reserve by UNESCO and that it has oil resources of about 846 billion barrels that have never been prospected.

The project is aimed at keeping that hydrocarbon under the earth to avoid emission of 407 million tons of carbon, considered the main cause of climate change, he explained. In that way the richest biosphere reserve of the world will remain intact.

To achieve that goal Ecuador needs an international contribution of $3.6 billion which is equivalent to half of what the Ecuadorian state would receive if it were to allow oil exploration.

United Nations, Prensa Latina