THE BURNING SEASON PLUS DROUGHT




The "fire devil" sweeping across a burning field in Araçatuba (São Paolo State) is emblematic of the fact that thus far 2010 has been an especially difficult year for fires in Brazil. Satellite monitoring of fire incidents or "hotspots" reveals that across the January to August period, there have be twice the number of fires in 2010 as in 2009.

The more populous Northeast and South (including the vast agricultural areas) have been hardest hit by the prolonged drought but the dryness and fires have been spreading across Amazônia as well.

Mongabay reports:

Alberto Setzer, coordinator of INPE's fire monitoring program, blamed drier and warmer conditions, as well as socio-political factors, like higher commodity prices and upcoming national elections. Afraid of alienating key supporters in the agricultural sector, Setzer told Terra Brasil that politicians are laying off environmental law enforcement until after elections. Uncertainty about the Brazilian environmental legislation - including a possible weakening of the country's strict Forest Code - might also be having an impact.

Fires in the Brazilian Amazon are generally set by developers opening logged forests, deforested scrub, and grassland for pasture and agriculture. Under dry conditions fires often "escape" into adjacent rainforest areas, casting a pall over much of Brazil and in some years affecting transportation and air quality.

The last last two weeks have been especially intense here in Rio Branco.



The air has been thick with smoke and the Rio Acre has been at near-record lows...




The most serious problem is that low river levels, especially on the Madeira River in neighboring Rondonia, have been cutting ferry service and the normal flows of transportation into Acre. This means that we could be facing serious shortages of fresh foodstuffs and fuel. Additionally, the wells that serve most of the residential areas are critically low.

The good news is that the 5-day forecast includes a return of scattered showers. The cumulative amount of precipitation is not great but it could signal the end of the most severe phase of the drought. Let's hope so.

A BIG VICTORY FOR A SMALL PEOPLE



The Dongria Kondh tribe of 8,000 has prevailed in its struggle to prevent the $8 Billion Vedanta Corporation from mining bauxite on their sacred mountain in Eastern India.

The global campaign of Survival International was vital to the victory, demonstrating the power of organizing on-the-ground actions and outreach via the Internet.

According to The Guardian:

The project has been delayed by four years because of intense opposition from environmental and tribal rights group. At Vedanta's annual meeting in London last month its board of directors faced criticism from shareholders, celebrity activists and charities all protesting about the company's human rights and environmental record.

Survival International, whose supporters sent more than 10,000 protest letters to the Indian government, described the decision as a "stunning victory" and "a crushing defeat for billionaire Anil Agarwal, Vedanta's majority owner and founder".

Survival campaigner Dr Jo Woodman said: "This is a victory nobody would have believed possible. The Dongria's campaign became a litmus test of whether a small, marginalised tribe could stand up to a massive multinational company with an army of lobbyists and PR firms and the ear of government.

"Incredibly, the Dongria's courage and tenacity, allied with the support of many people in India, and Survival's supporters around the world, have triumphed."

PLAN TO MINE SACRED MOUNTAIN NAILED

Survival International hopes that the new report by India's government is the final nail in the coffin for Vedanta's plan to mine the sacred mountain of the Dongria Kondh.

[UPDATE August 17, 2010: More background, stories of the violence faced by activists and stunning photos have been posted at mongabay.com.]

Plans by Vedanta Resources to mine on Dongria Kondh land in eastern India ‘threaten the survival’ of the tribe, according to an official government investigation whose report has just been released.

In a devastating report, a committee set up by India’s Environment Minister has ruled that Vedanta has acted illegally and with ‘total contempt for the law’; that local officials have ‘colluded’ in the company’s illegal activity and falsified documents; that ‘it is established beyond any doubt that the [mining] area is the cultural, religious and economic habitat of the Dongria Kondh ’; and that to allow Vedanta’s mine would be ‘illegal’.

India’s Minister of Environment and Forests has already said he will use the report to decide whether to give Vedanta permission to begin mining.

Vedanta’s scheme to mine the land of the Dongria Kondh tribe has become one of the most notorious projects in the world, with investors including Aviva and the Church of England attacking the company. Celebrities including Bianca Jagger, Joanna Lumley and Michael Palin have given their support to the Dongria tribe, who have been peacefully resisting the mine for years.

