ACTION ALERT UPDATE PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY! FOREST ALERT! Fund Ecuador to Keep Oil Underground and Rainforests Standing for Our Shared Climate
By Rainforest Portal, http://www.rainforestportal.org/ August 20, 2008 TAKE ACTION It is time for the international community led by Europe to step up and finance large-scale Amazon rainforest preservation to protect the Earth's atmosphere, biodiversity, and life- giving ecosystems; while helping meet needs for national advancement http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=ecuador_oil_underground The Western Amazon -- home to some of the most biodiverse and intact rainforest left on Earth, which are critical for driving regional and global ecosystems and climatic patterns necessary for life -- may soon be decimated by oil rigs and pipelines. According to a new study in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, over 180 oil and gas "blocks" areas zoned for exploration and development now cover the Western Amazon, which includes Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and western Brazil. These oil and gas blocks stretch over 688,000 km2 (170 million acres), a vast area nearly the size of Texas. Yet there is hope, as Ecuador's new forward-thinking government led by President Rafael Correa announced in June 2007 the innovative Yasuní-ITT Initiative which offers to keep Ecuador's largest untapped oilfields unexploited in exchange for financial compensation from the international community. Regional governments, international donors and global citizens must decide whether every last bit of the Earth's wilderness; and intact, large ecosystems, will be sacrificed to delay having to transition now to renewable energy sources, ensuring abrupt run-away climate change in the process. Given their historical strong rhetoric on the need to protect global climate and biodiversity, please ask European aid agencies to lead the effort. TAKE ACTION NOW: http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=ecuador_oil_underground DISCUSS THIS ALERT: http://www.rainforestportal.org/issues/2008/08/alert_fund_ecuador_to_keep_oil.asp --- You are subscribed to ecological_internet as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Before unsubscribing, please consider modifying your list profile at: http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/subscribe/[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or click here: http://email.ecoearth.info:81/u?id=84041H&n=T&c=F&l=ecological_internet To subscribe visit: http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/subscribe/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
