Live Yasuni, Ecuador

In the heart of the Amazon basin lies the most biologically diverse forest on the planet, Yasuní. Yasuní National Park is home to the Waorani and some of the last indigenous peoples still living in isolation in the Amazon, whose ancestral lands sit atop Ecuador's largest undeveloped oil reserves, the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil block.

In the past three decades, Ecuador has become dependent on oil exports for revenue, yet the "resource curse" of oil exploitation has failed to lift most Ecuadorians out of poverty, and has caused extensive watershed degradation, deforestation, toxic pollution, and severe health impacts to the Waorani and other indigenous people.

In 2007, the new government of President Correa has offered an unprecedented and historic proposal: Ecuador will not allow extraction of the ITT oil fields in Yasuní, if the world community can create a compensation trust to leave the oil permanently in the ground and fund Ecuador's sustainable development into the future. The groups listed on this website portal, LiveYasuni.org, endorse this policy.