A previous investigation for the Environment Ministry found that Vedanta’s mine ‘may lead to the destruction’ of the Dongria Kondh as a tribe. The report concluded that mining should not be allowed.

Stephen Corry, Director of Survival said today, ‘This report is utterly scathing about Vedanta’s behaviour and confirms what Survival and others have been saying for years. The investigators have discovered that both Vedanta and the local authorities have already broken the law. The findings are unequivocal – mining will destroy the Dongria Kondh and should not be allowed. Let’s hope this is the final nail in the coffin for Vedanta’s plans.’

Download the report

HOMAGE TO THE STONE PEOPLE

Check out the Flickr set "Canyons, Making Of" for the story of how this was done.

Metron is absolutely right is saying that there is nothing quite like hiking through the canyonlands under moonlight.

US AND BRAZIL SWAP DEBT FOR NATURE

Video shows the extraordinary diversity of nature and people in the cerrado region near Brasilia. There is 
concern about the new hydroelectric projects planned for the region. More information at sos chapada.

Although Amazonia receives the bulk of global media attention, there are several other important and even more threatened biomes in Brazil including the the Atlantic Rainforest (Mata Atântica), the interior Savannah (Cerrado) and the dry lands of the Northeast (Caatinga). These lesser-known regions of incredible biodiversity are now going to benefit from a $21 million debt-for-nature swap between the US and Brazil.

More on the swap from Mongabay:

The United States will cut Brazil's debt payments by $21 million under a debt-for-nature that will protect the Latin American country's endangered Atlantic Rainforest (Mata Atlantica), Caatinga and Cerrado ecosystems.

The agreement, announced Thursday, comes under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA) of 1998, which to date has generated $239 million to protect tropical forests in Bangladesh, Belize, Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and the Philippines. The Brazil deal is the 16th signed under the TFCA.

Funds under the latest debt-for-nature swap will go towards "activities to conserve protected areas, improve natural resource management, and develop sustainable livelihoods for communities that rely on forests," according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

The three ecosystems targeted are under greater threat than the better known Amazon rainforest.

The cerrado, a biologically-rich grassland that once covered an area half the size of Europe, is fast being transformed into croplands to meet rising demand for soybeans, sugarcane, and cattle. It is now disappearing more than twice as the rate as the neighboring Amazon rainforest.

The Mata Atlântica is Brazil's most endangered rainforest, covering less than 8 percent of its original range. Logging and conversion for agriculture and cattle ranches have been the primary drivers of deforestation of the Mata Atlântica, which is found in some of Brazil's richest and most populous states. The ecosystem, which ranks as a global biodiversity hotspot with more than 250 species of mammals, more than 750 species of reptiles and amphibians and nearly 1,000 species of birds, is home to some of Brazil's most famous endangered species like the Golden Lion Tamarin.

The Caatinga is a dry tropical forest characterized by scrubby vegetation in northeastern Brazil, one of the country's poorest regions. Caatinga is under threat from clearing for cattle ranching and agriculture, as well as charcoal production and timber harvesting. The ecosystem is known for its rich bird life, including a number of endemic species like Lear's Macaw (endangered) and Spix's Macaw (now extinct in the wild).

LESSIG LEVELS WITH OBAMA

Lawrence Lessig

Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics

On The Rage of Gibbs

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has been slapped around silly by commentator after commentator, decrying his anti-Lefty rage. But as I read the battle, it seems to miss a pretty fundamental point:

It's certainly not fair to criticize Obama for not being a Lefty. He wasn't ever a Lefty. He didn't promise to be a Lefty. And there's no reason to expect that he would ever become a Lefty.

But Lefties (like me) who criticize Obama are not criticizing him for failing our Lefty test. Our criticism is that Obama is failing the Obama test: that he is not delivering the presidency that he promised.

When Candidate Obama took on Hilary Clinton, he was quite clear about what he thought about the way Washington works. And he was quite clear about why he was running for President. As he said:

[U]nless we're willing to challenge the broken system in Washington, and stop letting lobbyists use their clout to get their way, nothing else is going to change. And the reason I'm running for president is to challenge that system.

Read it again: "The reason I am running for president is to challenge that system."

Or again:

[I]f we do not change our politics -- if we do not fundamentally change the way Washington works -- then the problems we've been talking about for the last generation will be the same ones that haunt us for generations to come.

Or again:

But let me be clear -- this isn't just about ending the failed policies of the Bush years; it's about ending the failed system in Washington that produces those policies. For far too long, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, Washington has allowed Wall Street to use lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system and get its way, no matter what it costs ordinary Americans.

Or again, as he asked, again and again:

Do we continue to allow lobbyists to veto our progress? Or do we finally put our national interests ahead of the special interests and address the concerns people feel over their jobs, their health care and their children's future?

Or again, as he explained:

We are up against the belief that it's OK for lobbyists to dominate our government -- that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem, and this election is our chance to say that we're not going to let them stand in our way anymore.

Or perhaps put best:

We need to challenge the system... And if we're not willing to take up that fight, then real change -- change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans -- will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.

Once Obama clinched the nomination, however, his rhetoric changed. And as he came to office, his focus, as a senior administration official explained, was to clean up the Executive, and leave to Congress the problem of cleaning up Congress (begging the obvious question: Does the president believe the problem with Washington is the presidency, and not Congress?)

Since coming to power, Obama has pushed just one piece of legislation that would have any effect at all on the power of lobbyists over Congress. That bill has not passed, and even if it had, it would have changed nothing in the lobbyists' power. He has not even indicated that he would support the only substantial reform of lobbyists power with support in Congress today -- the Fair Elections Now Act. Indeed, "congressional reform" doesn't even merit a mention on the "Additional Issues" page of whitehouse.gov (though "sportsmen" does).

Obama's strategy as president has not been to "change the way Washington works." Rather, he has pushed reforms in the same old way, with the same old games. As Glenn Greenwald put it, speaking of health care:

The way this bill has been shaped is the ultimate expression -- and bolstering -- of how Washington has long worked. One can find reasonable excuses for why it had to be done that way, but one cannot reasonably deny that it was.

Now I'm not sure whether it is leftist, or rightist, or centerist to govern through special interest deals. It certainly is Clintonist. It's precisely the administration that Hillary "lobbyists are people, too" Clinton promised. And were she president, and had she done exactly what Obama has done, then no one, I included, would have any reason to criticize her.

But beefed up Clintonism is not what Obama promised. He promised to "take up the fight." His failure to deliver on that critical promise -- the promise that distinguished him from his main primary rival -- or even to try, is a failure that everyone, Lefties included, should be free to complain about without suffering the rage of Gibbs.

BIOCHAR IS ON A ROLL

With the report last week of biochar's potential for reducing nitrogen pollution and the just-released report that biochar may be able to reduce overall concentrations of atmospheric carbon by as much as 12 percent, biochar news is really on a roll.

Here's the round-up of recent news from the International Biochar Initiative:

• Charcoal takes some heat off global warming
  Press Release: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
  08/10/2010
• Delivering biochar's triple win
  BBC News
  08/10/2010
• Biochar Could Put Huge Global Dent in Greenhouse Gases
  Discovery News
  08/10/2010
• Biochar Alone Could Offset 12% of All Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Study
  Treehugger
  08/10/2010
• Green machine: Don't burn plant waste, bury it
  New Scientist
  08/10/2010

Most interestingly, biochar seems to be bridging the chasm of political polarity.
Here is conservative Andrew Sullivan saying at The Daily Dish, "The Only Solution May Be Technology" and liberal Brad Plumer saying at The New Republic, "Yes, Biochar Really Might Be Magical."

Might Biochar not only be a nature and people win/win but a left/right political win/win as well?

If you are new to the biochar concept, here is a brief video introduction (with translation into Portuguese).



Here is one of the leading biochar experts, Johannes Lehmann, Associate Professor of soil biogeochemistry at Cornell University, discussing the characteristics of naturally occurring terra preta including its agricultural and carbon sequestering benefits. He then turns to considering the factors involved with implementation industrial biochar systems for large-scale carbon sequestration and energy provision. Watch this for the BIG PICTURE.



For the "small is beautiful" side of the biochar vision, check out the extraordinary work of the Biochar Fund among traditional farmers in Africa. Incredibly inspiring!

Finally, the global International Biochar Initiative Conference will be held next month in Rio de Janeiro where the latest-and-greatest advances will be presented and a whole new global citizen's movement of earth healers will be launched.

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH

I love this one -- the latest gift from Joe Riley at Panhala.

A Brave And Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through casual space

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us

It is possible and imperative that we learn

A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it

To the day of peacemaking

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

And allow the pure air to cool our palms

***

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body

Created on this earth, of this earth

Have the power to fashion for this earth

A climate where every man and every woman

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety

Without crippling fear

When we come to it

We must confess that we are the possible

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world

That is when, and only when

We come to it.

~ Maya Angelou ~

Check out the treasures in the archive of Panhala postings.

TSUNAMI FROM THE SKY

Global warming is all about location. Here in Acre Brazil we are worried that the shifts in North Atlantic tropical water temperatures are producing more frequent and more devastating droughts. With at least 2 months of the dry season to go, the rivers are already at a 35 year low and the sunsets are obscured by the widespread fires.

Far away on the other side of the planet in the tiny and happy Kingdom of Bhutan, people fear that melting glaciers will produce too much water, a veritable "tsunami from the sky."

Our places are distant and our experiences are different but we're all in the same boat.

THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT



The world is full of lumps.

I've got to admit that I have been skeptical of Tom Friedman's thesis that "The World is Flat". Often, it strikes me somehow as an information age manifesto of monculture. My thoughts are not well-developed about this but by instinct and intuition, as well by science, I know that the diversity and richness of both our social and natural world could not possibly be represented as flat. Variety, messiness and roughness offer a more fundamental view of the non-linear and non-flat elegance in which "bottomless wonders emerge from very simple rules repeated without end."

Ethan Zuckeman's brilliant and inspiring TED talk describes well the social lumps that are missed in the "World is Flat" perspective. Many voices are never heard in the flat terrain of the mainstream media where most cultural and natural roughness is ignored unless it is sensational or violent. Indeed, our world seems complex, too complex to understand. But, in simplicity, there can be found a deeper more tranquil beauty that binds us together. Our quest is to find it.

NO LAUGHING MATTER: BIOCHAR MAY OFFER A SOLUTION FOR A BIG PROBLEM

THE NITROGEN PROBLEM:

While greening farms worldwide, much nitrogen washes into lakes, rivers, and the sea, causing rampant algae growth. More nitrogen billows from power-plant smokestacks, blowing in the wind until it settles as acid rain. Still other nitrogen gases remain in the atmosphere consuming the ozone layer. Nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide – considered the leading cause of climate change – and the third most threatening greenhouse gas overall.

Concern about nitrogen pollution is increasing. Last September, disruption of the nitrogen cycle topped the list of global tipping points in this Nature study. Other scientists have ranked nitrogen pollution as one of the top threats to global biodiversity. The Christian Science Monitor reported on the many modes and moods of nitrogen here.

A BIOCHAR SOLUTION:

New Study Says Biochar Reduces Emissions and Runoff

Biochar proponents now have an additional benefit to tout, in addition to increasing crop yields and carbon storage of soil: According to a long-term study in Australia, biochar both reduces nitrous oxide emissions from soil by 73%, and reduces inorganic nitrogen runoff from fields by up to 94%. 

The study in the Journal of Environmental Quality, done by Bhupinder Pal Singh of Industry & Investment New South Wales and Balwant Singh from the University of Sydney, found that initially biochar produced inconsistent effects. Early on it appeared that biochar increased nitrous oxide emissions. However, after four months the effect was reversed, with aging of biochar in the soil cited as a possible reason for the switch from adverse to beneficial effects, in terms of emissions.

"The impacts of biochars on nitrous oxide emissions from soil are of interest because even small reductions in nitrous oxide emissions can considerably enhance the greenhouse mitigation value of biochar, which is already proven to be a highly stable carbon pool in the soil environment," according to senior author Bhupinder Pal Singh. "This research highlights that impacts of biochar on nitrogen transformations in soil may change over time and hence stresses the need for long-term studies to assess biochar's potential to reduce nitrogen losses from soil." (Science Daily)

It's still way too early to claim that biochar is the proverbial silver bullet techno-fix but this news sure puts a smile on my face without a whiff of laughing gas.

NOTE: There's an excellent compendium of biochar reports covering everything from the backyard to the laboratory here.

THE NEEDED POPULATION BOOM

In Indonesia's West Java province, a new law to promote tree planting in this region of high deforestation is making newlyweds go green. It doesn't answer the problem of continuing deforestation but it surely will help to swell the global population of trees.

The program, "Couples Caring For The Environment", requires newly married couples to plant and care for five trees. The seedlings are generally brought by the bridegroom as a dowry for the bride. The initiative is an effort to help repopulate native greenery in Indonesia, much of which has been destroyed to make room for agriculture.

Perhaps something similar could be part of a bolsa floresta program for Brazil's "arc of Amazon deforestation".


Deforestation through 2006 in Brazilian Amazonia. (source: Ecology and Society)

THE RUSH FOR OIL IN BRAZIL

Romantically, I'd love to report that Equal Exchange's Fairtrade Marked Organic Brazil Nut Oil is opening vast economic development opportunities -- "Dream on, Lou" -- but the truth is that Brazil seems to be entering a new era of fossil fuel fever.

"... since the national oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, discovered the massive Tupi field off the coast of Rio de Janeiro two years ago — estimated to hold 5 to 8 billion barrels — it is the development of oil fields that has gone into overdrive. ... Estimates of the entire area's recoverable oil range between 50 billion and 100 billion barrels.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hailed the finds as the nation's future, a second declaration of independence and an economic saviour for 57 million Brazilians living in poverty — 30 per cent of the population. The military wants new submarines and jets to protect the crude. Leftist groups want it all nationalized.

The enthusiasm is also fanned by Brazil's devotion to Petrobras, routinely listed as one of the most-admired companies in national polls."

Despite the many pioneering Petrobras efforts to employ the "latest-and-greatest" technologies of "clean and green" oil exploration and extraction deep plumbing for petrol remains a difficult, dirty and dangerous enterprise:

The oil workers union, the Federacao Unica dos Petroleiros, says Petrobras’s safety record is hardly pristine. The union says it has documented 282 fatalities among Petrobras staff and contract workers during the past 15 years in accidents at oil rigs and refineries.

Petrobras has also suffered 27 oil rig blowouts since 1980, two of them in the past 10 years, according to a presentation by Otto Luiz Alcantara Santos, a trainer from the International Association of Drilling Contractors.

In 2007, it took six weeks to plug a leaking well on land near the Espirito Santo Basin on Brazil’s eastern coast. The leak was finally plugged via a relief well of the kind being drilled in the Gulf, says Santos, who trains Petrobras staff in well control.

The most recent offshore blowout was in 2009 and was caused by an explosion in an offshore well in the Sergipe Basin. No one was killed, and Petrobras was able to plug the well in just two days by injecting fluids into the piping that remained after the explosion -- a technique that failed in the Gulf.

Has BP's Deepwater Horizon Gulf Gusher had an impact on the Brazilian oil rush?

Bloomberg reports:

Lucia Rodriguez Ilaria figured it would be easy to get a big crowd together in Brazil’s largest city to demonstrate against BP Plc, the company responsible for the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The June 12 event in Sao Paulo was part of Worldwide Protest BP Day, an event organized in 52 cities across five continents that aimed to start a boycott of BP products. About 350,000 people signed on for the protest on Facebook.

In Sao Paulo, eight people showed up for the rally at Ibirapuera Park, Bloomberg Markets reports in its September issue.

“I don’t think they’ll care until there’s a wake-up call, like if it happened off the coast of Rio de Janeiro tomorrow,” says Rodriguez, 26, a translator and organizer of the Sao Paulo event.

[UPDATE - 11 August 2010 - Bloomberg: Mysterious oil slick is appearing on beaches east of Rio.]

Indeed, the main controversy seems to center on how to divide the new wealth.

Last year, Lula introduced legislation, which has yet to pass, that would make Petrobras the operator of all new pre-salt oil fields and reduce the role of foreign companies to financial investors in projects in which Petrobras calls the shots.

Meanwhile, local politicians are fighting over how to divide up what they hope will be tens of billions of dollars in future revenues from the oil fields. All Brazilian states share royalties whether they produce oil or not. In early March, the lower house passed a bill that would increase the royalties for non-oil-producing states by as much as 26 percent.

More than 80,000 people filled downtown Rio on March 17 on a rainy afternoon to protest the bill. Rio de Janeiro state, which produces 68 percent of the country’s oil and natural gas, has the most to lose from any changes in the royalty structure. Further action on the bill has been delayed until after the October presidential elections.

Given the public enthusiasm for Petrobras’s deep-water projects -- or at least the money they’ll bring in -- it’s hard to find a politician who doesn’t back more drilling. Carlos Brizola, a Brazilian lower-house representative who led a committee this year that wrote a bill establishing new oil laws boosting government control of the industry, says there’s “no chance” Brazil will impose an Obama-style moratorium.

LET YOURSELF ...

Let yourself be silently drawn
by the strange pull of what you really love.
It will not lead you astray.

~ Rumi ~

(Essential Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks)

From the wonderful collection of poems and photos posted at Panhala.

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Just send a blank email to: Panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

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Enjoy.

VICTORY FOR THE RIGHTS OF HUMANS AND NATURE IN ECUADOR'S YASUNI NATIONAL PARK

There's some real good news emerging from the western Amazon and, especially in the context of the more worried view that I've been reporting, it is inspiring to see good intentions taking on concrete meanings.

[UPDATE 03 August 2010: Mongabay offers an in-depth report and lots of background links for this historic victory.]

Under an unprecedented agreement, known as the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, the government of Ecuador will refrain from exploiting some 900 million barrels of oil underground in the Yasuni National Park in exchange for more than $3 billion from foreign donors. The agreement, which is based on value of protecting ecosystem services as compared with burning extracted fossil fuels is an outstanding example of a how a new global carbon economy might promote a reciprocal win/win relationship between people and nature. The agreement is scheduled to be signed on Tuesday.

This begins the long process of giving concrete meanings to the first-of-its-kind rights-of-nature clause which was included in Ecuador's new Constitution.

Globally, grassroots organizations have contributed significant energy and support -- Ecological Internet helped "nudge" the donors into action on protecting the park and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund offered technical assistance in developing the visionary constitutional clause -- and according to Amazon Watch:

Ecuador's civil society organizations, as well as the Huaorani themselves, kept the proposal alive by pressuring the government and continuing to increase the proposals popularity nationally and internationally. The environmental organization, Accion Ecologica with its "Amazon For Life" campaign collected tens of thousands of signatures of support and kept the initiative in the news during times when the government's commitment appeared to wane.

Developing a 21st Century model for replacing resource extractivism with reciprocity is not an easy task and is riddled with contradictions such as possible "leakage" to other regions. Again, according to Amazon Watch:

Although there is cause for celebration, some of Ecuador's indigenous groups are concerned by the Correa administration's announcement this week to open up areas of Ecuador's roadless, pristine southeastern Amazon region, as well as re-offering older oil blocks that were unsuccessful due to indigenous resistance.

"We hope that the success of the Yasuni proposal doesn't mean a defeat for the forests and people of the southern rainforests," said German Freire, President of the Achuar indigenous people who have land title to almost 2 million acres of intact rainforest, all of which would be opened to new drilling. "We don't want Correa to offset his lost income from leaving the ITT oil in the ground by opening up other areas of equally pristine indigenous lands."

As the delicacies and dangers of development unfold across Amazônia, agreements such as protecting the Yasuni National Park serve both as an important concrete accomplishment and a beacon for the future. But it's going to take constant vigilance to truly turn vision into reality. Stay tuned for latest reports at Amazon Watch.